The Orphan Girl – Henry Louis Vivian Derozio
The poem The Orphan Girl portrays the social condition of a young Orphan girl. This poem has captured a pitiable state of the life of an orphan girl who is thrown into because of circumstances. The father of the girl died in the world and her mother couldn’t tolerate the shock of her husband’s death and left the girl in this world alone with no one look after her.
The situation of the girl is papathetic. Derozio has well portrayed, with the images ‘cold, bleak earth’, the pathetic condition of the girl. She has no home or heart where she can feel protected and can grow up.
The poem is full of language suggesting that an orphan girl would inevitably stray from virtue’s way, become an erring woman, wretched, scorned and filled with sorrow, guilt and shame, as it is an unpitying world.
In this poem, there is a social message which is poetically presented. Ending of the poem is an apple to the people to provide the girl a shelter. Thus this poem has a socio-cultural favour as he thought poetry to be a medium of spreading awareness.
Thus Derozio’s poems have a socio-cultural fervour as he thought poetry to be a medium of spreading social awareness. Most of his poems were first published in magazines and later published as a book. As his critical prose writings (many of which are lost), his poems also significantly contribute to the socio-cultural movement of Bengal which is also known as Bengal Renaissance.
