During the 18th and 19th centuries, the problem of child labor was reflected in poetry and fiction as one of the main social issues. In general, during this period, child labor was officially permitted and widely used by upper-classes and in production. Cheap labor, it was always maintained, was essential to Britain’s competitive position, and children were the cheapest labor of all. Textile mills, potteries, ribbon factories, brickyards —whatever industry had ill-paid drudgery to offer, offered it to children. Romantic and Victorian writers viewed this social problem similarly, seeing it as the main evil of the society based on deep social values and traditions.
Romantic poets pitied children and expressed feelings of anger and anxiety associated with this social phenomenon, but they did not protest against inhuman conditions and the exploitation of children. In his poem, William Blake writes: “And my father sold me while yet my tongue / Could scarcely cry ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! / So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot, I sleep” (Blake). The poem depicts a small boy whose life is full of grief and who leads miserable existence. In general, children were perceived by romantics as innocent creatures who suffered from the ruling class and oppression (Enscoe and Gleckner 41). Blake depicts the dramatic illusion, sensibility of a human using the dynamic nature of imagination and creativity. Similar to other romantics, Blake uses imagination as the main tool to unveil the main message of the poem and shape an atmosphere of innocence and hardship. Blake writes: “they clothed me in the clothes of death” (Blake). This symbolic and imaginary world creates passion, tragedy, desperation, and sorrow as the main markers of child labor. Its symbolic representation appeals to the imagination and forces readers to create a picture of sorrow and sadness through “the clothes of death.”
Victorian poets and writers depicted child labor as a social problem and protested against exploitation. Elizabeth Barrett’s “The Cry of the Children” (1844) was the most notable poetic protest against child labor, and Charles Kingsley’s novel Alton Locke (1850) was in part an exposé of sweated tailoring shops. With the curbing of the worst abuses in some portions of industry and the return of prosperity in the late forties and early fifties, a lot of some workers—by no means all, or even a majority—became a bit more endurable. )n general, Victorian poetry and literature portrayed that the appearance of a few public parks and the introduction of cheap excursion fares on the railroads enabled them to escape briefly from their depressing habitats. But the habitats themselves remained largely what they had been. For various reasons, after the middle of the century, the evils of the factory system itself ceased to be a leading theme of social commentary and fiction. But toward the end of the century, the issue of how people lived or were forced to live was revived in a new locale, the East End of London, where the foul conditions of slum life aroused the conscience of a new generation. Surveys showed that fully a third of the population lived on or below the bare margin of subsistence (Bristow 99).
In contrast to romantics, Victorian writers were less sensitive and pitiless. Poets and writers tried to arouse the nation’s conscience and tell about the problem. As the sequence of events shows, the initial reforms, at least, were accomplished before men and women of letters addressed themselves to the condition of England question (Bristow 258). But by adding their often eloquent humanitarianism to the message contained in the blue books and in the news accounts of constant strife between labor and management, they unquestionably gave greater impetus to the cause. A series of novels protested the human cost of industrialism and sometimes suggested ways by which the interests of employer and worker could be reconciled: Disraeli’s Sybil (1845), Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848), and North and South (1854-55), Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849), and Dickens’s Hard Times (1854). The publicity was given to laboring conditions extended to sweatshops and other non-factory enterprises as well. Again there was agitation for reform, and fiction found a theme in the life of the workers.
Romantic poets portrayed children’s voices as silent sufferers who could do nothing but worked under oppression. Through children’s eyes, these writers portrayed terrible living conditions and hunger. Long hours of strenuous work left little leisure or inclination to take up a book or magazine. Crowded rooms noisy with quarreling adults and squalling children, insufficient light, poor eyesight caused in part by nutritional deficiencies and eyestrain at work—such factors discouraged reading even among those who had the ability to do so (Enscoe and Gleckner 51).
In contrast to Romantics, Victorian poets protested against oppression using children’s voices and narrators. Even the titles of both poems reveal the difference: ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ portrays a life of a small boy and the hardship he faces, while Barrett protests against oppression and humiliation using the title “the Cry of the Children”: “Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, From your pleasures fair and fine!” (Barrett). If social adjustment lagged behind the new conditions of life, even farther behind were the schools as a seed-ground of humane culture. As the state of popular culture everywhere in the Western world, today attests, universal education has proved not to be the panacea it once was touted as being. But at least a working-class child has a better chance today to share in the nation’s intellectual and artistic life than did his Victorian ancestors, whose cultural deprivation was one of the sorest reproaches to the notion of progress and one of the age’s most intractable problems.
Victorian expressiveness and imagination are more sympathetic to children portraying real-life problems and grievances faced by small boys and girls. Victorian poets used emotional appeal as a symbol to describe deep personal feelings and life experiences. In contrast to Romantic writers, Victorian poets portray that in an ordered and organized world, children sometimes feel the need for a change. It is possible to say that children weeping is full of tragedy, looses and depression, which has a profound influence on the writing style and message of most poems. Themes of weeping and cry shape poems and create the feeling of futility of life and death. In both periods, happiness and pain have much in common with a child’s emotional sufferings (Bristow 163).
In sum, both literary periods unveil social injustice and hardship faced by children. Thus romantic poets just expressed their views and feelings while Victorian writers protested against child labor and exploitation. Imagination and romantic nature are typical for both periods, which help authors to create political and social criticism of the epoch.
Works Cited
Barrett, E. The Cry of the Children. Web.
Blake, W.TheChimney Sweeper. Web.
Bristow, J. The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry (Cambridge Companions to Literature). Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Enscoe E. Gerald, Gleckner, Robert F. Romanticism: Points of View. Prentice-Hall, 1962.