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Aurora Leigh
Aurora Leigh is an eponymous epic novel/poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poem is written in blank verse and encompasses nine books. Through Book 5, Aurora narrates her past, from her childhood to the age of about 27; in Books 6-9, the narrative has caught up with her, and she reports events in diary form. Elizabeth Barrett Browning styled the poem "a novel in verse", and referred to it as "the most mature of my works.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1856
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About the author
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
979 books686 followersElizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most respected poets of the Victorian era.
Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Browning was educated at home. She wrote poetry from around the age of six and this was compiled by her mother, comprising what is now one of the largest collections extant of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15 Browning became ill, suffering from intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life, rendering her frail. She took laudanum for the pain, which may have led to a lifelong addiction and contributed to her weak health.
In the 1830s Barrett's cousin John Kenyon introduced her to prominent literary figures of the day such as William Wordsworth, Mary Russell Mitford, Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Thomas Carlyle. Browning's first adult collection The Seraphim and Other Poems was published in 1838. During this time she contracted a disease, possibly tuberculosis, which weakened her further. Living at Wimpole Street, in London, Browning wrote prolifically between 1841 and 1844, producing poetry, translation and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery and her work helped influence reform in child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth.
Browning's volume Poems (1844) brought her great success. During this time she met and corresponded with the writer Robert Browning, who admired her work. The courtship and marriage between the two were carried out in secret, for fear of her father's disapproval. Following the wedding she was disinherited by her father and rejected by her brothers. The couple moved to Italy in 1846, where she would live for the rest of her life. They had one son, Robert Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Towards the end of her life, her lung function worsened, and she died in Florence in 1861. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband shortly after her death.
Browning was brought up in a strongly religious household, and much of her work carries a Christian theme. Her work had a major influence on prominent writers of the day, including the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is remembered for such poems as "How Do I Love Thee?" (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh (1856).
Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Browning was educated at home. She wrote poetry from around the age of six and this was compiled by her mother, comprising what is now one of the largest collections extant of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15 Browning became ill, suffering from intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life, rendering her frail. She took laudanum for the pain, which may have led to a lifelong addiction and contributed to her weak health.
In the 1830s Barrett's cousin John Kenyon introduced her to prominent literary figures of the day such as William Wordsworth, Mary Russell Mitford, Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Thomas Carlyle. Browning's first adult collection The Seraphim and Other Poems was published in 1838. During this time she contracted a disease, possibly tuberculosis, which weakened her further. Living at Wimpole Street, in London, Browning wrote prolifically between 1841 and 1844, producing poetry, translation and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery and her work helped influence reform in child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth.
Browning's volume Poems (1844) brought her great success. During this time she met and corresponded with the writer Robert Browning, who admired her work. The courtship and marriage between the two were carried out in secret, for fear of her father's disapproval. Following the wedding she was disinherited by her father and rejected by her brothers. The couple moved to Italy in 1846, where she would live for the rest of her life. They had one son, Robert Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Towards the end of her life, her lung function worsened, and she died in Florence in 1861. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband shortly after her death.
Browning was brought up in a strongly religious household, and much of her work carries a Christian theme. Her work had a major influence on prominent writers of the day, including the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is remembered for such poems as "How Do I Love Thee?" (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh (1856).
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May 10, 2017
What do you say to someone who tells you to stop being yourself? You love him and you want to marry him, and he comes out with that. He tells you to stop writing poetry; it’s something women can’t do well apparently, and he tells you to give it up. Essentially, he tells you to stop being you. Here is Romney’s ignorant argument to his Aurora:
“We get no Christ from you- and verily
We shall not get a poet in my mind."
Aurora does the right thing, she says the right things, and she walks away. She doesn’t sacrifice herself, her individuality, to become some foolish man’s helpmate: his restricted Victorian wife. She remains Aurora.
She was raised to believe in respectability and womanhood. Her aunt made her read guides on manners and appropriate behaviours a woman should manifest. Aurora didn’t have the time for such crap. She wasn’t going to become a caged bird or someone’s doll. She liberated her own mind through books on history, politics and art. It is only when Aurora discovers her father’s library, with its extensive range of ideas and knowledge that she feels her world and mind opening up. Books liberate her.
She became intelligent enough to understand that she shouldn’t be led by anyone else whether male or female. She became her own person in body and soul. And this hugely creative narrative poem depicts her journey through life as she comes to understand the true meaning of love. Her autonomy drives the poem forward; she wishes to be able to express her own thoughts and emotions in her art form. Similar to Jane’s voice in Jane Eyre, Aurora’s poetry becomes a means of liberating herself and expressing her emotions and desires.
Eventually, her foolish lover realises the errors of his ways. He reads some of Aurora’s poetry, and says:
You have the stars, ‘he murmured- ‘it is well:
Be like them! Shine, Aurora, on my dark
Thus everything ends in happiness, but not after Barret Browning has made her stance very clear on the Victorian Woman question. Healthy marriage is perfectly achievable if it occurs through mutual respect and autonomy. One partner should not dominate the other’s personality and individualism. The wife is not a simple creature to be shaped in accordance with her husband’s will: she is not his helpmate. She is an individual and this should be retained for a healthy marriage. It seems like an obvious statement, but the Victorians were idiots when it came to marriage.
She comes to regret her earlier refusal of Romney; however, it can be argued that their initial marriage would have been a failure because Aurora would not have had her art. Aurora not becoming a possession of Romney is Browning’s answer to the woman question and a love filled marriage. Later, after there is an acceptance of the place of each in a relationship, Romney recognises Aurora’s art and individualism, a healthy marriage is possible. This marriage, this love, becomes an artistic muse for Aurora, oneness with God is achieved.
This poem is very rich in sentimentality and instructive purpose. Oscar Wilde would have hated it. But that’s beside the point. There is a strong message in here, and despite its overt nature, it is an important one. Also of note, this can easily be read alongside the fantastic Jane Eyre. There are many crossovers in theme and message. I’d recommend it to lovers of Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece.
>Postscript- This is the longest poem I’ve ever read. At 300+ pages, I can easily say it was as enjoyable as any novel. And this quote was my favourite. Can you tell why?
“Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father’s name;
Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!”
“We get no Christ from you- and verily
We shall not get a poet in my mind."
Aurora does the right thing, she says the right things, and she walks away. She doesn’t sacrifice herself, her individuality, to become some foolish man’s helpmate: his restricted Victorian wife. She remains Aurora.
She was raised to believe in respectability and womanhood. Her aunt made her read guides on manners and appropriate behaviours a woman should manifest. Aurora didn’t have the time for such crap. She wasn’t going to become a caged bird or someone’s doll. She liberated her own mind through books on history, politics and art. It is only when Aurora discovers her father’s library, with its extensive range of ideas and knowledge that she feels her world and mind opening up. Books liberate her.
She became intelligent enough to understand that she shouldn’t be led by anyone else whether male or female. She became her own person in body and soul. And this hugely creative narrative poem depicts her journey through life as she comes to understand the true meaning of love. Her autonomy drives the poem forward; she wishes to be able to express her own thoughts and emotions in her art form. Similar to Jane’s voice in Jane Eyre, Aurora’s poetry becomes a means of liberating herself and expressing her emotions and desires.
Eventually, her foolish lover realises the errors of his ways. He reads some of Aurora’s poetry, and says:
You have the stars, ‘he murmured- ‘it is well:
Be like them! Shine, Aurora, on my dark
Thus everything ends in happiness, but not after Barret Browning has made her stance very clear on the Victorian Woman question. Healthy marriage is perfectly achievable if it occurs through mutual respect and autonomy. One partner should not dominate the other’s personality and individualism. The wife is not a simple creature to be shaped in accordance with her husband’s will: she is not his helpmate. She is an individual and this should be retained for a healthy marriage. It seems like an obvious statement, but the Victorians were idiots when it came to marriage.
She comes to regret her earlier refusal of Romney; however, it can be argued that their initial marriage would have been a failure because Aurora would not have had her art. Aurora not becoming a possession of Romney is Browning’s answer to the woman question and a love filled marriage. Later, after there is an acceptance of the place of each in a relationship, Romney recognises Aurora’s art and individualism, a healthy marriage is possible. This marriage, this love, becomes an artistic muse for Aurora, oneness with God is achieved.
This poem is very rich in sentimentality and instructive purpose. Oscar Wilde would have hated it. But that’s beside the point. There is a strong message in here, and despite its overt nature, it is an important one. Also of note, this can easily be read alongside the fantastic Jane Eyre. There are many crossovers in theme and message. I’d recommend it to lovers of Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece.
