Aurora Leigh: Book 1

Aurora Leigh is one of the greatest epic poems of all time, written in prose. The language of Aurora Leigh is accentual and has great rhythm, although it for me is easy to sometimes get lost in her sub-thoughts without realizing they are not a central part of story.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning published her first book of poetry at age 22. She was a very famous poet, and wrote excellent love poetry for her husband, Robert Browning, another poet in 1845. She was claimed to be cloistered by her father, became an invalid and addicted to morphine. They met through letters, kept correspondence, eloped, moved to Italy, had a child and died some 15 years later. Her life however, was very different from that of the main character in her work Aurora Leigh.

Aurora Leigh's mother died when she was four years old, and then her father died when she was 13. After this she moved to live with her aunt who was very cold toward her. She claims her true life existed in the attic where her father's book was, where she first discovered poets. Aurora distinguishes between two types of "live," physical and spiritual. She says that her phsyical life existed in her aunt's home but her feeling of being alive was when she was among her father's books.

Her father was a man of property and money. No one expected his father to marry, and goes to Italy, travelling as a nobleman, and sees a parade and this is where he meets Aurora's mother. He falls instantly in love with this Florentine woman, who loves him, has his child and dies. He became uncommon when he marries and forgets his estate and life in England. His sister, Aurora's aunt in England, is very jealous of her mother because she took the title of Lady from her (as at this time if a man did not marry, female relatives were the Ladies of the house, whereas if he did marry, his wife was the Lady with the title).

Book 1
Aurora Leigh decides that she is now going to write for herself alone. She remembers her mother, telling her to be quiet but she really comes and plays wit her. Aurora thinks that her mother died of joy of having a child. She, just like Latimir in The Lifted Veil and Victor in Frankenstein, was a genius adored by her mother. She says her mother "could not bear the joy of giving life / The mother's rapture slew her" (34-5). Similarly, like her mother, Aurora claims to feel a "mother want" from the world; she wants the kind of love that mothers show and are comfortable and capable of showing that fathers are less able to provide. Mothers have a way of stringing pretty words together, despite the fact that they are not focusing on the meanings, such as in "Rock-a-bye Baby."