SOURCE: "Combating an Alien Tyranny: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Evolution as a Feminist Poet," in Browning Institute Studies, Vol. 15, 1987, pp. 23-41.

In the essay that follows, Byrd explores Browning's poetry as a protest against patriarchy and an attempt to establish a feminist literary community.

The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspirations of every subject (ego)—who always regards the self as the essential—and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential. (Simone de Beauvoir xxxiv)

The name [of poet]
 Is royal, and to sign it like a queen
 Is what I dare not,—though some royal blood
 Would seem to tingle in me now and then,
 With sense of power and ache.
 (Aurora Leigh I. 934-38)

'Tis Antidote to turn—
 To Tomes of solid Witchcraft—
 (Emily Dickinson, #593)

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