Aurora Leigh Themes

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh examines the role that social class plays in marriage decisions, showing how class distinctions are both arbitrary but also hard to escape in society. The poem also explores how the issue of equality in marriage is much more complicated than simply the matter of social class, as in Romney’s proposal to Aurora Leigh. Although the two of them come from the same family and are in the same…

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh is sometimes considered part of the first wave of modern feminism due to the progressive and even radical ways that it explores women’s issues. The narrator, Aurora, is constantly considering what it means to be a woman and how it’s distinct from being a man, particularly when it comes to making art. As the poem shows, Aurora often has to deal with prejudice due to her status as a…

Throughout Aurora Leigh, Aurora reckons with how to interpret and live out the final words of her father: “Love, my child.” In spite of this advice, one of Aurora’s first actions in the novel is to reject the marriage proposal of her cousin Romney, in part because she is more focused on her art (which Romney doesn’t take seriously) and in part because Romney himself is too distracted with his social work to…