>Postscript- This is the longest poem I’ve ever read. At 300+ pages, I can easily say it was as enjoyable as any novel. And this quote was my favourite. Can you tell why?
“Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father’s name;
Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!”
January 22, 2021
I did very much enjoy this -- especially the first two books. Aurora Leigh grows into such a strong, enlivened character. Barrett Browning shows that she is not just intellectually equal, but intellectually superior to the men in her life, and her moral/philosophical beliefs (which are kind of Stoic?) provide much food for thought. A great proto-feminist novel.
This is an Epic Poem, but the plot is far from the kind of thing you find in Homer and Milton. It's a bildungsroman, following the progression of Aurora Leigh as she becomes a writer. This is a world where women are supposed to create art only for their husbands (as she is taught by her aunt in the first book), and so this in itself is a huge mark of resistance. The events documented are fairly domestic but I think the Epic Poem form makes them more important. It positions female experience as something to be respected.
This is an Epic Poem, but the plot is far from the kind of thing you find in Homer and Milton. It's a bildungsroman, following the progression of Aurora Leigh as she becomes a writer. This is a world where women are supposed to create art only for their husbands (as she is taught by her aunt in the first book), and so this in itself is a huge mark of resistance. The events documented are fairly domestic but I think the Epic Poem form makes them more important. It positions female experience as something to be respected.
July 24, 2025
Aurora Leigh is an epic poem which Elizabeth Barrett Browning herself styled as a "novel in verse" to which she has poured her profound thoughts on life and art. Being a Victorian woman and a poet, Barrett Browning was keenly aware of the disadvantages faced by a woman who wanted to lead an artistic life as free and as equally respected as her male counterpart. And through Aurora Leigh she has voiced the need for acceptance, appreciation, and respect for women as individuals as well as artists beyond their accepted Victorian role of wife and mother.
Although this is called an epic poem, it is not the sort of Homer or Milton; rather, it's a bildungsroman of sorts. The story is centered on the principal protagonist and heroine, Aurora Leigh, and runs from her childhood to her adulthood and success as a poet, which is principally narrated through her perspective. This had helped Barrett Browning to voice the flaws of accepted Victorian ideals regarding women. She is highly critical of the women's upbringing, the primary purpose of which was to make them fit only for domestic duties. And she was equally severe on the concept of marriage, where the woman was seen as a "helpmate" to make men's world comfortable and successful. Aurora's scorn for her aunt's way of bringing her up and her subsequent refusal of the marriage proposal by her cousin, Romney Leigh, speak volumes about the difficulties Victorian women faced in setting themselves as individual beings who deserve respect for their individuality and creativity. When Romney proposes to Aurora, he had the audacity to say "I ask for love, And that, she can; for life in fellowship Through bitter duties— that, I know she can; For wifehood— will she? If your sex is weak for art (And I, who said so, did but honour you By using truth in courtship), it is strong For life and duty." Aurora promptly replies to this by saying "What you love, Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause: You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir, A wife to help your ends— in her no end! Your cause is noble, your ends excellent, But I, being most unworthy of these and that, Do otherwise conceive of love." Barrett Browning viewed marriage as not a contract where the wife was just a "helpmate" of her husband to make things smooth for him, but as a bond, born out of mutual understanding and respect for each other and each other's talents. She is quite strong in this view and shows that if both parties are to be happy and contented in a marriage, this mutual appreciation and respect for each other is a necessary feature.
Barrett Browning's strong views on women's position in Aurora Leigh have marked it as a feminist work. But I'd like to differ there. Her equality and individuality are restricted to the institution of marriage and life as an artist. By no means does she speak of women's right to be equal to men. There the convention comes and she cloaks herself within. She wasn't strictly a feminist author, but she did stand up to them knowing her life difficulties as a woman and artist. But at the same time, she viewed love and marriage as a necessary part of a woman's life. Although Aurora refuses Romney for his failure to understand her and appreciate her creativity, she cannot help thinking afterward what would have been if he had not been such an ignorant typical Victorian man. "I, who spoke the truth then, stand upright, Still worthy of having spoken out the truth, By being content I spoke it though it set Him there, me here". And even after her relative success as a poet, Aurora cannot banish the thoughts of loneliness and her longing for love and companionship. "How dreary ’tis for women to sit still On winter nights by solitary fires, And hear the nations praising them far off, Too far! ay, praising our quick sense of love, Our very heart of passionate womanhood, Which could not beat so in the verse without Being present also in the unkissed lips And eyes undried because there’s none to ask The reason they grew moist. To sit alone And think for comfort how, that very night, Affianced lovers, leaning face to face With sweet half-listenings for each other’s breath, Are reading haply from a page of ours, Appraised by love, associated with love, While we sit loveless!"
In addition to the dominant theme of women's position, Barrett Browning touches on the social question. There comes Romney Leigh, the misunderstood and misguided philanthropist. Romney's social reforms guided by his socialistic views don't ripen into fruit as he anticipates. He is thwarted in his efforts by the very people whom he wanted to help. Through Romney Leigh's sincere blunder, Barrett Browning questions the correctness of the social reforms taken into the heart by many young noble enthusiasts. She wants to show that, though their hearts are in the right place, their method is not. According to her, no social reform can be achieved without educating and nourishing the soul of the unprivileged; mere catering to the body only makes them more corrupt and indulgent. Her thought-provoking insight truly struck me deep. I couldn't help pondering over the mistaken charities of modern times.
Class difference is yet another minor theme Barrett Browning touches on through Aurora Leigh. She clearly shows how strongly the upper-class nobility and gentry held their social status. Even those who held socialist views were eager to maintain their status and keep the lower classes at arm's length. Aurora's description of a noble socialist sums it all. "Let me draw Lord Howe. A born aristocrat, bred radical, And educated socialist, who still Goes floating, on traditions of his kind...". When Romney Leigh, in his fervent enthusiasm for social reform, attempts to make a marital alliance with a lower-class girl, the views expressed, and the role played underhanded to prevent it, show that there is nothing they wouldn't do to maintain their class and status being "polluted".
All these themes addressed in Barrett Browning's rich verse were enchanting. I was utterly drowned in them. Drawing parallels from Greek mythology and Christian religion and comparing and contrasting English life with those of the French and Italian, she creates a beautiful epic that sweeps you off your feet. Without a doubt, Elizabeth Barrett Browning took me on a fascinating journey and into another world through this beautiful creation.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
Although this is called an epic poem, it is not the sort of Homer or Milton; rather, it's a bildungsroman of sorts. The story is centered on the principal protagonist and heroine, Aurora Leigh, and runs from her childhood to her adulthood and success as a poet, which is principally narrated through her perspective. This had helped Barrett Browning to voice the flaws of accepted Victorian ideals regarding women. She is highly critical of the women's upbringing, the primary purpose of which was to make them fit only for domestic duties. And she was equally severe on the concept of marriage, where the woman was seen as a "helpmate" to make men's world comfortable and successful. Aurora's scorn for her aunt's way of bringing her up and her subsequent refusal of the marriage proposal by her cousin, Romney Leigh, speak volumes about the difficulties Victorian women faced in setting themselves as individual beings who deserve respect for their individuality and creativity. When Romney proposes to Aurora, he had the audacity to say "I ask for love, And that, she can; for life in fellowship Through bitter duties— that, I know she can; For wifehood— will she? If your sex is weak for art (And I, who said so, did but honour you By using truth in courtship), it is strong For life and duty." Aurora promptly replies to this by saying "What you love, Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause: You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir, A wife to help your ends— in her no end! Your cause is noble, your ends excellent, But I, being most unworthy of these and that, Do otherwise conceive of love." Barrett Browning viewed marriage as not a contract where the wife was just a "helpmate" of her husband to make things smooth for him, but as a bond, born out of mutual understanding and respect for each other and each other's talents. She is quite strong in this view and shows that if both parties are to be happy and contented in a marriage, this mutual appreciation and respect for each other is a necessary feature.
