Curse For a Nation" - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I heard an angel speak last night,

And he said 'Write!
Write a Nation's curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea.'
I faltered, taking up the word:
'Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another
To send thy curse against my brother.
'For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.'
'Therefore,' the voice said, 'shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.'
'Not so,' I answered. 'Evermore
My heart is sore
For my own land's sins: for little feet
Of children bleeding along the street:
'For parked-up honors that gainsay
The right of way:
For almsgiving through a door that is
Not open enough for two friends to kiss:
'For love of freedom which abates
Beyond the Straits:
For patriot virtue starved to vice on
Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion:
'For an oligarchic parliament,
And bribes well-meant.
What curse to another land assign,
When heavy-souled for the sins of mine?'
'Therefore,' the voice said, 'shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
Because thou hast strength to see and hate
A foul thing done within thy gate.'
'Not so,' I answered once again.
'To curse, choose men.
For I, a woman, have only known
How the heart melts and the tears run down.'
'Therefore,' the voice said, 'shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
Some women weep and curse, I say
(And no one marvels), night and day.

'And thou shalt take their part to-night,

Weep and write.
A curse from the depths of womanhood
Is very salt, and bitter, and good.'
So thus I wrote, and mourned indeed,
What all may read.
And thus, as was enjoined on me,
I send it over the Western Sea.
The Curse
Because ye have broken your own chain
With the strain
Of brave men climbing a Nation's height, Yet thence bear down with brand and thong
On souls of others, -- for this wrong
This is the curse. Write.
Because yourselves are standing straight
In the state
Of Freedom's foremost acolyte,
Yet keep calm footing all the time On writhing bond-slaves, -- for this crime
This is the curse. Write.
Because ye prosper in God's name,
With a claim
To honor in the old world's sight,
Yet do the fiend's work perfectly
In strangling martyrs, -- for this lie
This is the curse. Write.
Ye shall watch while kings conspire
Round the people's smouldering fire,
And, warm for your part,
Shall never dare -- O shame!
To utter the thought into flame
Which burns at your heart.
This is the curse. Write.
Ye shall watch while nations strive
With the bloodhounds, die or survive,
Drop faint from their jaws,
Or throttle them backward to death;
And only under your breath
Shall favor the cause.
This is the curse. Write.
Ye shall watch while strong men draw
The nets of feudal law
To strangle the weak;
And, counting the sin for a sin,
Your soul shall be sadder within
Than the word ye shall speak.
This is the curse. Write.
When good men are praying erect

That Christ may avenge His elect

And deliver the earth,
The prayer in your ears, said low,
Shall sound like the tramp of a foe
That's driving you forth.
This is the curse. Write.
When wise men give you their praise,
They shall praise in the heat of the phrase,
As if carried too far.
When ye boast your own charters kept true,
Ye shall blush; for the thing which ye do
Derides what ye are.
This is the curse. Write.
When fools cast taunts at your gate,
Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate
As ye look o'er the wall;
For your conscience, tradition, and name
Explode with a deadlier blame
Than the worst of them all.
This is the curse. Write.
Go, wherever ill deeds shall be done,
Go, plant your flag in the sun
Beside the ill-doers!
And recoil from clenching the curse
Of God's witnessing Universe
With a curse of yours.
This is the curse. Write.
.
Summary and analysisThe poem starts off by the narrator being visited by an angel. The angel tells her to write a curse to
America. The narrator tries to take a stand against the angel, telling him that America are their comrades
and wishes to write something else to them, due to the intense gratitude he has towards the United
States. The angel does not budge, and tells her that heaven wishes it to be done. She stops the angel.
She tells him that he cannot write a curse toAmericaabout slavery because her own country has
problems. People are starving in the streets and have do not even have shoes for walking.
She says thatAmericastands for freedom, and the ability to follow the hearts desire. Their country
however, is ruled by parliament. Those people will falter at even the smallest bribe. She continues to say
that she cannot curse the West whenEnglandis filled with sin. The angel replies that she will write the
curse. Because she knows sin, and seen hate. The angel feelsAmericais heading in that direction. She
replies it is better suited for a man to curse than a woman. She is only good for weeping. The angel
continues to tell her to write, from the depths of womanhood. The woman mourns as she finally starts
writing a curse to the West
The letter starts by saying that they have reached the peak of their nation, and now they can only look
down on people, and deem themselves above other people (slaves). They claim that they stand for
freedom, and yet they enslave others. They claim that they follow God and take from their former nation,
but they lie. The letter then states how they just sit back and watch, never doing anything but stand there
and do nothing about it. They just watch while their nation crumbles around them, and only will say
something about it when there is no one listening to their words. They watch as people struggle and die
around them, but anything they say will be meaningless, only their soul could show their true sadness.
The good people pray to God, but they hear even the faintest prayer, it is loud, as if their enemies are
marching on their gates.

