More handpicked essays just for you.
Child labor in 1800s england editorials
Child labor in 1800s england editorials
Child labor in 1800s england editorials
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
During the Victorian Era poverty was common in London as many people suffered from illnesses, starvation, and other poor conditions. These conditions prevented people from being healthy therefore they were forced to work in harsh conditions to ensure that they sustain whatever little they had left of themselves. During these times, children who were abandoned, sold, or born into poor families were also treated harshly. Children were forced to work in terrible conditions. William Blake and Charles Dickens portray the troubles that children had to face and overcome through the use of literary devices in their works. In William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” Blake used symbolism and in Charles Dickens’ “A Walk in the Workhouse” Dickens used imagery to portray the innocence and the loss of innocence in the children.
In “The Chimney Sweeper”, Blake uses symbolism, which allowed the readers to feel the innocence yet the loss of the innocence of the child as well. The young boy’s father abandoned him shortly after his mother died. His father then sold him when he was just an infant, pure and innocent. The word “weep” was repeatedly used in the third line “[c]ould scarcely cry ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” (3) showing that the young boy could barely pronounce the word “sweep” thus showing his innocence in a symbolic manner. This young boy was put into hard labor as a chimney sweeper at a very young age and the repetition of the word “weep” also makes us readers feel the tears and sorrow of the young child. The symbolic use of the words sweep, soot, and sleep which form an alliteration makes the readers hear the sounds of the young boy cleaning the insides of a dirty chimney as does the young child hear, even in his sleep. This shows that the child...
... middle of paper ...
...hild that was found in the street and [the nurse] had brought up ever since, had died an hour ago, and see where the little creature lay, beneath this cloth! The dear, the pretty dear!” (45). This image of this beautiful child being found dead under a piece of cloth portrays the image of his childhood having been stripped away from him and he was unable to experience a regular childhood while being at the workhouse. This image also tells the readers that children rarely survive in the workhouse, as they are small, fragile and innocent as the image of “the little creature” is read. Another imagery that Dickens portrays is “that such as the dropped child are the angels who behold my Father’s face!” (46) where the innocence of a child is always present regardless of him being a dropped child or not because all children are pure and innocent while beholding God’s face.
Many people that did not come from rich families lived a life of extreme poverty. They sent kids to work in factories to help pay for things needed to survive, such as food, clothing, and other necessary materials. There were many poor families living in poverty during the Victorian Era: ‘I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea industrious,...
Starting with the first stanza, Blake creates a dark and depressing tone. He uses words such as died, weep, soot, and cry to support this tone. In the first two lines the child shares his family with us, stating his mother’s death and the fact that his father sold him sharing that the child must come from a poor background “When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue”(Lines 1-2). The image of a poor child getting tossed into another unhappy place sets the tone for the beginning of this poem. Blake uses the word “weep”, instead of “sweep” in the first stanza to show the innocence of the child “Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep”(3). The fact that the child cried “weep” instead of sweep shows that the child could not be any older than four. Blake describes that they sleep in soot also meaning they are sleeping in their death bed. The average life span of children who work in chimneys is ten years due to the harsh work environment. The child portrays sorrow in the last line of the first stanza “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.”(4)
Robert Browning's poem "The Pied Piper of Hamelin: A Child's Story" details the strange occurence in a town called Hamelin. This poem is a retelling of a popular piece of folklore about the real town of Hamelin in which children did actually disappear. Browning credits that disappearance to the character of the Pied Piper -- a figure wronged and who retaliates by taking children. In this essay, I aim to explore the depiction of the Pied Piper. He is a character that works on both the levels of child and adult. I believe that Browning is intentional with his descriptions of characters throughout, and I first want to detail Browning's descriptions of the adults and children in order to better understand how the Piper overlaps both classes. Then, I will determine the ways in which the Piper acts out traits of children and adults. Finally, I will conclude with a brief reference to the poem's function as a whole and its relation to the Pied Piper depicted in the piece.
Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities, has many metaphors, including “the great blue flies,” knitting and the sea to explore the important theme of human inhumanity towards the fellow man into his story. The metaphors are perfect symbols to explain how insensitive and cruel people can be towards one another, despite their pain and suffering. Nevertheless, Dickens includes not only moments for the reader to feel empathy for the victims of the revolution, but also moments of love. This story shows that inhumanity towards the fellow man is a problem in societies that will never be overcome; however, the world would be a better place if everyone strived to have compassion and respect for everyone, regardless of social class, religion, race, or money.
William Blake's poem "The Chimney Sweeper" gives us a look into the unfortunate lives of 18th century London boys whose primary job was to clear chimneys of the soot that accumulated on its interior; boys that were named "climbing boys" or "chimney sweepers." Blake, a professional engraver, wrote this poem (aabb rhyme), in the voice of a young boy, an uneducated chimney sweeper. This speaker is obviously a persona, a fictitious character created by Blake, as it is apparent that he wasn't a child or a chimney sweeper at the time he wrote this poem.