Barrett Browning's strong views on women's position in Aurora Leigh have marked it as a feminist work. But I'd like to differ there. Her equality and individuality are restricted to the institution of marriage and life as an artist. By no means does she speak of women's right to be equal to men. There the convention comes and she cloaks herself within. She wasn't strictly a feminist author, but she did stand up to them knowing her life difficulties as a woman and artist. But at the same time, she viewed love and marriage as a necessary part of a woman's life. Although Aurora refuses Romney for his failure to understand her and appreciate her creativity, she cannot help thinking afterward what would have been if he had not been such an ignorant typical Victorian man. "I, who spoke the truth then, stand upright, Still worthy of having spoken out the truth, By being content I spoke it though it set Him there, me here". And even after her relative success as a poet, Aurora cannot banish the thoughts of loneliness and her longing for love and companionship. "How dreary ’tis for women to sit still On winter nights by solitary fires, And hear the nations praising them far off, Too far! ay, praising our quick sense of love, Our very heart of passionate womanhood, Which could not beat so in the verse without Being present also in the unkissed lips And eyes undried because there’s none to ask The reason they grew moist. To sit alone And think for comfort how, that very night, Affianced lovers, leaning face to face With sweet half-listenings for each other’s breath, Are reading haply from a page of ours, Appraised by love, associated with love, While we sit loveless!"
In addition to the dominant theme of women's position, Barrett Browning touches on the social question. There comes Romney Leigh, the misunderstood and misguided philanthropist. Romney's social reforms guided by his socialistic views don't ripen into fruit as he anticipates. He is thwarted in his efforts by the very people whom he wanted to help. Through Romney Leigh's sincere blunder, Barrett Browning questions the correctness of the social reforms taken into the heart by many young noble enthusiasts. She wants to show that, though their hearts are in the right place, their method is not. According to her, no social reform can be achieved without educating and nourishing the soul of the unprivileged; mere catering to the body only makes them more corrupt and indulgent. Her thought-provoking insight truly struck me deep. I couldn't help pondering over the mistaken charities of modern times.
Class difference is yet another minor theme Barrett Browning touches on through Aurora Leigh. She clearly shows how strongly the upper-class nobility and gentry held their social status. Even those who held socialist views were eager to maintain their status and keep the lower classes at arm's length. Aurora's description of a noble socialist sums it all. "Let me draw Lord Howe. A born aristocrat, bred radical, And educated socialist, who still Goes floating, on traditions of his kind...". When Romney Leigh, in his fervent enthusiasm for social reform, attempts to make a marital alliance with a lower-class girl, the views expressed, and the role played underhanded to prevent it, show that there is nothing they wouldn't do to maintain their class and status being "polluted".
All these themes addressed in Barrett Browning's rich verse were enchanting. I was utterly drowned in them. Drawing parallels from Greek mythology and Christian religion and comparing and contrasting English life with those of the French and Italian, she creates a beautiful epic that sweeps you off your feet. Without a doubt, Elizabeth Barrett Browning took me on a fascinating journey and into another world through this beautiful creation.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
October 6, 2022
Maybe 4.5. I really enjoyed this, possibly more than I expected to. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's writing is wonderful, and I love how she explores her character's life as a poet and issues around gender. I can't decide how I feel about the ending, however.
October 29, 2024
Beautifully written coming-of-age story! And a prose poem! I can see why George Eliot read this three times in a year. There are so many profound reflections on what it means to be an artist, how to help the poor, the nature of love and attachment, what it means to become one's own person, etc. Besides all that, it's a compelling narrative. There is also a lovely secondary story with a character called Marian Erle. You may be able to guess from her name that she is a Madonna-type character, and I loved her both as a counterpoint and complement to Aurora. The introduction mentioned the parallels to Jane Eyre. Parallels and differences too--very intriguing.
I haven't read many long poems like this, so I found it challenging at times to follow the action. It was helpful to read a summary of each of the nine Books in the poem to make sure I was following the story correctly. There are also lots of classical references that (sorrowfully) go over my head, so the notes were very helpful in this Oxford World Classics edition. Thankfully, there are also many biblical references, including a particularly beautiful one at the very end, that I pick up on much more quickly. I definitely plan to re-read this in the future when I can return to it with more experience of reading long-form poetry.
Read for Victober 2024 for Katie's prompt to read a book that plays with form.
I haven't read many long poems like this, so I found it challenging at times to follow the action. It was helpful to read a summary of each of the nine Books in the poem to make sure I was following the story correctly. There are also lots of classical references that (sorrowfully) go over my head, so the notes were very helpful in this Oxford World Classics edition. Thankfully, there are also many biblical references, including a particularly beautiful one at the very end, that I pick up on much more quickly. I definitely plan to re-read this in the future when I can return to it with more experience of reading long-form poetry.
Read for Victober 2024 for Katie's prompt to read a book that plays with form.
August 26, 2018
I am surprised how much I enjoyed this odd-ball work. It is feminist from a time when the word did not exist. As a verse novel it was highly experimental. As I am not aware of any other verse novels having been written since it would appear to be trial balloon that failed rather than an innovation.
Perhaps some versifier might consider a second attempt. As a reader I felt that the approach worked very well particularly in the first half. The events in the novel are banal and the characters are of marginal interest. In prose, Aurora Leigh would have been a frightful bore. It is essentially the tale of two cousins who take a long time to admit that they are in love with other. However the intellectual argumentation and emotional torment of the heroine are rendered into sublime poetry. Her dialogues with her beloved are also wonderful. The young lovers bungle through life before finally agreeing that they must unite their destinies. Their actions are too modest to make them interesting. It is the poetry of their thoughts and words that engage the reader.
Aurora Leigh is a strange but serendipitous brew. If it doesn't charm you quickly put it aside and try again at a later date.
Perhaps some versifier might consider a second attempt. As a reader I felt that the approach worked very well particularly in the first half. The events in the novel are banal and the characters are of marginal interest. In prose, Aurora Leigh would have been a frightful bore. It is essentially the tale of two cousins who take a long time to admit that they are in love with other. However the intellectual argumentation and emotional torment of the heroine are rendered into sublime poetry. Her dialogues with her beloved are also wonderful. The young lovers bungle through life before finally agreeing that they must unite their destinies. Their actions are too modest to make them interesting. It is the poetry of their thoughts and words that engage the reader.
Aurora Leigh is a strange but serendipitous brew. If it doesn't charm you quickly put it aside and try again at a later date.
August 9, 2013
Actual rating is closer to 3.75 stars.
Aurora Leigh is a weird book.
With that, I reworked my basic sigh of desperation while I was writing into the opening line of my dissertation, because this book is just fucking weird, man.
I regularly doubted if I should keep that introduction, but my advisor even encouraged us to write a "spoof abstract" as the summary, so I wasn't exactly worried - academically speaking.
Truth is, Aurora Leigh is an ambitious work. Barrett Browning knew this. She wanted it to be regarded as her literary masterpiece. Theoretically, it comes very close to unadulterated genius. The main problem is the form in which it is written. It's quite unreadable because it rests on so many literary traditions and devices that it doesn't always make for a coherent story. It also doesn't help that a lot of its material entertains a dialogue with behemoths such as Wordsworth and Milton, so there's a rather extensive field of obscure references.
While there is discussion on this part, it's generally acknowledged that Aurora Leigh is an "epic novel-poem". It follows the stylistic rules of the classic epic, but is written in the blank verse of the English epic, while it has a complex plot and a lot of pathos. If you're purely reading for story, this will prove to be a tiresome and tedious read.
Okay, so this novel isn't the most readable in its genre. No biggie, right? Well, the different genre influences and the resulting hybrid form are part of the point Elizabeth Barrett Browning tries to make. At its core, Aurora Leigh is the story of Aurora, an orphaned female artist who tries to make her way in a male-dominated world. She has talent, but she's fickle and often thinks she isn't good enough. Add in a paternalistic cousin who thinks she should just give up on her ambitions and marry him already, and what follows is nine books of EBB using her heroine as the representative of her ideas on art, Victorian society, and The Woman Question, amongst other things.
So obviously, this subject matter raises a lot of gender-centric questions, which is what most of the relevant literary criticism focuses on. I can honestly say that the plot events and the points EBB tries to make have influenced me a lot in terms of feminist thinking. I often had to delete a page that read a suspicious lot as Feminism 101 upon rereading, but I never saw it as wasted energy.
Reading experiences Aurora Leigh has influenced: The Edge of Never, The Graceling Realm series, Mistborn: The Final Empire, Blindness, Oryx and Crake, Anybody But Him, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, The Fault in Our Stars, Two-Way Street, every romance novel ever, and this list will probably forever grow.
It was fascinating, to see how Barrett Browning interlaces several genres from different social standings and uses these to open the debate to women-centric questions. The discussion on the trashiness of romance novels, and, by extension their readers, who couldn't possibly be anything else than unhappy housewives? That was already happening in Victorian England. EBB don't care, she just mixes it in with the highbrow, noble, "masculine" genres such as the epic and the heroic romance, and it all worked out fine.
