Abstract
This thesis investigates the employment of the underage children in coal mines, factories and chimneys through “The Chimney Sweeper” and “London” poems by William Blake along with Elizabeth Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” during the 19th century in England and its impact upon their childhood, their potential, their dignity, their education and their health. As widely and controversially as literary figures, social reformers and politicians differ about the social defect of the child labour phenomenon during such an age, it was admitted and being aware of as a strong cry of resentment and indignation by all. While some social reformers like Lord Ashley and Charles Booth strongly objected the employment of the underage children, others including Prince Albert and Andrew Ure justified the exploitation of deprived children by passing laws allowing them to work to survive and save their families. The Victorian poets on the other hand responded to the growing pains of child labour in various ways. According to Emma Dove, William Blake the Romantic poet, vehemently evaluated child labour to be a threat to the innocence of the working children, as depicted in his the two chimney sweeper poems and “London”, the Victorian poetess, Elizabeth Browning sorrowfully considered it to be the curse of the time as shown in her poem “The Cry of the Children”. However, this study aims through the literary analysis of these poems to show how poetry was used by Blake and Browning to drive their readers to identify with the London dwellers including the chimney sweepers, and the children working body of the factories and the coal mines to feel and experience what they have felt and experienced to apprehend the real consequences of child labour upon them.