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Elizabeth Barrett Browning Research Paper

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During the 19th century Elizabeth Barrett Browning, unlike many other women of her time, was known for being both experimental and controversial. Due to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s courage to voice her opinions on many of the social injustices happening during her time period, she was, and is greatly admired across the world (“Elizabeth Barrett Browning”). Throughout her life Elizabeth Barrett Browning experienced many events that shaped the woman and poet she was to become. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s passionate curiosity during her childhood, adolescence and adulthood along with her unlikely relationship with Robert Browning led her to create works of poetry that held themes of love, injustice and common sense that remain relevant to this …show more content…

Browning’s upper, middle class childhood was known for being extremely happy. She was born in 1806 in Durham, England, during the Romantic Movement, which held a wide appreciation for the natural world along with the mystic and supernatural. (Poets.org) Browning was the oldest of 12 siblings. Unlike her siblings, Browning completely immersed herself in books and the study of languages. During an interview later in her career, she was quoted as saying, “Books and dreams were what I lived in and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like bees about the grass,” (“Elizabeth Barrett Browning”). Beginning her poetry career at the age four, she started to compose verses. At the age of six she sold her father “some lines on virtue with great care” for 10 shillings (“Elizabeth Barrett Browning”). During her tenth year, Elizabeth wrote four books which were completely made of rhyming couplets. This book, The Battle of Marathon, was published privately for only her family to have and appreciate (“Elizabeth Barrett Browning”). Browning also taught herself how to read …show more content…

In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem, ”The Cry of the Children” Browning’s choice of the title was meant to draw readers to both read and reflect on the troubling social/economic issue of using children in the mines to provide cheap labor for economic gain. This poem is written from the perspective of both the children who are working in these horrible conditions and a troubled observer, questioning their circumstances. “Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,/ Ere the sorrow comes with years?/ They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, —/ And that cannot stop their tears.” In the beginning lines of the poem Browning introduces the children and their loss of innocence. Asking why these children carry such pain so early in their young lives (Porter). Browning then goes on to reminisce how the animals of the field and the flowers in a meadow exist with less suffering than these forgotten children. “The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;/ The young birds are chirping in the nest;/ The young fawns are playing with the shadows;/ The young flowers are blowing toward the west---/ But the young, young children, O my brothers,/ They are weeping bitterly!---” (Porter). The poem continues with descriptions of their cries for mercy and escape, knowing their cries will fall on the deaf ears of both God and man “Who is God that He should hear

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