The issue is that while this is all very intriguing on a theoretical level, if you're interested in these kinds of things at least, it doesn't make the story more engaging. Aurora is a very meditative character. She often goes on a completely random tangent that might prove relevant to the bigger picture, but also halts the narrative. She represents so many female archetypes (the artist, the motherless daughter, the independent woman, the Nymph, Eve, Lilith, Persephone, the Improvisatrice, ...) that I never quite got the feeling of a distinctive personality. The same goes for Romney Leigh and Marian Erle. I never had the feeling I was reading about characters. I like Aurora, feel indifferent about Marian, and dislike Romney, but as you can tell, none of those are essentially strong feelings.
However, part of that might have been due to the fact that I was in complete analysis mode every time I picked this up. While I have three physical copies of this novel (I'm just that kind of overzealous student), I would recommend opting for The Norton Critical edition if you're interested in reading this. It has a lot of relevant footnotes (EBB loves to use a lot of specific terminology and references to the classics) and includes some bonus material, such as selected letters from the Brownings, short essays on social and/or gender issues - both from Victorian and contemporary critics - , information on how (badly) women-centric literature was recieved in that time, ...
What I will say for Aurora Leigh's relative unreadability is that it doesn't break the book for me. Sometimes, when you've studied something long and hard, it's hard to see the actual text or narrative. One of my teachers once compared it to building your own house. She was so involved with the construction that when her house was finished, she saw the bricks, the wiring, the plumbing, the isolation, but those elements never came together to give her a house. That never happened to me here. Maybe now that I no longer have to come up with innovative ways of interpretation and critical debate, I can finally read for the story.
Ah, Aurora Leigh, how do I review thee?
Shall I recount the ways in which you made me cry,
the nights of frustration, the days of recluse,
since I had a dissertation to finish,
and you were just so damn unreadable?
Aurora Leigh is a weird book.
With that, I reworked my basic sigh of desperation while I was writing into the opening line of my dissertation, because this book is just fucking weird, man.
I regularly doubted if I should keep that introduction, but my advisor even encouraged us to write a "spoof abstract" as the summary, so I wasn't exactly worried - academically speaking.
Truth is, Aurora Leigh is an ambitious work. Barrett Browning knew this. She wanted it to be regarded as her literary masterpiece. Theoretically, it comes very close to unadulterated genius. The main problem is the form in which it is written. It's quite unreadable because it rests on so many literary traditions and devices that it doesn't always make for a coherent story. It also doesn't help that a lot of its material entertains a dialogue with behemoths such as Wordsworth and Milton, so there's a rather extensive field of obscure references.
While there is discussion on this part, it's generally acknowledged that Aurora Leigh is an "epic novel-poem". It follows the stylistic rules of the classic epic, but is written in the blank verse of the English epic, while it has a complex plot and a lot of pathos. If you're purely reading for story, this will prove to be a tiresome and tedious read.
Okay, so this novel isn't the most readable in its genre. No biggie, right? Well, the different genre influences and the resulting hybrid form are part of the point Elizabeth Barrett Browning tries to make. At its core, Aurora Leigh is the story of Aurora, an orphaned female artist who tries to make her way in a male-dominated world. She has talent, but she's fickle and often thinks she isn't good enough. Add in a paternalistic cousin who thinks she should just give up on her ambitions and marry him already, and what follows is nine books of EBB using her heroine as the representative of her ideas on art, Victorian society, and The Woman Question, amongst other things.
So obviously, this subject matter raises a lot of gender-centric questions, which is what most of the relevant literary criticism focuses on. I can honestly say that the plot events and the points EBB tries to make have influenced me a lot in terms of feminist thinking. I often had to delete a page that read a suspicious lot as Feminism 101 upon rereading, but I never saw it as wasted energy.
Reading experiences Aurora Leigh has influenced: The Edge of Never, The Graceling Realm series, Mistborn: The Final Empire, Blindness, Oryx and Crake, Anybody But Him, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, The Fault in Our Stars, Two-Way Street, every romance novel ever, and this list will probably forever grow.
It was fascinating, to see how Barrett Browning interlaces several genres from different social standings and uses these to open the debate to women-centric questions. The discussion on the trashiness of romance novels, and, by extension their readers, who couldn't possibly be anything else than unhappy housewives? That was already happening in Victorian England. EBB don't care, she just mixes it in with the highbrow, noble, "masculine" genres such as the epic and the heroic romance, and it all worked out fine.
The issue is that while this is all very intriguing on a theoretical level, if you're interested in these kinds of things at least, it doesn't make the story more engaging. Aurora is a very meditative character. She often goes on a completely random tangent that might prove relevant to the bigger picture, but also halts the narrative. She represents so many female archetypes (the artist, the motherless daughter, the independent woman, the Nymph, Eve, Lilith, Persephone, the Improvisatrice, ...) that I never quite got the feeling of a distinctive personality. The same goes for Romney Leigh and Marian Erle. I never had the feeling I was reading about characters. I like Aurora, feel indifferent about Marian, and dislike Romney, but as you can tell, none of those are essentially strong feelings.
However, part of that might have been due to the fact that I was in complete analysis mode every time I picked this up. While I have three physical copies of this novel (I'm just that kind of overzealous student), I would recommend opting for The Norton Critical edition if you're interested in reading this. It has a lot of relevant footnotes (EBB loves to use a lot of specific terminology and references to the classics) and includes some bonus material, such as selected letters from the Brownings, short essays on social and/or gender issues - both from Victorian and contemporary critics - , information on how (badly) women-centric literature was recieved in that time, ...
What I will say for Aurora Leigh's relative unreadability is that it doesn't break the book for me. Sometimes, when you've studied something long and hard, it's hard to see the actual text or narrative. One of my teachers once compared it to building your own house. She was so involved with the construction that when her house was finished, she saw the bricks, the wiring, the plumbing, the isolation, but those elements never came together to give her a house. That never happened to me here. Maybe now that I no longer have to come up with innovative ways of interpretation and critical debate, I can finally read for the story.
November 4, 2011
Maybe this poem fascinates me because I go to Baylor. Maybe these words excite me because I can stroll through the Armstrong-Browning library and see early drafts of Aurora Leigh in the author's own handwriting. Maybe EBB's living room furniture releases some abundance of curiosity in my mind that pops the words off the page. Maybe I like this poem because I know that EBB and I have read many of the same books and this produces some type of brain kinship.
I'm not really sure.
All I know is that I read this poem and it has become a part of me. You'll have to excuse my melodramatic response. Let me just say that there is something special about the words that force you see your own world differently. Words that remind you to soar in the heavens and stare at the sewers.
I'm not really sure.
All I know is that I read this poem and it has become a part of me. You'll have to excuse my melodramatic response. Let me just say that there is something special about the words that force you see your own world differently. Words that remind you to soar in the heavens and stare at the sewers.
August 26, 2021
Aug 23, 2pm ~~ Review asap.
Aug 26, 1pm ~~ After reading Flush by Virginia Woolf, which was a novel about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog, I became more interested in EBB herself. I don't think I ever read any of her work by choice. I was subjected to her in high school and did not appreciate it at that time. But Virginia Woolf made me see the poet in a different light than my English teachers ever could fifty years ago.
So I decided it was time to explore a little bit. I ordered Aurora Leigh to sample her work and also Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett: The Courtship Correspondence, 1845-1846 to get to know the woman better. Although I think that just by reading Aurora Leigh I have learned a lot about EBB already, at least assuming that she put as much of her own character and beliefs into the poem as it appeared. Here is the dedication, written to her cousin John Kenyon, in 1856.
The words ‘cousin’ and ‘friend’ are constantly recurring in this poem, the last pages of which have been finished under the hospitality of your roof, my own dearest cousin and friend;—cousin and friend, in a sense of less equality and greater disinterestedness than ‘Romney’’s.
Ending, therefore, and preparing once more to quit England, I venture to leave in your hands this book, the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered: that as, through my various efforts in literature and steps in life, you have believed in me, borne with me, and been generous to me, far beyond the common uses of mere relationship or sympathy of mind, so you may kindly accept, in sight of the public, this poor sign of esteem, gratitude, and affection, from your unforgetting E.B.B.
I like poetry to a point, but I love long prose poems like this, so I was happy with the format to start with. There are nine books, each fairly long, and as always when I read such works I admire the talent, ambition, and discipline it must take to create such pieces. A novel is hard enough to write without keeping to a prose poem format!
Within the nine books, we learn about Aurora Leigh, a successful poet looking to tell her life story, to explain herself not only to the world but to herself. There were many times I wanted to cheer You Go, Girl! because our Aurora learned to be true to her Self and to live her life the way she felt was the best for her. This is a courageous thing for women to do even in our day.
