ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

AGES ERA PERIOD

VICTORIAN AGE

Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
Elizabeth Barrett’s poem The Cry of the Children is concerned with which major issue attendant on the Time of Troubles during the 1830s and 1840s?
A
women’s rights and suffrage
B
child labor
C
chartism
D
the prudishness and old-fashioned ideals of her fellow Victorians
Explanation: 

Detailed explanation-1: -Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s influential poem ‘The Cry of the Children’ was written in response to the dire state of child labour in Britain.

Detailed explanation-2: -Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem “The Cry of the Children” recognizes the injustice of the exploitation of child labor, but her protest is not so much against the eternal class struggle as it is against the failures of her culture to remain true to its long-held beliefs.

Detailed explanation-3: -The themes in ‘The Cry of the Children’ include pain/suffering and God. Throughout the poem, Browning uses very direct language in order to address the overwhelming problem of children’s labor during her lifetime. This was something that she often spoke out against, something that was quite unusual for the time.

Detailed explanation-4: -Reports of the Children’s Employment Commission In 1842 and 1843 they issued massive reports about the abusive conditions under which children were laboring in these industries. This in part inspired EBB to write her famous poem, “The Cry of the Children, ” as a sort of call to action to stop the injustices.

Detailed explanation-5: -Browning makes use of several literary devices in ‘The Cry of the Children. ‘ These include but are not limited to examples of anaphora, metaphor, caesurae, and enjambment. The latter is a common formal device that is concerned with where the poet chooses to end a line.

There is 1 question to complete.