Essay Questions

Why are the children crying in the poem "The Cry of the Children’’?

In this poem, the narrator describes a group of children crying and being affected by the world around them. The reason why they are crying is that they are afraid of death. The adults near the children try to convince them that death should not be something they should be worried about because death only is a threat to the old ones. The children point out that this is not true, and that many of their friends died while they were young, children and babies. While this poem may not present the perspective of the children of the time, it does present a common fear of the time, namely the untimely death of their children. The narrator wrote the poems in the 19th century, a time when the life expectancy in England was 45 years and the reason why it was so low is because many children died in their infancy, being affected by various illnesses such as smallpox and polio that affected exclusively children. What is more, many children died during childbirth, as a result of complications and so it was common for families to have dead children in their families. Thus, the poem expresses this idea and the way in which this affected both the adult population and the children of the age who knew they could die at any moment.

Explain the end of the poem "A Man’s Requirements’’.

In this poem, the narrator lists eleven things a woman must do in order to be loved by a man. The list is extensive and the items listed range from outrageous to simple requests. The poem ends with the man claiming that is a woman does do all these things, then a man will love her ‘’half a year’’, a little period when compared with the list of demands mentioned in the poem. Through this poem, the narrator wants to transmit the idea that men usually request a lot from the women in their lives while they are not willing to offer almost anything in return. The love and security they offer is fleeting and almost without value when it is compared with the things a man asks for from his wife or partner.

Why does the narrator claim that a woman can’t be an artist in the poem "Mother and Poet’’?

In the poem mentioned above, the narrator talks about the death of her two children, both who are dead, probably killed during war. When talking about them, the narrator asks the people around her not to call her a poet or an artist because she is only a mother. This poem transmits the way in which society in that time perceived women. For the society in the century when the poems were written, women were seen only as mothers and wives, nothing more. For many, the idea that women were able to create art and to produce something else except children was not acceptable. Many women adopted this point of view as well and so they looked as themselves as lesser beings when compared with their male counterparts.