The curse ends with the narrator writing that fools will taunt them, and they will turn them away. And that
they are guilty because everything they claim they value is a lie. The final lines tell them to continue along
their path. They should have slaves and conquer others. For Gods curse will be their doom.
I can see this poem being a stab at the people of England just trying to have their own opinions on slavery
in the Americas. In this case, Browning is showing her support for the New World. She sees it as a place
of freedom, prosperity and promise. She feels that if one would follow their heart there, they will gain all
they desire. By her stanzas in the progloge, Browning seems to feel indebted to America. She has no ill
will towards them, even though her country lost two wars to them. She in a sense feels that these people
are her kinsman, as their forefathers were once a part of England. However the angel (possibly a stand in
for her country or government) is trying to force her to think otherwise.England sees slavery as horrible
and thinks America is going against what they say they stand for.
As such, despite her wishes, she must succumb to her government and follow their side. She really has
no choice. If she does not, she could be shunned by her homeland. Browning feels like America is much
like England. She cant be so quick to judge them. It feels like she cant do so because they have similar
problems like people living in poverty and general unhappiness. She wishes to have the choice to think
how she wants.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

18061861

Among all women poets of the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century, none was held
in higher critical esteem or was more admired for the independence and courage of her views
than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. During the years of her marriage toRobert Browning, her
literary reputation far surpassed that of her poet-husband; when visitors came to their home in
Florence, she was invariably the greater attraction. Both in England and in the United States she
had a wide following among cultured readers. An example of the reach of her fame may be seen
in the influence she had upon the recluse poet who lived in the rural college town of Amherst,
Massachusetts. A framed portrait of Mrs. Browning hung in the bedroom of Emily Dickinson,
whose life had been transfigured by the poetry of "that Foreign Lady." From the time when she
had first become acquainted with Mrs. Browning's writings, Dickinson had ecstatically admired
her as a poet and had virtually idolized her as a woman who had achieved such a rich fulfillment
in her life. When Samuel Bowles, a close friend of the Dickinson family and respected editor of
the Springfield Republican, went to Europe for the first time, he took with him two books: the
Bible and Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh (1857). So highly regarded had she become by 1850,
the year of Wordsworth's death, that she was prominently mentioned as a possible successor to
the poet laureateship. Her humane and liberal point of view manifests itself in her poems aimed
at redressing many forms of social injustice, such as the slave trade in America, the labor of

children in the mines and the mills of England, the oppression of the Italian people by the
Austrians, and the restrictions forced upon women in nineteenth-century society.
As a child and a young woman Elizabeth Barrett was extremely fortunate in the circumstances of
her family background and environment. Her father, whose wealth was derived from extensive
sugar plantations in Jamaica, was the proprietor of "Hope End," an estate of almost 500 acres in
Herefordshire, between the market town of Ledbury and the Malvern Hills. In this peaceful
setting, with its farmers' cottages, gardens, woodlands, ponds, carriage roads, and mansion
"adapted for the accommodation of a nobleman or family of the first distinction," Elizabethknown by the nickname "Ba"-at first lived the kind of life that might be expected for the
daughter of a wealthy country squire. She rode her pony in the lanes around the Barrett estate,
went with her brothers and sisters for walks and picnics in the countryside, visited other county
families to drink tea, accepted visits in return, and participated with her brothers and sisters in
homemade theatrical productions. But, unlike her two sisters and eight brothers, she immersed
herself in the world of books as often as she could get away from the social rituals of her family.
"Books and dreams were what I lived in and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around,
like bees about the grass," she said many years later. Having begun to compose verses at the age
of four, two years later she received from her father for "some lines on virtue penned with great
care" a ten-shilling note enclosed in a letter addressed to "the Poet-Laureate of Hope End."
Before Barrett was ten years old, she had read the histories of England, Greece, and Rome;
several of Shakespeare's plays, including Othello and The Tempest; portions of Pope's Homeric
translations; and passages from Paradise Lost. At eleven, she says in an autobiographical sketch
written when she was fourteen, she "felt the most ardent desire to understand the learned
languages." Except for some instruction in Greek and Latin from a tutor who lived with the
Barrett family for two or three years to help her brother Edward ("Bro") prepare for entrance to
Charterhouse, Barrett was, as Robert Browning later asserted, "self-taught in almost every
respect." Within the next few years she went through the works of the principal Greek and Latin
authors, the Greek Christian fathers, several plays by Racine and Molire, and a portion of
Dante'sInferno-all in the original languages. Also around this time she learned enough Hebrew
to read the Old Testament from beginning to end. Her enthusiasm for the works of Tom Paine,
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft presaged the concern for human rights that she
was later to express in her poems and letters. At the age of eleven or twelve she composed a
verse "epic" in four books of rhyming couplets,The Battle of Marathon, which was privately
printed at Mr. Barrett's expense in 1820. She later spoke of this product of her childhood as "
Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone." Most of the fifty copies that were printed