But as in any friendship (for the reader comes to think of Aurora as a friend) there are times when you cannot help saying 'Oh, Meow' or 'that was kind of rude, girl" and I had a few such moments with Ms. Leigh. I also was just a bit put off by the preachy parts here and there. I know it was vital to the story, to the character, and certainly to the poet herself, but I can only read so much about one's duty to God without fretting about how the spiritual side of life is a private matter, something for each person to discover on his own, not something that is only this way or that way, and not something that should feel like duty. It should be joyous, full of gratitude and create a feeling of partnership with the Universe. So there were a few small parts of this poem that I skimmed, but even though I did not focus sharply on them I understood how essential the subject was for both Aurora and EBB.
The Romney mentioned in the dedication is Romney Leigh, Aurora's cousin. He is the spur that prods Aurora to grow into herself perhaps sooner than she might have otherwise. but will there be a romance between them? Could there be? Not because of the cousin thing (although I can't help myself, that still seems creepy) but because he is just such a dense, unthinking, unfeeling man. Imagine that word man being spit out as an insult and that is how he is. I know there are plenty of good men around, men who value and appreciate women who have the strength to follow their own ambitions in life, but Romney was not one of them. I never did like him in any part of the poem, not even at the end. Probably less so there than at any time, if I'm honest about it. But, as I said, and as so often happens in real life, a stinker of a man often is the goad to help create a woman of character, or at least to speed the process along.
I don't think I will ever read EBB's other poetry, but I am very glad I read this book and I am looking forward to her letters!
Aug 26, 1pm ~~ After reading Flush by Virginia Woolf, which was a novel about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog, I became more interested in EBB herself. I don't think I ever read any of her work by choice. I was subjected to her in high school and did not appreciate it at that time. But Virginia Woolf made me see the poet in a different light than my English teachers ever could fifty years ago.
So I decided it was time to explore a little bit. I ordered Aurora Leigh to sample her work and also Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett: The Courtship Correspondence, 1845-1846 to get to know the woman better. Although I think that just by reading Aurora Leigh I have learned a lot about EBB already, at least assuming that she put as much of her own character and beliefs into the poem as it appeared. Here is the dedication, written to her cousin John Kenyon, in 1856.
The words ‘cousin’ and ‘friend’ are constantly recurring in this poem, the last pages of which have been finished under the hospitality of your roof, my own dearest cousin and friend;—cousin and friend, in a sense of less equality and greater disinterestedness than ‘Romney’’s.
Ending, therefore, and preparing once more to quit England, I venture to leave in your hands this book, the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered: that as, through my various efforts in literature and steps in life, you have believed in me, borne with me, and been generous to me, far beyond the common uses of mere relationship or sympathy of mind, so you may kindly accept, in sight of the public, this poor sign of esteem, gratitude, and affection, from your unforgetting E.B.B.
I like poetry to a point, but I love long prose poems like this, so I was happy with the format to start with. There are nine books, each fairly long, and as always when I read such works I admire the talent, ambition, and discipline it must take to create such pieces. A novel is hard enough to write without keeping to a prose poem format!
Within the nine books, we learn about Aurora Leigh, a successful poet looking to tell her life story, to explain herself not only to the world but to herself. There were many times I wanted to cheer You Go, Girl! because our Aurora learned to be true to her Self and to live her life the way she felt was the best for her. This is a courageous thing for women to do even in our day.
But as in any friendship (for the reader comes to think of Aurora as a friend) there are times when you cannot help saying 'Oh, Meow' or 'that was kind of rude, girl" and I had a few such moments with Ms. Leigh. I also was just a bit put off by the preachy parts here and there. I know it was vital to the story, to the character, and certainly to the poet herself, but I can only read so much about one's duty to God without fretting about how the spiritual side of life is a private matter, something for each person to discover on his own, not something that is only this way or that way, and not something that should feel like duty. It should be joyous, full of gratitude and create a feeling of partnership with the Universe. So there were a few small parts of this poem that I skimmed, but even though I did not focus sharply on them I understood how essential the subject was for both Aurora and EBB.
The Romney mentioned in the dedication is Romney Leigh, Aurora's cousin. He is the spur that prods Aurora to grow into herself perhaps sooner than she might have otherwise. but will there be a romance between them? Could there be? Not because of the cousin thing (although I can't help myself, that still seems creepy) but because he is just such a dense, unthinking, unfeeling man. Imagine that word man being spit out as an insult and that is how he is. I know there are plenty of good men around, men who value and appreciate women who have the strength to follow their own ambitions in life, but Romney was not one of them. I never did like him in any part of the poem, not even at the end. Probably less so there than at any time, if I'm honest about it. But, as I said, and as so often happens in real life, a stinker of a man often is the goad to help create a woman of character, or at least to speed the process along.
I don't think I will ever read EBB's other poetry, but I am very glad I read this book and I am looking forward to her letters!
April 23, 2024
Majestic. Magisterial. Magnificent! I knew I was in for some exquisite poetry and profound philosophy, but I had no idea how deeply, genuinely, and gloriously Christian this book would turn out to be.
Really, this poem is the most thoroughly Christian of any 19th century fiction I've read: not culturally Christian, or tacitly Christian, or Christian by implication or inference, but with theology—Aurora Leigh's own spiritual ruminations—forming the poem's center of gravity. How God reveals himself in the world, how he calls artists to bear witness to this revelation, how work (though cursed through Adam) becomes sweet through fellowship with Christ...this kind of theologizing is never far from Aurora Leigh's musings and crystalizes so beautifully and movingly in the climactic Book VII. I was spellbound reading it and remain awestruck remembering it.
Yes, it's a novel with a rather thin plot, and yes, it bears more than one striking parallel to Jane Eyre. Read it for the incredible poetry (which becomes such a joy when you get into the rhythm of it) and for the breathtaking metaphysics. I'm pretty sure I will need to carve out time for an annual reread.
This book has given me food for thought in contemplating the long-pondered question of how one might write Christian fiction in a way that's neither outdated, edgy, perfunctory, saccharine, or naïve. Granted, Aurora Leigh would be a tough act to follow, but discovering a model makes such a project seem *just* attainable.
Really, this poem is the most thoroughly Christian of any 19th century fiction I've read: not culturally Christian, or tacitly Christian, or Christian by implication or inference, but with theology—Aurora Leigh's own spiritual ruminations—forming the poem's center of gravity. How God reveals himself in the world, how he calls artists to bear witness to this revelation, how work (though cursed through Adam) becomes sweet through fellowship with Christ...this kind of theologizing is never far from Aurora Leigh's musings and crystalizes so beautifully and movingly in the climactic Book VII. I was spellbound reading it and remain awestruck remembering it.
Yes, it's a novel with a rather thin plot, and yes, it bears more than one striking parallel to Jane Eyre. Read it for the incredible poetry (which becomes such a joy when you get into the rhythm of it) and for the breathtaking metaphysics. I'm pretty sure I will need to carve out time for an annual reread.
This book has given me food for thought in contemplating the long-pondered question of how one might write Christian fiction in a way that's neither outdated, edgy, perfunctory, saccharine, or naïve. Granted, Aurora Leigh would be a tough act to follow, but discovering a model makes such a project seem *just* attainable.
July 20, 2021
He conseguido leer este libro gracias a Masa Crítica de Babelio, una acción promocional de esta web de lectura en la que el lector interesado participa en el sorteo de varios libros donados por las editoriales con el único compromiso de escribir una reseña del mismo. Cuando salió esta edición de la Masa Crítica, solicité este libro porque me pareció un curioso, cuanto menos, el que se trate de una historia romántica contada en forma de poesía, además de porque así me servía para cumplir uno de los puntos del reto lector Voces Femeninas (libro de poesía escrito por una mujer).
Reconozco que cuando me llegó el libro me llevé las manos a la cabeza: ¡712 páginas! No me había fijado en ese pequeño detalle y con lo que yo soy de poesía (vamos, que no soy de poesía) me temía un desastre de lectura. Pero nunca he estado más equivocada.
El poema, con un total de 10938 versos, narra una historia que nos hace recordar a Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë. Una joven huérfana, de padre inglés y madre italiana, es enviada a vivir con su tía inglesa tras el fallecimiento de sus padres. Y allí crece, enfrentada en espíritu a una sociedad establecida en lo tradicional y las convenciones, donde la mujer debe estar supeditada al hombre y su arte no es reconocido como tal al nivel que merece. Tras recibir una declaración de amor al más puro estilo Mr Darcy de Orgullo y Prejuicio de Jane Austen, se traslada a Londres para dedicarse a su gran amor: la poesía. Y hasta aquí puedo leer, como dijo Mayra Gómez Kemp.
