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Enlarging the Heart: L. E. L.'s “The Improvisatrice,” Hemans's “Properzia Rossi,” and Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Margot K. Louis
Margot K. Louis
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
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Extract

Elizabeth barrett browning's relation to her female predecessors was complex, conflicted, and rewarding. In Aurora Leigh we see both the heroine and her creator grow from poets who attempt to prove themselves in traditionally masculine terms, into poets who engage with a feminine tradition of sentimental verse which they resist and criticize but nevertheless find of essential value. Only by viewing the poem against the backdrop of the sentimental tradition can we fully appreciate Barrett Browning's challenge to the cult of privacy and the doctrine of separate spheres, her dual emphasis on poetry as at once a job requiring doggedness and a vocation requiring wide social and religious vision, and, finally, her sense of the connection between herself and her female predecessors. Such poets as Felicia Hemans and L. E. L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon) stand in a relation to Barrett Browning which resembles the unsentimental aunt's relation to Aurora in Book 1 of Aurora Leigh: there is more conflict than sympathy in the relationship; the older woman represents a version of femininity which the younger must at all costs resist; and yet the older woman leaves the younger a legacy which is both narrow and enabling, an essential basis for the young poet's future achievement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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