Aurora Leigh

Sueann Schatz (Essay Date Winter 2000)

SOURCE: Schatz, SueAnn. "Aurora Leigh as Paradigm of Domestic-Professional Fiction." Philological Quarterly 79, no. 1 (winter 2000): 91-117.

In the following essay, Schatz presents Aurora Leigh as Browning's effort to counter the Victorian idealization of the domestic woman by creating a heroine who could appear in both domestic and professional roles.

I am waiting for a story, and I won't take one, because I want to make one, and I like to make my own stories, because then I can take liberties with them in the treatment.

—Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning; February 27, 1845

If, therefore, I move certain subjects in this work, it is because my conscience was first moved in me not to ignore them.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Julia Martin;

February, 1857

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Through an analysis of Aurora Leigh as domestic-professional fiction, in this essay I investigate Elizabeth Barrett Browning's...