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Essay On The Cry Of The Children By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning began her poetry career at a young age and continued to write until her death. A fiercely political mind, Browning wrote “The Cry of the Children” as a girl in protest of child labor in factories during the Industrial Revolution. She also wrote “A Curse for a Nation”, a notable poem for its condemnation of American slavery. Through her political writing, Browning used her voice as a poet to give women a mouthpiece on issues affecting them. Most importantly, however, are Browning’s romantic poems, almost all of which are influenced by her husband and fellow poet, Robert Browning. In Sonnet 43, “How Do I Love Thee?” for example, Browning portrays the far-reaching extent of marriage by professing her love for her husband, …show more content…

In his criticism, Steve Dillon notes that Elizabeth Barrett Browning is well known for the emotion she writes with, but the imagery she uses to convey her emotion is equally important to the emotion itself. He analyzes her use of ecstasy, pain, and despair in a way that helps to convey her emotion so intensely that the reader is able to feel the same emotions that Browning writes about. Specifically, her poem “The Cry of the Children,” utilizes imagery to help the reader feel the pain of children working in a factory. Many critics have noted that the poem is not simply an account of child workers, but rather it feels as though the children are screaming in agony off the page to the reader as a cry for help. As such, Browning seeks not to simply convey a message or reveal her own emotions but seeks to have her readers feel the very emotions that are present in her poems. She writes, “For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses / Down the cheeks of infancy — / "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;" / "Our young feet," they say, "are very weak !” Through this verse, the reader is able to hear the screams of the children and feel the outrage Browning expresses about child labor. Her imagery is key to the romantic ideals of emotion in poetry. Without the language and imagery, one would not be able to grasp the feelings expressed by Browning her poetry. As such, the emotion with which …show more content…

Indeed Simon Avery notes, “Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the great experimenters in 19th-century poetry. By the time of her marriage to Robert Browning in September 1846, she was recognised internationally for her often innovative and challenging verse and was heralded by many as one of the most accomplished poets of the period.” Browning’s first major poem, “The Battle of Marathon,” was written as an epic and included vivid depictions of the gore of war. Many critics note that her first poem characterized her bold and daring style as many novice poets would not think to write an epic to begin their poetic career. Once again borrowing from the romanticism of her time, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote many poems as a ballads. Although however, as noted by Simon Avery, Browning never concretely followed any one style. She manipulated the ballad to highlight the plight of women in the Victorian era. Later in her career, Browning once again experimented with epic poetry in her classic epic “Aurora Leigh.” Many have characterized the poem as a “novel-poem” as the epic spans nine books and dabbles in many different topics. The experimental form of “Aurora Leigh,” shows Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s groundbreaking style of poetry. She never sought to write how

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