SOURCE: Louis, Margot K. “Enlarging the Heart: L. E. L.'s ‘The Improvisatrice,’ Hemans's ‘Properzia Rossi,’ and Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh.” Victorian Literature and Culture 26, no. 1 (1998): 1-17.

In the following essay, Louis underscores connections between Aurora Leigh and the sentimental literary tradition popularized by poets Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Felicia Hemans.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's relation to her female predecessors was complex, conflicted, and rewarding. In Aurora Leigh we see both the heroine and her creator grow from poets who attempt to prove themselves in traditionally masculine terms, into poets who engage with a feminine tradition of sentimental verse which they resist and criticize but nevertheless find of essential value. Only by viewing the poem against the backdrop of the sentimental tradition can we fully appreciate Barrett Browning's challenge to the cult of privacy and the doctrine of separate spheres, her dual emphasis on poetry as at once a...