Robert Burns: Social Injustice

During the early 1300’s, Scotland, like most places in the world, was defined by a system of social stratification. This hereditary division system, which was called Estate of the Realm, divided people among the clergy (first estate), the nobility (second estate), and the commoners (third estate). After the Estate of the Realm was established, it kept developing. In the 16th century one more category was added: the shire commissioners. Each of these categories divided the people of Scotland into divisions, in which they considered, best to least. While most people with authority had no problems with this social injustice, people like Robert Burns, who was born to a tenant farmer, absolutely abhorred the discrimination. In the majority of

Burns references the eighteenth century Enlightenment philosophy of social contract when the speaker says “social union”. This reference shows the speaker thinks of the mouse as a representative of the natural world and himself as a representative for all mankind. Burns then includes, “An’ justifies that ill opinion, / Which makes thee startle, / At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, / An’ fellow-mortal,” (Burns L. 9-11) to show the reader that the speaker has determined that he and the mouse are both poor and mortal. Not only does the speaker believe he and the mouse share characteristics, but he also believes the mouse reminds him of himself. The nest, the speaker destroyed, “(...) Has cost thee monie a weary nibble,” (Burns L. 32) and an awful amount of work for the mouse just to be evicted from her own house. According to Carol McGuirk, “To a Mouse” is “(...) contrasting the privileged lives of landowner with anxious labor of tenants in Burns’s Scotland(...)(McGuirk “Critical Essays on Robert Burns” 9),” where the“(...) so called lairds of creation do not manage the distribution of wealth very fairly,”(McGuirk “Critical Essays on Robert Burns” 9). The speaker relates the tragic accident of destroying the mouse’s house with