"The Subaltern can speak out Pain": Aesthetics of Suffering in Elizabeth Barrett Borrowing’s “The Cry of the Children”

The present paper argues that Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her poem The Cry of the Children criticizes the exploitation of the children in mines and factories by employing a distinctive poetic persona. This persona is overlapped between the voice of an empathetic speaker and the voice of the abused children themselves. The poetess uses this persona effectively in order to give a voice to the exploited children who were voiceless and subaltern. Aesthetically, the poetess presented her voice as a harsh critique to subvert the dehumanized exploitation of child labor in mines and factories and social injustice in Britain in the Victorian period.