El libro, escrito en 1856 es un adelanto a su tiempo ya que es una defensa de la mujer, de su arte y de su inteligencia, enfrentada a la tradición de ser sólo esposa y madre.
La lectura es bastante ágil una vez que te olvidas de la poesía y te centras en la historia, aunque reconozco que las partes en que no contaba la historia directamente sino que se explayaba en sus pensamientos sobre Dios, el amor, la poesía,.. se me hacían un poco más cuesta arriba.
Con respecto a las 712 páginas, no os asustéis, porque 113 de ellas son una introducción a la vida y obra de la autora, comentario de este libro y compendio de referencias bibliográficas, y el resto se diluye con un montón de notas al pie. Y digo un montón, porque en muchas páginas, por no decir la mayoría, es más el texto de la nota al pie, que el texto del libro.
En definitiva, un libro que me ha sorprendido agradablemente. No sólo porque sea poesía sino porque siendo la autora un clásico, nunca (y digo nunca) había oído hablar de ella (ni Jorge Luis Borges por lo que ponen en la introducción).
Reconozco que cuando me llegó el libro me llevé las manos a la cabeza: ¡712 páginas! No me había fijado en ese pequeño detalle y con lo que yo soy de poesía (vamos, que no soy de poesía) me temía un desastre de lectura. Pero nunca he estado más equivocada.
El poema, con un total de 10938 versos, narra una historia que nos hace recordar a Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë. Una joven huérfana, de padre inglés y madre italiana, es enviada a vivir con su tía inglesa tras el fallecimiento de sus padres. Y allí crece, enfrentada en espíritu a una sociedad establecida en lo tradicional y las convenciones, donde la mujer debe estar supeditada al hombre y su arte no es reconocido como tal al nivel que merece. Tras recibir una declaración de amor al más puro estilo Mr Darcy de Orgullo y Prejuicio de Jane Austen, se traslada a Londres para dedicarse a su gran amor: la poesía. Y hasta aquí puedo leer, como dijo Mayra Gómez Kemp.
El libro, escrito en 1856 es un adelanto a su tiempo ya que es una defensa de la mujer, de su arte y de su inteligencia, enfrentada a la tradición de ser sólo esposa y madre.
La lectura es bastante ágil una vez que te olvidas de la poesía y te centras en la historia, aunque reconozco que las partes en que no contaba la historia directamente sino que se explayaba en sus pensamientos sobre Dios, el amor, la poesía,.. se me hacían un poco más cuesta arriba.
Con respecto a las 712 páginas, no os asustéis, porque 113 de ellas son una introducción a la vida y obra de la autora, comentario de este libro y compendio de referencias bibliográficas, y el resto se diluye con un montón de notas al pie. Y digo un montón, porque en muchas páginas, por no decir la mayoría, es más el texto de la nota al pie, que el texto del libro.
En definitiva, un libro que me ha sorprendido agradablemente. No sólo porque sea poesía sino porque siendo la autora un clásico, nunca (y digo nunca) había oído hablar de ella (ni Jorge Luis Borges por lo que ponen en la introducción).
January 2, 2025
How had I not heard of this book until recently?
That’s the question I find myself asking as I finish Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s epic poem about a female writer’s adventures in love and art. Sadly, the main reason for the book’s lack of popularity is simple: Browning was a woman, and the male critics of her time thought that poetic genius required a Y chromosome. The comments of one critic (quoted in the book’s introduction) capture the spirit of the age: “The negative experience of centuries seems to prove that a woman cannot be a great poet.”
Well, Mr. Critic, the joke’s on you, because Aurora Leigh is great poetry - in fact, it’s some of the greatest poetry I’ve ever read. You could rank Browning alongside Victorian celebs like Dickens, Eliot, and the Brontës, but that wouldn’t do her justice. I’d put her up against Shakespeare any day.
That said, I don’t think Aurora Leigh is perfect. Browning’s work has its fair share of Victorian pitfalls: characters sometimes appear more saintly or angelic than flesh and blood, fortuitous meetings abound, romantic speeches tend to drag on (the climactic conversation fills 70 pages!), and a late plot twist seems to have been plucked straight from Jane Eyre.
However, I enjoyed this book much more than Charlotte Brontë’s feminist classic. Its twists and turns are more intriguing, its characters more flawed and believable (and far less creepy), and its reflections on identity, creativity, womanhood, and love in the Victorian era much more profound. Browning framed the book this way in a letter to a friend: “my chief intention just now is the writing of a sort of novel-poem…running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into drawing rooms and the like, ‘where angels fear to tread’; and so, meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and speaking the truth of it out plainly. That is my intention.” By all accounts, she succeeded.
I disagree with some of Aurora Leigh’s key religious and philosophical conclusions, but I can appreciate the elegance of the arguments it makes. I hope more people read it, and I hope they find it much sooner than I did.
P.S. To the woman who owned the copy of the book that I read before me, thank you. I don’t know if you were an English major or an English professor, but either way, your marginalia were fantastic!
That’s the question I find myself asking as I finish Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s epic poem about a female writer’s adventures in love and art. Sadly, the main reason for the book’s lack of popularity is simple: Browning was a woman, and the male critics of her time thought that poetic genius required a Y chromosome. The comments of one critic (quoted in the book’s introduction) capture the spirit of the age: “The negative experience of centuries seems to prove that a woman cannot be a great poet.”
Well, Mr. Critic, the joke’s on you, because Aurora Leigh is great poetry - in fact, it’s some of the greatest poetry I’ve ever read. You could rank Browning alongside Victorian celebs like Dickens, Eliot, and the Brontës, but that wouldn’t do her justice. I’d put her up against Shakespeare any day.
That said, I don’t think Aurora Leigh is perfect. Browning’s work has its fair share of Victorian pitfalls: characters sometimes appear more saintly or angelic than flesh and blood, fortuitous meetings abound, romantic speeches tend to drag on (the climactic conversation fills 70 pages!), and a late plot twist seems to have been plucked straight from Jane Eyre.
However, I enjoyed this book much more than Charlotte Brontë’s feminist classic. Its twists and turns are more intriguing, its characters more flawed and believable (and far less creepy), and its reflections on identity, creativity, womanhood, and love in the Victorian era much more profound. Browning framed the book this way in a letter to a friend: “my chief intention just now is the writing of a sort of novel-poem…running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into drawing rooms and the like, ‘where angels fear to tread’; and so, meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and speaking the truth of it out plainly. That is my intention.” By all accounts, she succeeded.
I disagree with some of Aurora Leigh’s key religious and philosophical conclusions, but I can appreciate the elegance of the arguments it makes. I hope more people read it, and I hope they find it much sooner than I did.
P.S. To the woman who owned the copy of the book that I read before me, thank you. I don’t know if you were an English major or an English professor, but either way, your marginalia were fantastic!
May 22, 2023
This was a surprise - I wasn’t at all sure I had an appetite for a 300+ page novel in verse form. But the narrative is satisfying, and the author’s reflections on poetry and art are profound:
Ay, but every age
Appears to souls who live in’t (ask Carlyle)
Most unheroic. Ours, for instance, ours:
The thinkers scout it, and the poets, abound
Who scorn to touch it with a fingertip:
A pewter age—mixed metal, silver-washed;
An age of scum, spooned off the richer past,
An age of patches for old gabardines,
An age of mere transition, meaning nought
Except that what succeeds must shame it quite
If God please. That’s wrong thinking, to my mind,
And wrong thoughts make poor poems.
…
Nay, if there’s room for poets in this world
A little overgrown (I think there is),
Their sole work is to represent the age,
Their age, not Charlemagne’s—
This live, throbbing age,
That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,
And spends more passion, more heroic heat,
Between the mirrors of its drawing-rooms,
Than Roland with his nights at Roncesvalles.
To flinch from modern varnish, coat or flounce,
Cry out for togas in the picturesque,
Is fatal—foolish too. King Arthur’s self
Was commonplace to Lady Guinevere;
And Camelot to minstrels seemed as flat
As Fleet Street to our poets.
Book V, 155-166 and 200-213
Ay, but every age
Appears to souls who live in’t (ask Carlyle)
Most unheroic. Ours, for instance, ours:
The thinkers scout it, and the poets, abound
Who scorn to touch it with a fingertip:
A pewter age—mixed metal, silver-washed;
An age of scum, spooned off the richer past,
An age of patches for old gabardines,
An age of mere transition, meaning nought
Except that what succeeds must shame it quite
If God please. That’s wrong thinking, to my mind,
And wrong thoughts make poor poems.
