Aurora Leigh- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Browning, raised in an upper class family, was well-educated and by the age of 35 was one of the most popular poets in England. She was much more popular than her husband, Robert Browning, however the two wrote about very different subjects. She focused a lot on gender issues, which was a very hot topic during the mid 1800’s. One of her longest and most ambitious poems as well as one of her most successful was Aurora Leigh, a blank-verse narrative. It centers around a young girl who has been orphaned and raised by her aunt. She is very independent and an aspiring writer; like Elizabeth, she finds herself struggling to balance work and love. These social norms Aurora Leigh fights to break mirror those which Elizabeth fought throughout her own life.
I will focus this blog on one section from Browning’s Aurora Leigh, Book 1 [AURORA'S EDUCATION]. As previously stated, Aurora’s mother dies and her father sends her to live with her aunt so she can be properly educated in womanly things. It doesn’t take very long for the reader to see how Aurora Leigh, as the narrator, feels about her aunt. “She had lived, we’ll say,/ A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,/ A quiet life, which was not life at all/ (But that, she had not lived enough to know)” and then later on line 304, “She had lived/ A sort of cage-bird life” (p. 536). I think it is fairly easy to understand that the aunt has probably lived the life of a typical woman in the mid 1800’s; doing what was expected without complaint. It is also pretty easy to see that Aurora Leigh does not agree that this is a good or right way to live life nor does she plan on living like her aunt. In line 309, Aurora Leigh describes herself as a “wild bird” as opposed to the cage bird that she described her aunt as earlier. Her father has brought her to become educated by her aunt, but Aurora Leigh quickly sees it as stifling and is not optimistic about it as seen in the following line, she was “brought to her [the aunt] cage” (p. 536). I am going to assume that Aurora feels as though she, being brought to her aunt’s cage, is going to be “tamed” so to speak, which she sees as a negative thing.
The next stanza goes on to describe the liberal education her aunt deemed necessary which included collects, catechisms, literature, French, German, a little algebra, some of the sciences, music, art, and dancing. To her aunt, this education was not necessary in order to expand Aurora’s intellect or further her literary gifts, but that she “may teach thinking (to a maiden aunt/ Or else the author)” or so that she can “comprehend husband’s talk/ When not too deep, and even of answering/ With pretty “may it please you,” or “so it is,”--” (p. 538). With these quotes, we can see that a woman during this era was not expected to have the education of a man nor was it desirable. Her education was simply to make her more “marriageable” meaning that she can carry on minimal conversation with her husband, but by no means should she be more knowledgeable than him in any of the fields besides perhaps music, art, and dancing. Additionally, in line 437, “And never say “no” when the world says “ay,”/ For that is fatal...” (p. 538). Basically, a woman should follow tradition and there is no reason for her to ever think outside the box or come up with an original thought.
Towards the end of this section, Aurora, or the narrator, becomes slightly sarcastic showing her disdain for the work women are expected to do in society.

“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers…
a stool…
a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not
But would be for your sake…
This hurts most, this--that, after all, we are paid
the worth of our work, perhaps” (p. 538).

As previously stated, we see the way Aurora and probably, ultimately, how Elizabeth feels about the jobs of women in society. She feels the things that are expected of them like sewing are monotonous, boring, and worthless. Sarcastically, she says there is a reason why they’re not paid for their work, which is because it is worthless. I think her words are a bit harsh in that women of her time probably were very talented sewers and cross-stichers. However, she has a point in that women are capable of much more than society was allowing of them and in comparison to their ability, the majority of women were not living up to their full worth.