England was a society dominated by children. During the reign of Queen Victoria one out of three of her servants were under the age of fifteen. Child labor was a prominent issue, because there were no systems to ensure the safety of children. During the start of the industrial revolution, there was a “high demand” for labor (Robson 53). Many families moved from rural areas to new, industrialized cities. After a while things weren’t looking as “promising” as they did before (Boone 23). In order to maintain, families had to put almost all of their family members to work. This led to a rise in the number of child labor. Children were “mistreated, underpayed and overworked” (Kincaid 30). Using children to do all of the hard work, the mining companies believed, was the most sensible and efficient way to get the job done. Because the children were a lot smaller, it was easy for them to “maneuver through tight spaces” and on top of that the children demanded little or no pay at all(Boone 43 ). These wages were enough to persuade companies to use children for all sorts of dangerous jobs such as coal mining and chimney sweeps. Children were called to do many other “horrible” jobs, jobs that adults in this era could not bear, just so long as the bills were paid (Robson 18). The working conditions and treatment of young children during this era was horrible and a lot was done to put an end to it.
The prominent theme that was exhibited throughout the novel was inhumanity. The quote "Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky." This quotation shows how a powerful authority had all the control to carry out disturbing actions and no common ma...
"The Lamb," "The Little Black Boy," "The Chimney Sweeper," and "The Garden of Love," by William Blake, are unique in their simple structure and simple choice of words but complex concepts on life and life's experiences. His poems continue to twist and turn minds for centuries due to his style of setting up his poems with both questions and unanswered predicaments, and this is what sets William Blake apart from the rest of the other poets in British literature.
William Blake's Songs of Innocence, “The Shepherd,” “The Echoing Green,” The Little Black Boy,” “The Blossom,” and “Laughing Song.” William Blake wrote many poems during his lifetime. He had a set of poems called The Songs of Innocence and also a set called The Songs of Experience. This paper focuses on five poems from the Songs of Innocence, which are: “The Shepherd,” “The Echoing Green,” The Little Black Boy,” “The Blossom,” and “Laughing Song.” “The Shepherd” is a very short two stanza poem in which Blake tells about a shepherd who stays with his flock morning and night praising them.
Charles Dickens' Exploration of the Victorian Society's Awful Treatment Of The Children Of The Poor
Blake's portrayal of childhood is far from happy. A small child's mother dies while that child is still very young; this is sad but not all together strange. However the child's father then, very soon after, sells him off to be a chimney sweeper. Blake does not stop here; after a description these children's living conditions few emotions are left except for pity. As Americans living in the twenty first century, this all seams very strange. We see childhood as a time of joy, and innocence; a time to embrace, and to not let slip by too fast. We see childhood as Robert Frost does.
Charles Dickens is the author of many well-known classics such as A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Great Expectations, and David Copperfield, but he was a man of humble beginnings. Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England as the second of eight children. Though they had high aspirations for success, Dickens’ family remained poor, and his father was even imprisoned for debt. When Dickens’ entire family was sent to work in a downshodden boot-blacking factory, he felt that he had lost “his youthful innocence… betrayed by the adults who were supposed to take care of him. These sentiments would later become a recurring theme in his writing”(biography.com). This life did not last long, as he was soon able to return home, after
When reading the two poems the reader can easily see that as a child the speaker was carefree, innocent, and oblivious to the outside world. As an adult the speaker realizes that the world is a different place. The speaker carefree innocence has now been corrupted. William Blake uses imagery, tone, and diction to validate his theme of man being born innocent and is corrupted through
Mr. Gradgrind was a prominent school head that believed in “realities, facts, and calculations.” He is described as a cold-hearted man that strictly forbids the fostering of imagination and emotion, especially in his two children: Tom and Louisa (Dickens 5). Mr. Gradgrind raises his children in Coketown, a Capitalistic industrial town that Dickens calls, a waste-yard with “litter of barrels and old iron, the shining heaps of coals, the ashes everywhere, shrouded in a veil of mist and rain” (128). In this town that seems to be impenetrable to the sun’s rays, his children grow up lacking social connections, mor...
In the William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the vision of children and adults are placed in opposition of one another. Blake portrays childhood as a time of optimism and positivity, of heightened connection with the natural world, and where joy is the overpowering emotion. This joyful nature is shown in Infant Joy, where the speaker, a newborn baby, states “’I happy am,/ Joy is my name.’” (Line 4-5) The speaker in this poem is portrayed as being immediately joyful, which represents Blake’s larger view of childhood as a state of joy that is untouched by humanity, and is untarnished by the experience of the real world. In contrast, Blake’s portrayal of adulthood is one of negativity and pessimism. Blake’s child saw the most cheerful aspects of the natural wo...