The Sexual Battle in Browning’s Aurora Leigh

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The Sexual Battle in Browning’s Aurora Leigh

Women Beware Women, Beware Your Rivals, and most of all, Women Beware Sexual Jealousy all apply equally well to Aurora Leigh, but Victorian society was not ready for such honesty, so these themes all had to be encoded in Elizabeth Barret Browning's epic novel-poem. Aurora Leigh is a sexual battle rather than a battle of the sexes. Aurora's major problem isn't being accepted in a male world of poetry, but in fending off rivals for her future sexual partner. Yet she does this with admirable dexterity for one who lacked a mother to instruct her in the ways of the world. This is due to an essential coldness in her character, present also in Romney, but tempered in him by a philanthropism, which is endearing, if on Elizabeth Barret Browning's terms misguided. Romney is an essentially passive character, which is prepared to marry all three women although he loves Aurora-(though he never proposed to Lady Waldemar, she maintains that he would if Aurora hadn't got in the way). Thus he becomes the object around which their manipulations centre. In life, it appears while competing for anything, the expected gender behaviours are that 'Men fight, Women spite', and Aurora Leigh definitely explores the regions of spite.

The most important thing women should beware of in other women is rampant sexual jealousy, which wells up from the unconscious to control the conscious actions of Aurora. Women, beware it in yourselves! Aurora never consciously recognised that this was affecting her judgement and behaviour, but Elizabeth Barrett Browning made it obvious to her readers that this was happening. Sexual jealousy is the cause of Aurora Leigh's seriously over-developed hostility to Lady Wa...

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...unate sisters.

Bibliography...

Barret Browning, Elizabeth : Aurora Leigh, edited, introduction and notes by Kerry McSweeny, World's Classics edition, Oxford University Press, 1993

Case, Alison : Gender and Narration in Aurora Leigh, Victorian Poetry, Vol.29, no.1, Spring 1991 West Virginia University Press

(NB: this article was intensely unpleasant to read, very boring and completely useless, but since I went through the torture of reading it, I feel justified putting it amongst my references.)

Kaplan, Cora : Introduction to Women's Press edition of Aurora Leigh, 1978

Mermin, Dorothy : Genre and Gender in Aurora Leigh, Victorian Newsletter, no.69,Spring 1986

Steinmetz, Virginia : Images of "Mother-Want" in Elizabeth Barret Browning's Aurora Leigh, Victorian Poetry, Vol.21, no.4, Winter 1983 West Virginia University Press.

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