Aurora Leigh

Aurora Leigh (1856) is an epic novel/poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poem is written in blank verse and encompasses nine books (the woman's number, the number of the prophetic books of the Sibyl). It is a first person narration, from the point of view of Aurora; its other heroine, Marian Erle, is an abused self-taught child of itinerant parents. The poem is set in Florence, Malvern, London and Paris. The author uses her knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, while also playing off modern novels, such as Corinne ou l'Italie by Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and the novels by George Sand. As far as 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, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered." Scholar Deirdre David asserts that Barrett Browning's work in Aurora Leigh has made her into "a major figure in any consideration of the nineteenth-century woman writer and of Victorian poetry in general."John Ruskin called it the greatest long poem of the nineteenth century.

Aurora describes her childhood in Florence, growing up as the daughter of a Tuscan mother and an English father. Her mother died when she was four, leaving her father to raise her. He was a scholar, and imparted to her knowledge of Greek and Latin and a love of learning. Her father died when she was thirteen, and she was sent to England to live with his sister, her aunt, in Leigh Hall, her family’s ancestral home. Her aunt tried to educate her in what she considered a ladylike manner, but Aurora discovered her father’s old library and read scholarly books on her own. She read many of Shakespeare's famous works and fell in love with his writing style and aspired to be a great writer like him one day.

This book starts on Aurora’s twentieth birthday. Her cousin, Romney Leigh, proposes marriage to her. He is skeptical about her poetic ability, telling her that women do not have the passion, intellectual capacity, or redemptive qualities to be true artists. Because of this, and because she feels that he is too wrapped up in his social work and ideals to be a good husband, she angrily rejects him. Aurora’s aunt chastises her for refusing him, telling her that because he is the male heir, he will inherit all of the estate and Aurora will be left with nothing. Shortly afterwards, her aunt dies. Romney attempts to give Aurora money, but she refuses it, deciding to go to London to make her living as a poet.

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