Aurora Leigh

What is the main conflict in Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?

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Aurora Leigh deals with some of the major social problems of her age, particularly the difficulty of being a professional woman. There is a frank treatment in the story of the “fallen woman” in an effort to show an unwed mother as a victim and not necessarily someone to be condemned, as was the Victorian practice. The poem also reveals a distrust of socialist theory, in that Browning feared that communist-style communities would exclude artists and poets.