probably went to the Barretts' home and remained there. It is now the rarest of her works, with
only a handful of copies known to exist.
At the age of twenty Barrett offered to the public, with no indication of authorship, a slender
volume entitled An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (1826). Long afterwards in a letter to an
American critic she called the book "a girl's exercise, nothing more nor less!not at all known to
the public."The poem for which the volume was named was a pretentious and frigid effort to
survey in some eighty-eight pages the history of science, philosophy, and poetry, from ancient
Greece to the present. The other fourteen poems were occasional pieces or verses of a personal
nature which did not yet display the author's authentic voice. Of the two journals which noticed
the volume, one objected to its obscurity of language and its "barren themes," and the other
advised the poet to come down from the heights to look more closely at nature.
Shortly after the publication of this volume Barrett entered into one of the most important
friendships of her life. Hugh Stuart Boyd, a totally blind, middle-aged dilettante scholar with
private means, had published at his own expense several volumes of translations from the Greek
patristic writings. Since the author of the "Essay on Mind" lived not far from him, he was eager
to become acquainted with a poet of such extraordinary erudition. From his home in Malvern
Wells he sent her copies of his works and invited her to pay him a visit. Starved as she was for
intellectual companionship, she eagerly began to correspond with him and before long was
making frequent visits to Ruby Cottage, where he lived with his wife and daughter. It was
entirely owing to Boyd's influence that Barrett's enthusiasm for Greek studies was rekindled.
During this period she read an astonishing amount of classical Greek literature-Homer, Pindar,
the tragedians, Aristophanes, and passages from Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, and Xenophon-as
well as the Greek Christian Fathers Boyd had translated.
In 1832 the peaceful, secure lives of the Barretts in their Herefordshire retreat came to a
distressing close. For a number of years the Jamaican plantations of the Barrett family had been
mismanaged and Mr. Barrett had suffered serious financial losses. With the prospect of a greatly
reduced income he could no longer afford to maintain the Hope End estate and suffered the
embarrassment of its having to be sold at a public auction to satisfy creditors. The eleven
children and their father (Mrs. Barrett had died in 1828) went to live temporarily in Sidmouth,
on the southern coast of Devonshire. The reason for the choice of this town in the south of
England may have been Mr. Barrett's concern for Elizabeth's health. At the age of fifteen she had
injured her spine when she was attempting to saddle her pony. Seven years later the breaking of
a blood vessel in the chest left her with a weakened constitution and a chronic cough. During the

period of the Barretts' stay in Sidmouth, Boyd lived for a year and a half within a few minutes'
walk from their home. To the detriment of her own poetic career she went to him daily and
helped him to see through the press a bizarre volume on his favorite subject, Greek Christian
Fathers. By the time she left Sidmouth Browning's feelings toward Boyd had changed: she now
saw him as limited, naive, and even pathetic. The one volume that she produced while at
Sidmouth was Prometheus Bound, Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus; and Miscellaneous
Poems, published anonymously in 1833. Twelve years later in a letter to Boyd she called the
translation "that frigid, rigid exercise," and after her marriage she made amends by writing a
vastly improved version. The "miscellaneous poems" are all immature in content and expression
and give little promise of their author's future distinction.
After living for three years in several rented houses in the coastal town, the Barretts moved in
1835 to London, which was to remain their permanent place of residence. At first Elizabeth
missed the fresh sea breezes and the sound of the waves, and disliked her new setting because of
the ever-present soot and fog and the long, narrow streets lined with attached stone or brick
houses which all looked alike. But before long she was content to be living in a great metropolis,
the center of the nation's literary and artistic activities. Barrett made her name known in literary
circles with The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838). Except for the privately printed Battle of
Marathonthis was the first work with her name on the title page. She said that the volume,
despite some shortcomings, was "the first utterance of my own individuality." The many reviews
that appeared both in England and America almost all hailed her as a young poet of
extraordinary ability and still greater promise. The long poetic drama of seventy-eight pages for
which the volume was named presents the conversation of two angels in the heavens retelling
portions of the Old and New Testaments, and commenting on the Crucifixion then taking place.
Although most of the critics considered the poem too mystical and too high-flown to be
successful, they generally praised the shorter poems, most of which now seem sentimental and
trite. A poem that soon became a great favorite with both professional critics and the general
public was "Isobel's Child," with its depiction of the death of a three-month-old baby who has
been lying all night in the mother's arms. The well-known critic John Wilson ("Christopher
North") declared that there was beauty in all the poems and that some were "altogether
beautiful."
Just as Barrett was being recognized as one of England's most original and gifted young poets,
she was in such poor health because of the weakness of her lungs that her physician
recommended that she move away from London and live for a while in a warmer climate.
Torquay, on the south coast of Devonshire, was selected, and there, together with various

members of her family who took turns living with her, she remained for three years as an invalid
under the watchful care of her physicians. Seriously ill as she was, she suffered a sudden
shattering blow that left her prostrated for months. The death by drowning on 11 July 1840 of
her favorite brother, Edward, who had been with her constantly at Torquay, was the greatest
sorrow of her life. The memory of that tragic event remained with her as long as she lived and
was so painful that she could never speak of it even to those closest to her.
When she returned to the family home at 50 Wimpole Street after the three terrible years at
Torquay, she felt that she had left her youth behind and that the future held little more than
permanent invalidism and confinement to her bedroom. For the following five years she
remained mostly in her room, which she decorated with busts of Homer and Chaucer and later
with engravings of Browning (whom she had not yet met), Tennyson, Carlyle,Harriet Martineau.
and Wordsworth. Yet despite her frail health she was more fortunate in her circumstances than
most women writers of her time. Thanks to inheritances from her grandmother and her uncle,
she was the only one of the brothers and sisters who was independently wealthy. As the eldest
daughter in a family without a mother, she normally would have been expected to spend much
of her time supervising the domestic servants, but her weakness prevented her from leaving her
room. Thus the members of her family came to visit with her and to bring her everything she
desired. Relieved of all household burdens and financial cares, she was free to devote herself to
reading English and French fiction and memoirs and to writing letters, essays, and poetry. Since
the prospect of meeting strangers made her nervous, only two visitors besides her family had the
privilege of seeing her in her room: John Kenyon, a minor poet and friend of many English
poets, and the well-known writer Mary Russell Mitford. During her last year or two at Wimpole
Street she also received the Reverend George B. Hunter, whom she had come to know during
her years at Sidmouth, and the art critic Anna Jameson.
Protected from the outside world and surrounded by a loving family, Barrett resumed her
literary career, which had been partially interrupted during her serious illness at Torquay. In
addition to producing a continuous flow of poems for publication in both English and American
journals, she wrote a series of articles on the Greek Christian poets and another series on the
English poets, the latter originally begun as a critique of a recently published anthology of
English verse. Also, in collaboration with the playwright Richard Hengist Horne, she made
many anonymous contributions to a book of critical essays on eminent literary figures edited by
him and entitled A New Spirit of the Age (1844). Within three years after her return to Wimpole
Street she had many new poems in manuscript and others already published in journals, and she
believed that the time was ripe for their appearance in book formthe first since The Seraphim

and Other Poems of 1838. The critical reception of her Poems, published in two volumes in
1844, was such that the author was no longer merely a promising young poet but had suddenly
become an international celebrity. On both sides of the Atlantic the leading journals came out
with substantial reviews, and almost all found much to praise; Elizabeth Barrett was now
acclaimed as one of England's great living poets. The poem which found least favor with the
critics was "A Drama of Exile." For 119 pages the drama recounts the conversations and events
of the first day's exile from Eden, as various spirits alternately rebuke and console the fallen
pair. In the judgment of most reviewers the drama was lacking in coherence, the language was
obscure, and the characters were unreal.
None of the shorter poems caught the public fancy more than "Lady Geraldine's Courtship: A
Romance of the Age." A young poet with slender financial resources falls in love with the
daughter of an earl; but since her life is filled with luxuries, he has little hope that his love will be
returned. Despite the social barriers, however, the romantic conclusion has the girl responding
to her suitor's ardor. Another poem much admired by sentimental readers was "Bertha in the
Lane." The heroine, though apparently in good health, dies suddenly after learning that her
lover has jilted her in favor of her younger sister. The most influential poem in the volumes, and
one of the best-known of all her works, was "The Cry of the Children," which had first appeared
in Blackwood's a year earlier. Having read the reports from the parliamentary commissioners of
the terrible conditions of children's employment in mines, trades, and manufactures, she tells of
the hopeless lives of the boys and girls who are the victims of capitalist exploitation. Even
though Barrett was a bookish, sheltered, uppermiddle-class unmarried woman far removed
from the scenes she was describing, she gives evidence here of her passionate concern for
human rights. The critics reviewing Poems praised her for her intellectual power, originality,
and boldness of thought; but most agreed that her weakness lay in her frequent vagueness of
concept and obscurity of expression.
The two volumes found their way into the home of Robert Browning. Upon seeing a handsome
tribute paid to him by name in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," Browning in January 1845 wrote a
letter which began, "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett." When Browning
wrote that first of the many letters that were to be exchanged between the two poets, Barrett had
already won an admiring public and was maintaining an extensive correspondence with writers
and artists in England and the United States. Browning, on the other hand, was bitterly
discouraged because his poetical career was not prospering and his productions on the London
stage had proved to be hopeless failures. Six years younger than Barrett, he had abundant
energy and good health, dressed as a young man of fashion, and enjoyed going to dinners and

receptions where he conversed with many of the leading figures of the literary world. For almost
all of his life he had been living at home with his parents and his sisterall three of whom
adored himand was financially dependent upon his father, since none of his volumes of verse
had repaid the expenses of publication.
The courtship progressed despite the objections of Mr. Barrett, who wished his children to
remain totally dependent on him. During the period of the exchange of letters and of Browning's
visits to her room, she was composing the poems later to be named "Sonnets from the
Portuguese." Most of the world's great love poetry has been produced by men; what is new about
the sonnets is that the coming of love into the writer's life is described from the point of view of
the woman. Among the finest love poems ever written by a woman, they are her most enduring
poetic achievement. A chronic invalid, worn down by a succession of griefs, robbed of the brighthued cheeks and resilience of youth, living without hope that a new life might someday be hers
outside of her virtual prison, she expresses in the sonnets her sense of wonder that her life has
been so transfigured. Filled with gratitude for her suitor's offer of love, she at first tells him that
they must remain no more than friends because of the disparities in health and age. Marriage,
she says, would place a severe burden upon him, for the care of an invalid wife six years older
than he would necessarily take him away from the varied social life he has been enjoying. Will
love that has come so quickly not fade just as quickly? Is her lover's suit based merely on pity? If
she will promise to give up her home and the day-to-day associations with father, brothers,
sisters, and friends, will he in turn be everything to her so that she will never miss the life she
leaves behind? From the earnest look of her lover's eyes she finds the answers to these and other
questions, so that her doubts and hesitations are dispelled. With the full assurance of the depth
of his feelings for her, she responds to his love in the most inspired sonnet of the cycle, "How do
I love thee? Let me count the ways."
The clandestine marriage ceremony took place on 12 September 1846 at St. Marylebone Parish
Church, which was not far from the Barretts' house. Almost immediately the couple left for Italy,
where they hoped the warmer climate might help Elizabeth to regain some of her strength. After
one winter they moved to Florence, which was to remain their home until Elizabeth's death.
Despite the responsibilities of marriage and motherhoodtheir only child, Robert Wiedemann
Barrett Browning, called "Pen," was born in 1849-Mrs. Browning had no intention of
discontinuing her literary career. Her first task was to revise her volumes of 1838 and 1844 for
publication in a new edition.
For the three years following her marriage Mrs. Browning had kept the forty-four sonnets in a

notebook; she did not show them to her husband until the summer of 1849. He was so
impressed with their beauty that he insisted on their appearing in her forthcoming new edition
of Poems (1850). In order to make it appear that the poems had no biographical significance, the
Brownings selected the ambiguous title "Sonnets from the Portuguese," as if they were
translations. "Catarina to Camoens," the poem immediately preceding the sonnets in the second
volume of Poems tells of the love of Catarina for the Portuguese poet Camoens. Since first
reading "Catarina to Camoens" in Elizabeth's Poems of 1844, Browning had associated Elizabeth
with the Portuguese Catarina. Most of the reviews of the Poemsof 1850 paid little attention to
the sonnets, but a writer in Fraser's magazine immediately appreciated their distinctive quality:
"From the Portuguese they may be: but their life and earnestness must prove Mrs. Browning
either to be the most perfect of all known translators, or to have quickened with her own spirit
the framework of another's thought, and then modestly declined the honour which was really
her own."The sonnets gradually gained critical acceptance and have become the most beloved of
all Mrs. Browning's works.
Besides the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," the other major new work in the volumes was the
retranslation of Prometheus Bound. This new version was an enormous improvement over the
translation that had been published in 1833; it is faithful to the original without being pedantic
and is expressed in lively, idiomatic English. The two volumes were fairly well received in
England, where the reviewers praised her for the depth of her intellect, the earnestness of her
thought, and the "pathetic beauty" of the romantic ballads. They believed, however, that Mrs.
Browning's poetry still retained some of the deficiencies of her earlier books, such as
diffuseness, obscure language, and inappropriate imagery.
Mrs. Browning had developed a passionate interest in Italian politics; during her first year in
Italy she had written "A Meditation in Tuscany" and sent it to Blackwood's. The editor had
declined it and returned the manuscript to her, and it became the first part of Casa Guidi
Windows (1851). The poem deals with political events as seen by the poet from the windows of
Casa Guidi, the great stone palace in Florence where the Brownings had an apartment. In 1846
the newly elected Pope Pius IX had granted amnesty to prisoners who had fought for Italian
liberty, initiated a program looking forward to a more democratic form of government for the
Papal State, and carried out a number of other reforms so that it looked as though he were
heading toward the leadership of a league for a free Italy. Progressive measures had also been
instituted in Tuscany by Grand Duke Leopold II, who arranged for a representative form of
government and allowed the people to have a free press and to form their own civic guard. The
first half of Casa Guidi Windows had been written when Mrs. Browning was filled with

enthusiasm and was hopeful that the newly awakened liberal movements were moving toward
the unification and freedom of the Italian states.
In the second half of the poem she voices her disillusionment and her bitter disappointment that
liberalism had been crushed almost everywhere in Italy. Pope Pius had fled in disguise from the
Vatican in the face of agitation for a republican government and had taken refuge at Gaeta under
the protection of the king of Naples. Leopold, whom Mrs. Browning had at first admired, had
proved to be a coward; and, rather than agree to the formation of a constituent assembly of the
Italian states in Rome, he had left his Florentine palace and joined the exiled pope in Gaeta.
Several months later the Austrian troops had occupied Florence, and Leopold had returned
under their protection. In her poem Mrs. Browning expresses her disappointment with the pope,
the grand duke, the English government for its failure to intervene on the side of the Italian
patriots, and the Florentines themselves because they had been unwilling to make the necessary
sacrifices. By the middle of 1849 the liberal impulses had been crushed; except for Piedmont all
the Italian states were under the domination of Austria and the papacy. For the next ten years
there were no more uprisings or wars, and in the absence of stirring political events Mrs.
Browning began the composition of a completely different kind of poem from anything she had
written up to then.
As early as 1845 she had written to Browning that it was her intention to write a sort of novelpoem "running into the midst of our conventions, & rushing into drawing-rooms & the like
'where angels fear to tread'; & so, meeting face to face & without mask the Humanity of the age,
& speaking the truth as I conceive of it, out plainly." For several years events in her own life and
in the world about her distracted her from her purpose, so that the first mention of her new
work appears in a letter written in 1853 to her friend Anna Jameson. Her poem would fill a
volume when it was finished, she said; it was the romance she had been "hankering after so long,
written in blank verse, in the autobiographical form." Named after the heroine of the
poem, Aurora Leigh was published in 1857. In the dedication to her lifelong friend and
benefactor John Kenyon she wrote that it was "the most mature of my works, and the one into
which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered." In a narrative of some 11,000
lines the heroine tells of her birth in Italy, her early years in rural England, her successful
literary career in London and later in Florence, and at the end her marriage to her one true love.
Orphaned at an early age and brought up by an aunt in the western county of Shropshire, the
youthful Aurora finds herself in a cultural desert, with no one to share her enthusiasm for
literature. Aurora's description of the kind of education imposed upon her by her conventional

aunt illustrates the restricted, anti-intellectual attitudes of the English middle classes toward the
upbringing of their daughters. Aurora memorizes the Collects of the Anglican Church, takes
lessons in music and dancing, is given some superficial instruction in French, German, history,
and geography, and is taught sewing and embroidery. Not only were young women discouraged
from learning Greek and Latin and from reading "controversial" books, but they were denied a
university education. Aurora has to seek her education at home, whereas her cousin Romney
Leigh is sent to a university. Rebelling against her aunt's narrow regimen, Aurora finds her true
life in the world of books. Discovering her father's private library hidden away in the attic, she
reads widely in Greek and Latin literature and English poetry and begins to compose verses of
her own.
At the age of twenty she rejects a proposal of marriage from Romney Leigh, who asks her to be
his wife for the sole reason that he needs her to help him in his philanthropic activities. Women,
he tells her, are lacking in the higher imaginative qualities that would enable them to be great
writers or artists. Aurora moves away from the rural community which has so stifled her and
makes her home in London, where she will be independent and strive for literary success. By
dint of steady application she wins within six or seven years a place for herself in the London
literary world. To help support herself she writes articles for encyclopedias and journals, but she
finds her chief satisfaction in the publication of her volumes of poetry. The heroine of this novelpoem serves as Mrs. Browning's mouthpiece when she declares that the most fitting subjects for
poetry are to be found in contemporary settings and that a poet should not reject his own times
to seek inspiration from earlier civilizations. Aurora, though still in her middle twenties, has
already produced books of poetry which are reaching a wide and admiring public.
In contrast to Aurora, who has lived a serene and rather sheltered life, the main figure of the
subplot is a pathetic victim of the abuses of society. Marian Erle is the only child of an ignorant
and abusive migrant farm worker and a wife cowed into submission by his drunken rages. The
girl runs away from her parents in fear of their violence, is rescued from destitution by Romney
Leigh, and even receives from him an offer of marriage. As a radical socialist he thus proposes to
put into practice his utopian ideal of the destruction of the barriers that separate the rich from
the poor and the educated from the ignorant. The marriage, however, does not take place, for
Marian is treacherously spirited away from England by a woman who believes herself to be in
love with Romney. Marian is taken to a house of ill fame in Paris, where she is drugged and
sexually assaulted. As a result of this act of violence she becomes pregnant and after much illtreatment gives birth to a son.

After nine years in London Aurora suddenly gives up her apartment and establishes a new home
for herself in a villa in Florence. On the way she stops in Paris, where she encounters Marian
and hears her story; she takes Marian and the baby to Florence with her. A few months after her
arrival Aurora is asked once again by Romney to be his wife. This time, however, he is blind and
much humbled by his misfortunes. Leigh Hall, which he had converted into a utopian
community, had been set on fire and destroyed by the very people whom he had been aiding. At
the time of the fire he had been struck on the forehead and blinded by a falling beam. Romney
now sadly admits that doctrinaire socialism is a failure, for the people will rebel against any
restrictions and reforms imposed upon them. Aurora says that she too has been wrong in her
proud independence and her belief that her life could be complete without the companionship of
a loved one. They pledge themselves to each other and look forward to a life of shared
responsibilities. In the meanwhile Marian has told them that she will never marry and that when
her child no longer needs her care she will devote herself to helping the "outcast orphans of the
world."
In this long narrative poem Mrs. Browning has dealt with some of the major social problems of
her age. In Victorian England an educated woman with unusual talents had almost no
opportunity to make use of her skills in a world that was dominated by men. Nevertheless, as the
poem shows in the example of its heroine, it was possible for a woman with great energy and
sense of purpose to live by herself in London and become renowned on the strength of her own
unaided efforts. Professional success alone, however, is not sufficient, for nothing can give more
meaning to a woman's life than enduring love in marriage. Another theme is Mrs. Browning's
distrust of the theories of contemporary French socialists, such as Charles Fourier, who
advocated the division of society into communistic units. She believed that in the kind of state
envisioned by the radical socialists there would be no place for artists and poets. Nothing stirred
up more controversy than her frank treatment of the plight of "the fallen woman"a subject that
was considered by the Victorian public to be outside the purview of the serious novelist or poet.
In mid-nineteenth-century England standards of sexual conduct were so rigid that any woman
who bore a child out of wedlock, even if she had been a victim of male aggression, was shunned
by "respectable" people and condemned to a life of penance and mortification. Eighteenthcentury readers had allowed their novelists more freedom to depict sexual irregularities, but the
great Victorian novelists dealt obliquely, or not at all, with such subjects. One of Mrs.
Browning's most fundamental convictions was that sexual activity outside of marriage was
immoral, but she believed that society should be more compassionate in its treatment of women
who had been victims of seduction or sexual attacks. It is not surprising that the story of Marian
Erle shocked a number of women readers, some of whom were reported to have said that the

reading of Aurora Leigh had endangered their morals.

Most of the Brownings' literary friends were delighted with the poem and accorded it the highest
praise; Swinburne, Leigh Hunt, Walter Savage Landor, Ruskin, and the Rossetti brothers all
spoke of it with unrestrained enthusiasm. From a commercial point of view it proved to be by far
the most successful of Mrs. Browning's works; by 1885, twenty-eight years after its first
publication, it had gone through nineteen editions. Despite its great popularity with other poets
and with the general public, it found little favor with professional reviewers. Most were in
agreement that the poem was too long and lacking in coherence, that the characterization was
weak, that the plot was melodramatic and implausible, that the imagery was often inappropriate
and discordant, and that some of the material was so vulgar that it offended good taste. One
reviewer declared that the coarseness of its language made Mrs. Browning's book "almost a
closed volume for her own sex." The notices in the most influential journals, however, granted
that despite its shortcomings the poem gave evidence of its author's vigorous intellect, her
earnestness, and her wide and humane sympathies.
Two years after the publication of Aurora Leigh Mrs. Browning again became absorbed in
current political events as the Italians, after a decade of truce, began once more their struggle for
independence and unity. In June 1859 Italian troops under the leadership of King Victor
Emmanuel of Piedmont, joined by Napoleon III, who had come to northern Italy with
substantial French forces, won two battles against the Austrians in Lombardy. Then early in July
Napoleon surprised and bitterly disappointed the Italians by agreeing at Villafranca to an
armistice which would leave Venice under the domination of Austria. In response to these
events Mrs. Browning'sPoems before Congress was published in the spring of 1860; but by the
time the volume appeared the title was misleading, for the congress of the leading powers that
was to have been held in January had been indefinitely postponed. Seven of the eight poems
deal with Italian politics, while the other, "A Curse for a Nation," is an antislavery poem that had
earlier been published in an abolitionist journal in Boston. Although Mrs. Browning felt
betrayed when she first heard of the truce initiated by the emperor whom she had long admired,
she expressed her continuing faith in him in two of the poems, "A Tale of Villafranca" and
"Napoleon III in Italy." In her view the emperor was not at fault, for his noble aims had been
frustrated by selfish and small-minded statesmen. In "Italy and the World" Mrs. Browning
prophesies that the states of central Italy in revolt against Austria will join Piedmont and
Lombardy to form a united and independent kingdom, but the triumphant conclusion of the
Italian cause will owe nothing to the English government, which she berates for its failure to
provide military aid. The notices in the leading English journals were uniformly unfavorable

toward the volume, which they found offensive because of its strident tone and anti-British bias.
In the spring of 1860 Mrs. Browning continued to write poems on the Italian situation, which to
her great delight appeared to be moving toward a victorious outcome. Central and northern Italy
had become a united kingdom under the leadership of Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont and his
prime minister, Count Cavour. The theme of "King Victor Emmanuel Entering Florence, April,
1860" is the great joy of the people of Tuscany and their expressions of gratitude toward the king
for the part he has played in helping them to their freedom. The tone of "Summing up in Italy,"
however, is bitter; here Mrs. Browning utters her fears that although the great powers of Europe
will ratify the creation of the new kingdom of Italy, they will discredit its chief architects. Besides
her political poems, at this time she wrote "A Musical Instrument," which has become one of her
best-known poems. Based on the myth of Pan and Syrinx, the verses exemplify the doctrine that
the true poet is destined to suffer much hardship and pain in the practice of his art.
Despite her extreme frailty Mrs. Browning followed with feverish excitement the rapidly
unfolding events of the winter of 1860-1861. The peoples of Sicily, Naples, and the States of the
Church had voted for annexation with Victor Emmanuel's new kingdom. With most of the
Italian states united, a national parliament met at Turin early in 1861. Mrs. Browning felt that
her faith in the Italian leaders had been justified. "There are great men here, and there will be a
great nation presently," she declared. She had been in poor health for several years, suffering
from weakness of the lungs and heart, and her obsession with Italian politics further weakened
her nervous system. The final blow, which prostrated her emotionally and physically, was the
unexpected and premature death on 6 June 1861 of Count Cavour, the great patriot who had
been chiefly responsible for bringing the disparate states into a unified and independent
kingdom. "I can scarcely command voice or hand to name Cavour," Elizabeth wrote; "if tears or
blood could have saved him to us, he should have had mine." For the next two weeks she
remained in seclusion, never going out and seeing almost no one at home. Then on 20 June she
was stricken with a severe cold, cough, and sore throat, and was confined to her bed; she died in
Browning's arms early in the morning of 29 June. Within a month Browning left Florence with
his son to make his permanent home in London.
The many journals which reported Mrs. Browning's untimely death all spoke of her as the
greatest woman poet in English literature. The highly respected Edinburgh Review expressed
the prevailing view when it said that she had no equal in the literary history of any country:
"Such a combination of the finest genius and the choicest results of cultivation and wide-ranging
studies has never been seen before in any woman." In America the most extravagant of the

obituary notices appeared in theSouthern Literary Messenger, which called her "the
Shakespeare among her sex" and placed her among the four or five greatest authors of all time.
A year after her death Browning collected and arranged for publication her Last Poems, which
included a number of translations from Greek and Latin poetry, personal lyrics, and poems on
Italian politics. In the same year the fifth edition of her Poems was published. Both works were
warmly received by the leading literary journals on both sides of the Atlantic as they reviewed
her poetic career from its beginning and concluded that her gifts had been of the highest order.
A writer in the Christian Examiner of Boston said that Tennyson's In Memoriam(1850) and
Mrs. Browning' Aurora Leigh were the two greatest poems of the age and that the "Sonnets from
the Portuguese" were the finest love poems in English: "Shakespeare's sonnets, beautiful as they
are, cannot be compared with them, and Petrarch's seem commonplace beside them."
In the decades following Mrs. Browning's death her poetry began to lose much of the appeal it
had held for readers during her lifetime. The consensus of late-Victorian critics was that much of
her writing would be forgotten in another generation but that she would be remembered for
"The Cry of the Children," a few of the romantic ballads such as "Isobel's Child" and "Bertha in
the Lane," and most of all for the "Sonnets from the Portuguese." During all this period and for
the first three decades of the present century, Aurora Leigh largely dropped out of sight. In
1930, however, Virginia Woolf in an article in the Times Literary Supplement deplored the fact
that Mrs. Browning's poetry was no longer being read and especially that Aurora Leigh had
been forgotten. She urged her readers to take a fresh look at the poem, which she admired for its
"speed and energy, forthrightness and complete self-confidence." "Elizabeth Barrett," Mrs.
Woolf wrote, "was inspired by a flash of true genius when she rushed into the drawing-room and
said that here, where we live and work, is the true place for the poet." In Mrs. Woolf's view, the
heroine of the poem," "with her passionate interest in social questions, her conflict as artist and
woman, her longing for knowledge and freedom, is the true daughter of her age."
Notwithstanding Mrs. Woolf's enthusiasm for Aurora Leigh, the poem continued to be ignored
by the general public and by scholars until the recent advent of feminist criticism. None of Mrs.
Browning's poems has received more attention from feminist critics than Aurora Leigh , since
its theme is one that especially concerns them: the difficulties that a woman must overcome if
she is to achieve independence in a world mainly controlled by men. In her Literary
Women Ellen Moers writes that Aurora Leigh is the great epic poem of the age; it is "the epic
poem of the literary woman herself." It now looks as though Mrs. Browning's literary reputation
will remain secure with future critics who view her work from a feminist perspective. One may
also prophesy that for the general public the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," despite some

Victorian quaintness of imagery, will continue to hold their place among the most-admired love
poems of world literature.