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

Aurora Leigh deals with some of the major social problems of Browning's 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.