SOURCE: Brown, Sarah Annes. “Paradise Lost and Aurora Leigh.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 37, no. 4 (autumn 1997): 723-40.

In the following essay, Brown analyzes the thematic complexities of Aurora Leigh within biblical and Miltonic frameworks.

LORD Illingworth.

The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. 

MRS. Allonby.

It ends with Revelations. 

The same is almost true of Aurora Leigh; although the crucial meeting between Aurora and her cousin Romney in the garden does not take place until book 2, the very last lines of the poem clearly allude to John's vision of the New Jerusalem:¹

He stood a moment with erected brows                     In silence, as a creature might who gazed—                     Stood calm, and fed his blind, majestic eyes                     Upon the thought of perfect noon: and when                     I saw his soul saw—“Jasper first,” I said,                     “And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony;                     The rest in order...