The Song Of The Low And The Chartist Movement

The Chartist movement began in 1838, this movement inspired many writers and poets to publish work about the social inequality and political side to the working and upper class life. The poetry was mainly published in journals, and newspapers that were read by the same social class as the writer. One of these poems is “The Song Of The Low” which was a rallying poem published in Notes to the People in 1852 to excite and create solidarity within the Chartists. To compare to this is a passage from Mary Barton a novel published in 1848 showing the Chartist movement but also showing how a story framework can be presented around the political nature of this text.
The political nature of these texts shows the social injustice of the class structure

Gaskell describes their movement through life as a ‘crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies.’ (113) the use of ‘moody’ creates a sullen atmosphere within the text, but then you get hit with ‘pain-stricken’ and there is instand hurt and sorrow for the harshness the working class are being dragged through. Jones does this in “The Song of the Low” by saying “And a miserable lot are we!” the emphasis on the exclamation point shows how important it is that the working class is miserable, this line is repeated three times just to add to the significance of how downtrodden the working class

The working class can work to create the ‘bread’ but at the end of the day they have no right to it, it goes to the upper classes. By including the reader within the poem using ‘We’ there is more of a unity and solidarity within the text. Its like the reader is part of the march. The poem is written in a song structure so it is easily sung or chanted within a march or a meeting of the