…
Nay, if there’s room for poets in this world
A little overgrown (I think there is),
Their sole work is to represent the age,
Their age, not Charlemagne’s—
This live, throbbing age,
That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,
And spends more passion, more heroic heat,
Between the mirrors of its drawing-rooms,
Than Roland with his nights at Roncesvalles.
To flinch from modern varnish, coat or flounce,
Cry out for togas in the picturesque,
Is fatal—foolish too. King Arthur’s self
Was commonplace to Lady Guinevere;
And Camelot to minstrels seemed as flat
As Fleet Street to our poets.
Book V, 155-166 and 200-213
March 26, 2018
4.9/5
I believe / In no one's honour which another keeps, / Nor man's nor woman's.It is rather pathetic, what is encouraged to soar and what is denied that extra gust of wind beneath its wings. More pathetic yet is when the status quo suckers bend over backwards to excuse the artificiality as if, pound for pound, the more neglected demographic did not meet the demands, layer by layer, pillar by pillar, defined by such vaunted categories as the epic poem. Aurora Leigh proved neither a five star nor a favorite, but bear in mind that I bought, mostly out of luck and partially out of desperation, an edition more contemporaneous with the author than myself, and so all the neat and mayhaps necessary aids to my understanding via the categorization of references and allusions were nowhere to be found. Thus, this is one of those works that goes down as needing a future revisit through the medium of a more modern edition, as while I caught what I could from such mainstream mentions of Shakespeares and burned houses, I want the full fleshed out form of something so old and yet so relevant to my self. Maybe then this will prove the five star or even favorite edition, but for now, I am satisfied with what I have gotten thus far.
Do we keep / Our love to pay our debts with?
What is done, is done, / And violence is now turned privilege, / As cream turns cheese, if buried long enough.Name me a Victorian male who delves into all the viciousness of class relations between women with all its associated breeding and selling of bodies, sets it all to walk in tandem with the woman as artist and the artist as artist, not unspoken male, and tops it off with glorious depictions of nature, morality, duty, and love of literature, the last both in terms of creation and indulgence. No, I do not suppose any of those would prove a worthy topic, unless there were porn of some sort in the vein of tragedy or disability or some boxed up automaton carved out by Pygmalion and wound up only after signing all their rights away under conventions of love or marriage. Other topics not worthy of mention here, I imagine: girlish childhoods hemmed in by xenophobia, womanly balances between financial independence and financial security, artistic concerns with constructing social systems versus grounding spiritual welfare, distinguishing between having made a mistake and having made the right mistake at the right time, solidarity out of the spirit of gender and the recognition of all the ills the world wills on the gender after rendering it said gender, etc, etc, etc. Perhaps one or more would claim the third or fourth, but they would have to mind the constant theme of girlish, womanly, female gender, female artistry, female, female, always female, never an onlooker, never an outsider (and when I mean outside, I mean of the cis variety. don't mistake my concerns for a bad faith reliance on inherently variable, biological matterns), never a thief, never a liar, never a fool.
Yet, behold, / Behold!—the world of books is still the world; / And worldlings in it are less merciful / And more puissant. For the wicked there / Are winged like angels. Every knife that strikes, / Is edged from elemental fire to assail / A spiritual life. The beautiful seems right / By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong / Because of weakness.
[W]e have all known / Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hopes; / Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; / Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; / Good kings, who disembowelled for a tax; / Good popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; / Good Christians, who sate still in easy chairs, / And damned the general world for standing up.One of the most powerful countries in the world today has had at its helm for more than a year an incompetent in all things save for matters of sexual assault, so you cannot tell me all the other representatives of that incompetents gender do not have to work twice as hard to make up for their failure (exceptions may be made for race), as it would not be the first time such fallacious distribution of responsibility had been made, or the second, or the fourteen hundredth; all it would be, just maybe, is the first time for a certain demographic, and likely it would slough off as much as water sloughs off the back of a duck, for this demographic has been in power for five firm centuries, enough time to have twisted all the recorded history before into the foulest sort of mirror, where rape is love and slavery is hospitality and genocide is the birth of a nation, and the modern people suffer for it. To find such an epic poem/novel as this is merely half the work, for a woman may still be white and well enough and thus incapable of encompassing the other four-fifths of the world, but in terms of starting points, it is of a better quality than most of which is currently trumpeted in ivory towels as the only triumphs of their kind.
Men get opinions as boys learn to spell. / By reiteration chiefly[.]
I do distrust the poet who discerns / No character or glory in his times, / And trundles back his soul five hundred years, / Past moat and drawbridge, into a castle-court, / Oh, not to sing of lizards or of toads / Alive i' the ditch there?—'twere excusable; / But of some black chief, half knight, half sheep-lifter. / Some beauteous dame, half chattel and half queen, / As dead as must be, for the greater part, / The poems made on their chivalric bones, / And that's no wonder: death inherits death.
February 5, 2023
Mrs. Elizabeth Browning, I'm quite disappointed in you.
I had hoped you'd prove to be a better writer than your husband, but alas that was not the case. If anything, I think Mr. Browning to be the better writer.
At the very least, I'm super happy and relieved it was not required to read the entirety of Aurora Leigh. I don't think I would have made it since my attention already began to wan not even halfway through.
I had hoped you'd prove to be a better writer than your husband, but alas that was not the case. If anything, I think Mr. Browning to be the better writer.
At the very least, I'm super happy and relieved it was not required to read the entirety of Aurora Leigh. I don't think I would have made it since my attention already began to wan not even halfway through.
August 5, 2020
Un libro que no le puedo recomendar a todo el mundo, yo misma batallé porque no tengo experiencia leyendo poesía y éste libro es muy superior a lo que acostumbro leer. La protagonista me recordó a muchas otras admiradas como Jane Eyre, Jo March o Elizabeth Bennett y eso me hizo sentirme aún más conectada con ella a pesar de la gran cantidad de referencias bíblicas y a la literatura clásica, que si no fueran por las notas del traductor me hubiera sentido muy perdida.
La historia nos presenta a Aurora Leigh, una huérfana de padre inglés y madre italiana. Ella es llevada a vivir con su familia paterna cuando mueren sus padres y junto a su fría tía y su primo Rommey empezará una nueva vida en Inglaterra donde descubrirá que su pasión está en la poesía, anhelo que le causará grandes problemas con los planes de boda que su tía tiene para ella.
El libro es una novela en verso que se divide en nueve capítulos y creo que fui muy atrevida al empezar mi camino en la poesía con éste título pero no me arrepiento de nada, me emocionaba mucho conocer la pluma de la autora y me dejó más allá de satisfecha aunque algo mareada. 😛💕
La historia nos presenta a Aurora Leigh, una huérfana de padre inglés y madre italiana. Ella es llevada a vivir con su familia paterna cuando mueren sus padres y junto a su fría tía y su primo Rommey empezará una nueva vida en Inglaterra donde descubrirá que su pasión está en la poesía, anhelo que le causará grandes problemas con los planes de boda que su tía tiene para ella.
El libro es una novela en verso que se divide en nueve capítulos y creo que fui muy atrevida al empezar mi camino en la poesía con éste título pero no me arrepiento de nada, me emocionaba mucho conocer la pluma de la autora y me dejó más allá de satisfecha aunque algo mareada. 😛💕
November 26, 2007
I'm normally not a huge poetry fan (especially English poetry), but I make an exception for *Aurora Leigh.* A verse novel, an urban epic, a working wife and househusband: there's too much paradox here not to love it.
November 3, 2023
A bold, fascinating, often beautiful novel in verse. I came back to this to move it from 4 to 5 stars because of the intensity with which it has stayed in my head in the weeks since I finished it.
March 22, 2021
I like to approach a book knowing as little about it as possible, and "Aurora Leigh" was a total cipher to me.
I had read some prior Barrett Browning work, of course. Long ago I had memorized her Sonnet 43 (“How Do I Love Thee?"), not out of any supreme love of it but just because it fell into my lap at a time I liked memorizing poetry (an urge that has diminished though not entirely gone away). Then, in grad school, I had to read her entire "Sonnets of the Portuguese"; it did not particularly speak to me.
So, when the other member of my two-person book club chose "Aurora Leigh" as our next exploration, I was neither enthralled nor repulsed. I set upon it with mind/heart/soul all open and curious.
