The industrial revolution, which began in the latter half of the eighteenth century in Britain, transformed society in a matter of decades. An agricultural, rural nation quickly urbanized, with factory work driving people to cities and disrupting a system of household production. As the very nature of work changed, it was artists and writers who responded, dissecting the radical transformations they saw around them. The movement of writers most closely associated with critiquing and addressing industrialization were called the Romantics, and while Robert Burns slightly predates the most famous members of that group, his poetry confronts many of the same social phenomena. In response to sudden urbanization, poets like Burns celebrated the natural world and lamented human alienation from it. As a wave of children came to work in newly industrialized cities, often in harsh conditions, these writers celebrated childhood as a time of innocence and deplored the mistreatment of children. Furthermore, Robert Burns himself came from Scotland, and his critique of industrialization comes from a specifically Scottish lens.
The encounter between a farmer and a mouse in "To a Mouse" is marked by the farmer's attempt to renegotiate relationships with the natural world, an issue of no small concern to industrializing society. Scotland grew massively during industrialization, its population swelling from 1 to 1.5 million over the course of the eighteenth century. This was in part because industrialization allowed for advances in food production, driving rates of hunger down and lengthening lifespans. New crops like the turnip and potato were introduced, providing valuable sources of nutrition. So were agricultural technologies from England, as well as social changes to the agricultural system such as enclosure (a practice in which public grazing lands were set aside for private use). This allowed Scotland to follow life expectancy trends already occurring in its southern neighbor. In England, life expectancy was beginning slowly but surely to lengthen during the decades in which Burns lived, rising from thirty-five to forty years between 1781 and 1851. In fact, we can see the speaker of Burns's poem grappling with this new reality as he notes that, for him, the loss of a small amount of food isn't noticeable or disastrous. While he's thrilled not to have to struggle to survive, it's clear that his orientation towards food and material wealth is new and slightly awkward.
Meanwhile, Scotland was already highly urbanized compared to the rest of Europe even before industrialization began. But the flourishing of manufacturing and mining, as well as the decreasing number of people needed for food production, drew unprecedented numbers of people to cities. By 1900, the majority of Scots lived in and around the city of Glasgow. Others migrated out of Scotland into the explosively growing city of London. Urban life became livelier than ever, with new forms of live entertainment and shopping. At the same time, newly industrialized cities were often unpleasant and even unhealthy, with extreme pollution from local factories. Sewage systems, in London and other major British cities, were often unable to keep up with urban populations, which, in combination with unsafe and crowded housing, caused rampant disease. While some writers of the period explored the exciting, frightening realities of urban life, others—such as Burns in this particular case—focused on the rapidly shifting relationship between humans and the rural or rustic.
Finally, child labor grew rampant in the new industries of eighteenth-century Britain. Children were easy to exploit, and employers, such as factory owners, were able to pay them roughly 10-20% as much as they might pay adult employees. This was especially true for orphans or other children without the advantage of adult protection. While children had long helped in agricultural settings and various preindustrial cottage industries, their conditions in coal mines, mills, and factories were especially deplorable, combining inherently unsafe work with harsh treatment. The treatment of child laborers drew public ire, but it wasn't until the nineteenth century that major legislation intervened to improve their conditions. Meanwhile, for many writers and other critics of child-labor practices, the issue was wrapped up with urbanization, both because children often worked in cities and because some saw the corruption of children and of the natural world as parallel processes. Burns never explicitly discusses childhood, but the poem's mouse is a representative of both the natural world and a certain childlike innocence.
Though "To a Mouse" is set entirely on a rural farm, the concerns of its speaker echo broader fears about the changes taking place in Scotland and in Britain generally during the time of the poem's writing. Burns's speaker expresses guilt over his surplus of food, a reflection of technological, social, and legal changes that improved health and lengthened lifespans in the eighteenth century. He worries about changing relationships between people and nature, reflecting a widespread unease with urbanization. And he voices a desire to preserve the innocence of others, as well as a longing to be innocent himself, echoing changing attitudes about childhood and anger about child labor. Despite its focused, pastoral conflict, "To a Mouse" addresses some of the biggest issues of eighteenth-century Britain.
