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Archived Group Reads 2022
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Aurora: Week 3: Books 4 & 5
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Both Aurora and Romney, innocents in their own ways, have fallen foul of society’s dishonesty, deceits and selfish reasonings. They have become victims of the people. Miriam has been lost through the despicable selfishness of Lady Waldemar, who has convinced her that she will ruin Romney because of her lowly birth. In fact it is Miriam who is most probably ruined and Romney blinded into believing the goodness of Lady Waldemar.As for Aurora her harsh realisation of her misery was acknowledged bluntly.
’ Let me set it down
At once,–I have been wrong, I have been wrong.
We are wrong always, when we think too much
Of what we think or are;’
They way she described the congregation at the church was in stark contrast to her own poetry, her descriptions of love and nature.
‘ Those, faces! ‘twas as if you had stirred up hell
To heave its lowest dreg-fiends uppermost
In fiery swirls of slime,–such strangled fronts,
Such obdurate jaws were thrown up constantly,
To twit you with your race, corrupt your blood,
And grind to devilish colors all your dreams
Henceforth, . . though, haply, you should drop asleep
By clink of silver waters, in a muse
On Raffael’s mild Madonna of the Bird.’
Aurora’s London life has made her ill because she has turned her back on the natural world that she loves and been swallowed up by London society.
‘That he, in his developed manhood, stood
A little sunburnt by the glare of life;
While I . . it seemed no sun had shone on me,
So many seasons I had forgot my Springs;
My cheeks had pined and perished from their orbs.
And all the youth blood in them had grown white
As dew on autumn cyclamens: alone
My eyes and forehead answered for my face.’
She was also miserable because Romney had turned his back on her, neither visiting her or showing her that his respect for her work had grown at all.
‘ Of me, incurious! likes me very well,
And wishes me a paradise of good,
Good looks, good means, and good digestion!–ay,
But otherwise evades me, puts me off
With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,–
Too light a book for a grave man’s reading!
Go, Aurora Leigh: be humble.
There it is; We women are too apt to look to one,
Which proves a certain impotence in art.’
Bleakness and disillusionment seem to pervade books four and five. I am hoping for something more positive in book six.
Mod
That's an interesting take.
Mod
I wonder if Romney was tied by social convention. Her reputation had to be protected. Neither have close relations who could have given news of the other.
Mod
Romney's actions are sincere but misguided. His want to marry Marian arises yet again from his zealous devotion to his cause. So it is perhaps well that the marriage didn't take place. But I feel uneasy for Marian. Her sudden change of mind is worrying.
At the beginning of ch 5 we certainly see her despair that, in not being able to gain Romney's approval of her work, that must mean it is lightweight or trivial:.....I must fail,
Who fail at the beginning to hold and move
One man-and he my cousin, and he my friend,
And he born tender, made intelligent,
Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides
Of difficult questions; yet, obtuse to me-
Of me, incurious! likes me very well,
And wishes me a paradise of good,
Good looks, good means, and good digestion!-ay,
But otherwise evades me, puts me off
With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness-
Too light a book for grave man's reading!
Aurora judges herself by Romney's yardstick, not realizing that he may not be impartial or even perceptive enough to value her work.
She also later despairs of the loss of her parents, that they can never read or appreciate her work, her poetry:
...The best verse written by this hand,
Can never reach them where they sit, to seem
Well-done to them. Death quite unfellows us,
Sets dreadful odds betwixt the live and dead,
And makes us part as those at Babel did,
Through sudden ignorance of a common tongue.
She does acknowledge that she also did not reach out to her cousin, who she feels has made himself open to love, perhaps too open:
He made an almshouse of his heart one day,
Which ever since is loose upon the latch
For those who pull the string.-I never did.
I was surprised, when she decided to go to Italy, that she hadn't done so before this time!
I was also surprised that she went to London, not Italy. For one thing it was much cheaper to live in Italy at that time. Maybe it was easier and more financially rewarding to publish her poetry in London.I was also intrigued by Aurora’s views on plays. Was this an echo of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s own opinion? Or could it be Aurora’s disillusionment with the public in society?
I will write no plays.
Because the drama, less sublime in this,
Makes lower appeals, defends more menially,
Adopts the standard of the public taste
To chalk its height on, wears a dog chain round
Its regal neck, and learns to carry and fetch
The fashions of the day to please the day;
Fawns close on pit and boxes, who clap hands,
Commending chiefly its docility
And humour in stage-tricks; or else indeed
Gets hissed at, howled at, stamped at like a dog,
Or worse, we’ll say. For dogs, unjustly kicked,
Yell, bite at need; but if your dramatist
(Being wronged by some five hundred nobodies
Because their grosser brains most naturally
Misjudge the fineness of his subtle wit)
Shows teeth an almond’s breath, protests the length
Of a.modest phrase,–’ My gentle countrymen,
‘There’s something in it, haply of your fault,’–
Why then, besides five hundred nobodies,
He’ll have five thousand, and five thousand more,
Against him,–the whole public,–all the hoofs
Of King Saul’s father’s asses, in full drove,–
And obviously deserve it.
Am I alone in finding the changes in tone a bit disconcerting? There is Marian's narrative, the wedding and then Aurora's (possibly EBB) feeling on the creative process and being a poet, then back to a social occasion and the news Romney is going to be married. This prevents me feeling too much for the characters, they feel more like devices than real people to me.The writing is beautiful in places though and I am always drawn to explorations of what it means to be an artist.
Mod
Piyangie wrote: "I think EBB's main purpose to pen this work is to show how difficult for a woman to be a poet, appreciated, and respected. The art world was mostly male dominant, and it was difficult for a female ..."That's what I was thinking too, and when she writes about her poetry those seem the strongest moments for me.
Piyangie wrote: "I think EBB's main purpose to pen this work is to show how difficult for a woman to be a poet, appreciated, and respected. The art world was mostly male dominant, and it was difficult for a female ..."By the time she wrote Aurora Leigh, EBB was probably the most famous living female poet. She almost became poet laureate a few years earlier. In Aurora Leigh I think she was using her fame to draw attention to the difficulties facing women and possibly women poets in particular.
At the beginning of the article below there is a description of how Emily Dickinson had EBB’s portrait on her wall to inspire her. (Towards the end of the article there are a number of paragraphs relating to ‘Aurora Leigh’ which you might want to avoid reading until you have finished the poem.)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
Miriam continues her tale when Romney arrives and is surprised by Aurora’s presence. They both leave together and he escorts her out of the bad neighborhood. Four weeks later the wedding day arrives. All the neighborhood seems to be squeezed into the church. Miriam doesn’t show and only a letter arrives that she can’t marry him for they are worlds apart. The crowd is under the impression that he may have used her ill and abandoned her. He is devastated. For days he looks for her with in vain.
Book 5
A year and a half later in London, Aurora is lonely and reflects on her work. She is very dissatisfied with what she has accomplished so far. She hasn’t found the path to the heights she aspires to. At a dinner party she finds out Lady Waldemar is engaged to Romney. It hits her hard and she decides to travel to Italy