I offer all this to say that I had hugely mixed feelings about it. This book-length poem has moments that range from 1-star to 5-star, the former mostly occurring in the first half, the latter in the second half, though my interest waxed and waned throughout. The melodramatic storyline and the handling of the themes of love, morality, "the Woman Question", and social justice are pure 19th-century for better and worse, alternately thrilling, indifferent, or boring.
My favorite parts are when the characters bare their souls (both noble and base); my least favorite, when the author philosophizes (esp. when she has characters do this with their dialogue for pages on end) or has a string of (nowadays) obscure and tedious allusions that require flipping to the 39 pages of footnotes at the back of the book. After the first 50 pages or so of the main text, I mostly stopped consulting the endnotes, content to get the gist of what was going on, often at the loss of unnecessary (I hoped) particulars which manifested as dutifully slogging through several dozen lines of blank verse without much comprehension, but trusting that, like a hiker who has veered off the trail, the path would soon be found again. And it always was.
Barrett Browning’s storyline is sweet if at times overly-wrought, her characters lovable and commendably flawed, and her philosophies [sometimes reminiscent of Emerson and Swedenborg, to whit: “Earth is crammed with heaven/and every common bush afire with God” (246)] worthy of consideration.
Two ideas that particularly stick in my mind: “A holiday of miserable men/ Is sadder than a burial-day of kings” (127) and a character’s wish “(t)hat no truth henceforth seem indifferent /No way to truth laborious” (252).
Hear, hear!
I had read some prior Barrett Browning work, of course. Long ago I had memorized her Sonnet 43 (“How Do I Love Thee?"), not out of any supreme love of it but just because it fell into my lap at a time I liked memorizing poetry (an urge that has diminished though not entirely gone away). Then, in grad school, I had to read her entire "Sonnets of the Portuguese"; it did not particularly speak to me.
So, when the other member of my two-person book club chose "Aurora Leigh" as our next exploration, I was neither enthralled nor repulsed. I set upon it with mind/heart/soul all open and curious.
I offer all this to say that I had hugely mixed feelings about it. This book-length poem has moments that range from 1-star to 5-star, the former mostly occurring in the first half, the latter in the second half, though my interest waxed and waned throughout. The melodramatic storyline and the handling of the themes of love, morality, "the Woman Question", and social justice are pure 19th-century for better and worse, alternately thrilling, indifferent, or boring.
My favorite parts are when the characters bare their souls (both noble and base); my least favorite, when the author philosophizes (esp. when she has characters do this with their dialogue for pages on end) or has a string of (nowadays) obscure and tedious allusions that require flipping to the 39 pages of footnotes at the back of the book. After the first 50 pages or so of the main text, I mostly stopped consulting the endnotes, content to get the gist of what was going on, often at the loss of unnecessary (I hoped) particulars which manifested as dutifully slogging through several dozen lines of blank verse without much comprehension, but trusting that, like a hiker who has veered off the trail, the path would soon be found again. And it always was.
Barrett Browning’s storyline is sweet if at times overly-wrought, her characters lovable and commendably flawed, and her philosophies [sometimes reminiscent of Emerson and Swedenborg, to whit: “Earth is crammed with heaven/and every common bush afire with God” (246)] worthy of consideration.
Two ideas that particularly stick in my mind: “A holiday of miserable men/ Is sadder than a burial-day of kings” (127) and a character’s wish “(t)hat no truth henceforth seem indifferent /No way to truth laborious” (252).
Hear, hear!
March 18, 2024
"By the way, The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, To put on when you're weary or a stool To stumble over and vex you . . . "curse that stool!" Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean And sleep, and dream of something we are not But would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, this that, after all, we are paid The worth of our work, perhaps."
Want to read
June 25, 2017Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
March 4, 2020
3 3/4 stars
April 2, 2024
snore. like i get it, women and art and independence and social norms but like. snore. why would you write a book this way.
Read
October 17, 2019I'm teaching this epic poem in my Victorian Poetry class this month, which has given me a chance to read it again for the first time in several years. I first read Aurora Leigh as a first-year college student in 1994 and was utterly blown away by the fact that a Victorian poem addressed so frankly the kinds of questions I was thinking about as a young woman in the late twentieth century. What kind of work should I do in the world? What kind of work did the world need? Could a poet help make the world better? How could romantic relationships and a vocation or calling go together? Where might child-bearing fit into a creative life? And the wild plot twists also hooked me--the ways that completely unforeseen developments turned up seemingly every twenty pages, yet then seemed completely organic to the poem's narrative as it developed.
I've had to read Aurora Leigh several more times in classes I've taken, and I've taught it four or five times in my own college classrooms. This semester, I've been thrilled by the fact that my 20-year-old students have been saying, "How have we never heard of this before?"
If you think that Victorian literature is all--and that Victorian people (especially women) were all--stodgy and boring and shortsighted and strait laced, this book-length poem will complicate your thinking, as long as you're patient and let yourself get into reading it. It won't take long for it to feel as though you're reading a novel. And then you might find yourself not wanting to put it down.
I've had to read Aurora Leigh several more times in classes I've taken, and I've taught it four or five times in my own college classrooms. This semester, I've been thrilled by the fact that my 20-year-old students have been saying, "How have we never heard of this before?"
If you think that Victorian literature is all--and that Victorian people (especially women) were all--stodgy and boring and shortsighted and strait laced, this book-length poem will complicate your thinking, as long as you're patient and let yourself get into reading it. It won't take long for it to feel as though you're reading a novel. And then you might find yourself not wanting to put it down.
December 14, 2017
This is a Victorian epic poem that I had to read for my Victorian Literature class. While it was rather long and at times opaque, I really did enjoy it. I'm not a quote person, but I found myself underlining passages and connecting with this book. This book is rather fascinating, especially because of the cast of characters who are quite complex. I even wrote my final paper on this, so you know I enjoyed it. I would love to come back to this in the future and really enjoy and tear apart this text.
October 4, 2019
I loved this verse-novel by Elizabeth Barrett Browning! The language is beautiful and flowing and the plot is engaging. The book addresses various themes and points, such as gender and stereotypes, social class, love, culture, and compassion.
February 21, 2019
I mean... I liked the writing style but anything not furthering the plot seemed like poetically written bullshit tho... that is to say, I understood roughly 50% of this book lmao
March 31, 2025
all that talk just to end up with a man. jk. kind of.
February 21, 2019
A recent friend of mine told me, back in 1910, that "There is an infinitely finer English novel, written by a woman, than anything by George Eliot or the Brontes, or even Jane Austen, which perhaps you have not read. Its title is 'Aurora Leigh,' and its author E.B. Browning. It happens to be written in verse, and to contain a considerable amount of genuinely fine poetry. Decide to read that book through, even if you die for it. Forget that it is fine poetry. Read it simply for the story and the social ideas. And when you have done, ask yourself honestly whether you still dislike poetry. I have known more than one person to whom 'Aurora Leigh' has been the means of proving that in assuming they hated poetry they were entirely mistaken."
Well my friend, I followed your recommendations and while I loved it at first, I then fell asleep and didn't feel any curiosity or excitement to continue any reading. Does that mean poetry is not for me? Yet I love 'Le Spleen de Paris' by Baudelaire for example. 'Aurora Leigh' was not for me but I will try again poetry some other day.
Well my friend, I followed your recommendations and while I loved it at first, I then fell asleep and didn't feel any curiosity or excitement to continue any reading. Does that mean poetry is not for me? Yet I love 'Le Spleen de Paris' by Baudelaire for example. 'Aurora Leigh' was not for me but I will try again poetry some other day.
September 20, 2021
Simply put, ‘Aurora Leigh’ is way too long. It takes a special skill to carry out verse for 300+ pages, and especially with the relatively little action that occurs in ‘Aurora Leigh’ it’s something that E.B.B doesn’t, in my opinion, achieve.
The quality of the verse is too inconsistent; it has it’s moments, for example the description of Romney’s wedding day where the people ‘clogged the streets, they oozed into the church / in a dark slow stream, like blood’ excellently encapsulates the eerie feeling that something is not right due to Lady Waldemar’s meddling.
Aurora’s strong authorial voice is not to be ignored as a landmark for Feminist literature, but the quality (or there lack of) of the poem for me left a sense of distaste at the end of my reading.
The quality of the verse is too inconsistent; it has it’s moments, for example the description of Romney’s wedding day where the people ‘clogged the streets, they oozed into the church / in a dark slow stream, like blood’ excellently encapsulates the eerie feeling that something is not right due to Lady Waldemar’s meddling.
Aurora’s strong authorial voice is not to be ignored as a landmark for Feminist literature, but the quality (or there lack of) of the poem for me left a sense of distaste at the end of my reading.
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