Aurora Leigh

Shahana Bhattacharya

English, PG II

7 November 2016

Barrett Browning’s Subversion of Societal Structures in Aurora Leigh

No cure for wicked children? Christ, - no cure!

No help for women sobbing out of sight

Because men made the laws? No brothel-lure

Burnt out by popular lightings? –

Hast thou found

No remedy, my England, for such woes?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Casa Guidi Windows (2. 637- 42)

In Victorian England “female purity, moral propriety, and social stability” were the three crowning qualities that the Queen, the longest-reigning female monarch, herself embodied. But such ideals were restricted to the surface; the grim reality was quite different. Nineteenth century England faced many significant social challenges; the country was rapidly shifting from being an agrarian society to an industrialized nation. This new economy fostered a significant rise in the urban population and induced an increase in socio-economic inequality, crime, poverty and economic deprivation. The status of women in the Victorian era was often seen as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between England’s colonial power and its appalling social conditions; during this era women did not have the right to own property, sue or vote. Governed by rigid social conventions, Victorian women were expected to be restricted within the domestic sphere. A distinction was made between the private and public realm according to which women where to tend to the matters of the heart (home), whereas men were entitled to deal with the decisions concerning the head (outside). Commenting on this head-heart binary, Deborah Gorham observed that throughout the period it was customary to refer to public and private life as two “separate spheres” and “each of the two spheres was thought to be inextricably connected either with women or with men.” She proceeded to elaborate in her essay that,

The public sphere was the male’s exclusive domain, whereas the private sphere was seen as presided over by females for the express purpose of providing a place of renewal for men, after their rigorous activities in the harsh, competitive public sphere.

The idea of Victorian femininity is closely associated with domesticity: the two ideas are inseparable. In her book Women in England 1760-1914: A Social History, Susie Steinbach explained that women of the Victorian period regardless of their social status, “were expected to spend their adult lives as wives, mothers, and housekeepers” (80). Likewise, Victorian poet Coventry Patmore also succinctly captured the domesticity, purity, and innocence that constituted the essence of Victorian femininity in his poem The Angel in the House (1586). Gorham writes that to the Victorians,