Feminism in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh

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Feminism in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh

In Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning creates an independent, intelligent young woman. Barrett Browning successfully demonstrates the difficult obstacles women had to overcome in the Victorian period. There were preconceived ideas of what "proper" women were suppose to do with their life. Not that this idea has completely been surmounted in our time. Barrett Browning though is optimistic about the goals women can achieve. She wants to demonstrate to women that belief in themselves and their dreams is possible and preferable to the standard.

The poem begins with Aurora Leigh's observations of her aunt. "Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight/ As if for taming accidental thoughts/ From possible pulses..." (273-275). This quotations shows several things; how specific Aurora Leigh's observations are (necessary to be a good poet) and the type of woman she will have to live with. Her aunt represents Barrett Browning's idea of the type of woman society admires. She was proper and never attempted anything that might be questionable. The almost parody Barrett Browning makes of her tells the reader that she does not approve of this type of woman. The aunt pulls her hair tight and close to her head to prevent what Aurora Leigh thinks bad thoughts from happening. This is an amusing observation. "She had lived/ A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,/Accounting that to leap from perch to perch/ Was act and joy enough for any bird" (304-307). Therefore Barrett Browning sees women as trapped in their role.

Since they are born and bred into a preconceived idea of the role of women, they do not see anything wrong with it. They are content to live there lives in restrict...

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...erberates still today. As much as our society would like to believe otherwise such ideas about women still exist. The struggle is still there and women must be on alert not become content in what they have so far achieved.

Works Cited and Consulted

Barret Browning, Elizabeth : Aurora Leigh, edited, introduction and notes by Kerry McSweeny, World's Classics edition, Oxford University Press, 1993

Case, Alison : Gender and Narration in Aurora Leigh, Victorian Poetry, Vol.29, no.1, Spring 1991 West Virginia University Press

Kaplan, Cora : Introduction to Women's Press edition of Aurora Leigh, 1978

Mermin, Dorothy : Genre and Gender in Aurora Leigh, Victorian Newsletter, no.69,Spring 1986 Steinmetz, Virginia : Images of "Mother-Want" in Elizabeth Barret Browning's Aurora Leigh, Victorian Poetry, Vol.21, no.4, Winter 1983 West Virginia University Press.

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