course guidelines path one calendar class discussion path two calendar essay prompts reference pages

 

ornamental line

Real As Grief

"'It takes a soul, / To move a body . . .'" (2.479-80).
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (1856)

Points for Reflection

Aurora Leigh, Book One

  1. does the following generalization from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s verse-novel favor one sex over the other?  “Such good do mothers. Fathers love as well / -- Mine did, I know, -- but still with heavier brains, / And wills more consciously responsible, / And not as wisely, since less foolishly” (1.60-63).
  2. does the painting of Aurora’s mother hanging in the home shared by Aurora and her father prove a blessing to Aurora’s psychological development (1.128-75)?
  3. was Aurora’s father the better for having fallen in love?
  4. what does EBB’s narrator repeatedly suggest about the nature of right action and true knowledge?  Do they require careful forethought, or passionate abandon?
  5. are Aurora’s father’s final words a cry, a call to action, or something else (1.210-12)?
  6. why does Aurora Leigh rebel so strongly against Nature as manifest in England, and why does she later grow to love it—what does it do for her?
  7. what tone dominates Aurora Leigh’s description of her aunt (1.270-358)?
  8. does the education Aurora Leigh receives under her aunt’s guidance enable or suppress her individuality?
  9. what does Aurora recommend as the appropriate way to read a book?
  10. does the teenage Aurora read with much discrimination?   Does she distinguish between “good” and “bad” literature?
  11. Aurora claims that poetry can accomplish what which no other profession can?
  12. Aurora argues that instinct and “pure reason” can come to one’s aid when reading widely, helping one scale heavenly, absolute Truth (1.799-809) in the midst of wrangling with both good and bad literature.  Poetry, she claims, not only puts one in touch with the pulse of life itself, but can help one reach “Beyond this blood-beat, passionate for truth / Beyond these senses!” (1.917-18, emphasis added).  What elements of poetry might allow it to effect such transcendence better than, say, a novel or a play?
  13. reading poetry inspires Aurora to try her hand at creating her own (1.890-98), and she writes passionately from a life she is actually living (1.960-61)—unlike some others (1.948-51), never analyzing her own work and disregarding any established rules of poetics (1.954-62).  Does this help her create truly original poetry?
  14. does Aurora Leigh’s cousin Romney Leigh join her in the view that Nature's beauty constitutes evidence of God's sovereignty, that the world is filled with good?
  15. do lines 1003-19 constitute a criticism or praise of the poets Keats, Pope, and Byron?
  16. do the closing, pessimistic lines of Book One (1.1141-45) undercut the optimism of the preceding stanza?
  17. does the narrator of Aurora Leigh ventriloquize the sentiments of any particular Romantic poet(s)? You might consider her reflections on the power of Nature, the uses of poetry, and/or the direction and nature of her nationalism.


Aurora Leigh, Book Two

  1. what clear signs of sexism does Romney betray in his interactions with Aurora?
  2. Romney asserts that, “‘The world’s hard pressed; / The sweat of labour in the early curse / Has (turning acrid in six thousand years) / Become the sweat of torture” (2.165-68).  Given these conditions, only what kind of art should now be created, according to Romney?
  3. what kind of critical reaction does Romney predict that Aurora’s poetry will receive, merely because she is a woman?
  4. is Aurora callous, that she does not more immediately and compassionately respond to Romney’s cry that the world is in pain?
  5. what elements of Romney’s proposal are particularly ironic?
  6. what common error made by many romantically inclined men does Romney pat himself on the back for avoiding?
  7. in what ways do Aurora’s words in lines 2.433-36 echo Mary Wollstonecrafts’ in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)?
  8. according to Aurora, what important role does poetry serve which social work cannot?
  9. why is Aurora’s aunt so appalled at the young woman’s response to Romney’s offer?
  10. what about Romney’s second, epistolary proposal differs from his first, oral one?
  11. what position on Art is the book building thus far? Consider not only Aurora's discussion of her artistic profession (poetry writing), but what she says of the visual arts (1.127-75, 420-23, 447-64), and what Romney claims art must needs accomplish (2.141-225).
  12. does Aurora's rejection of love and money constitute an act of scornful pride, a necessary act of self-definition, or something else?


painting of grassy meadow dotted with trees. Clouds and mountains lie in the background.
Country Landscape (late 19th c.)
James Peel


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu