Aurora Leigh

In a poem that Barrett Browning calls the “most mature” of her works, the narrator, a struggling poet, bears a close resemblance to Barrett Browning herself, and this is a deliberate and explicit choice on the part of the poet. In the first book, as Aurora, Barrett Browning proclaims:

I who have written much in prose and verse

For others’ uses, will write now for mine,—

Will write my story for my better self,

As when you paint your portrait for a friend (Book 1, Lines 2-5).

This unusual boldness contributes to the poem’s uniqueness and ingenuity, for Aurora herself is meant to embody both “[w]oman and artist” (Book 2, Line 4). As she relates her passion for classical literature in Book 1, Aurora pays homage to poets such as Homer, who famously begins nearly every new book of verse in The Odyssey with an invocation of a “rosy-fingered dawn.” Aurora’s very name thus links her with a poetic heritage tapped by Spenser and Milton before her. Leigh is also a homonym of “lay,” the symbol of the poet laureate, which Barrett Browning almost became. While Aurora reads classic literature in memory of her father, her mother is also figured in poetic terms, as a “Muse” (Book 1, Line 155).