Victorian literature, like almost all literature, inherently speaks to the social, philosophical, and religious issues that shaped the people of the time. Romantic ideals of individuation and celebration of the self are often challenged by Victorian literature, which focused on placing the self in a social context and examining the relationship that emerges. The statement "a sense of crisis permeated every aspect of Victorian society as it struggled to reconcile ideas and beliefs of the past with progress and modernity" describes this new aspect perfectly. Many changes caused this shift in Victorian society, but one of the most important and controversial was the growing importance of women in the public sphere and the changing dynamics of male-female relationships. It is this revelation that will be explored in this essay, using Elizabeth Barret-Browning's Aurora Leigh as a basis. A book and line number will be specified after each quotation, and given the length of the poem, this essay will focus primarily on the first two books. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The Victorian ideal of the angel in the house, a term taken from a poem by Coventry Patmore, described (when analyzed) how women were expected to be subservient to men and their goals considered sublimated in marriage in favor of help her husband achieve his goals. Certainly, women were not thought to have many purposes beyond raising children. In Aurora Leigh, however, this is a central theme and is examined from the beginning of the poem. In Book 1, after the death of Aurora's mother, her father must take care of her and this predominantly female task seems to weigh more on him than on a woman; according to Aurora, women "know/How to rear children" (Browning, 1864, 1. 47) and her father is described as "Conceiving such a miserable smile, /As if he knew that needs must, or should die" (Browning , 1864, 1.98). Having been thrust into this feminine role, Aurora's father is said to have “through love… suddenly/thrown away the old conventions” (Browning, 1864, 1.176) and thus re-establishes Aurora's similar rebellion in society. Her mother's death is used to highlight problems with the gender constructs of the time; How, he wonders, can a man continue to function in his socially approved place when his wife dies leaving him all her duties? In this way, Aurora Leigh pokes holes in society's then-dominant ideal that women take care of children and do nothing but support their husbands. It is important to note, however, that Aurora's father's experience is not a good one. It is described as somehow displaced, being “not made by a common man / but not completed for an uncommon man” (Browning, 1864, 1.183). Therefore, his departure from social norms left him in a kind of gender purgatory, being neither one thing nor the other. His father's example is one of the ways this poem describes the struggle between traditional and progressive values ​​in the individual; his father is thrust against his will into a progressive role and ultimately doesn't fare well. Later in the poem, of course, both Romney and Aurora willfully ignore society's norms and both fare well, admitting to a minor case of total blindness. So, in addition to examining tradition versus progression, Aurora Leigh examines how one comes across a progressive role and shows that progression is something of a double-edged sword. Romney eventually finds love with Aurora but is unable toeffect the social change he fights for, his father becomes a sort of half-mother, who cares for his son but feels uncomfortable doing so, and Marian Erle becomes a single mother through a horrible experience. , but fiercely protects this unconventional status once it is achieved. Therefore, the poem examines not only the crisis of the relationship between self and society, but also the internal struggles of progressive change, as well as its pitfalls and the sacrifices that are sometimes necessary. Arriving in England, Aurora meets her aunt, who is a perfect example of an angel in the house, having lived a “harmless life, which she called a virtuous life” (Browning, 1864, 1.290). Aurora's view of her aunt is not flattering but still insightful, as she notes that her aunt's hair is held tight, "as if to tame accidental thoughts" (Browning, 1864, 1.275). This could be interpreted as “taming her evil thoughts,” but an alternative interpretation—“taming all thoughts”—reveals more about what the aunt symbolizes in this poem: she is almost entirely devoid of agency. Her "cold use of life" (Browning, 1864, 1.277), "colorless eyes" (Browning, 1864, 1.283), and a mouth that speaks only of "unrequited loves" (Browning, 1864, 1.282) leave her powerless to act on his own initiative. She is an object in the poem, not a subject, to which Aurora has never directly given voice, and in its entirety it constitutes a satirical jab at the "angel in the house" paradigm. However, this is not to say that Aurora Leigh is necessarily a feminist work; while it espouses the virtues of female agency, it also contains a large number of nods to a more traditional overall point of view, embodying the Victorian "crisis of faith" within the work itself. One such suggestion is found in the mention of “lady's Greek,/Without the accents” (Browning, 1864, 2.83), an infantilization of Aurora's intellect that she does not dispute. He describes Romney's nature as “divine” (Browning, 1864, 1.565), later saying that he is “a worm” in comparison (Browning, 1864, 1.568). Another clue is the fact that her aunt is not given a direct say but others are, perpetuating the idea that only "modern" women, who have voluntarily entered a male-dominated sphere such as that of Victorian literature, deserve to have a voice. This non-feminist interpretation is explored by critic Deirdre David, who states in Art's A Service; Social Wound, Sexual Politics and Aurora Leigh that "the novel-poetry is an integrated expression of essentialist and ultimately non-feminist views of sex and gender, despite harsh attacks on sexual hypocrisy" (David, 1985). It could be said that Aurora's desire to become a poet is an attempt to emulate men, or to beat them at their own game; neither particularly evocative of the feminist ideology of undoing conventional gender roles. Certainly Aurora's desire to write an epic poem (like Aurora Leigh herself), which is a completely male-dominated area of ​​poetry, shows that she wants to prove herself as good as men; not necessarily an ignoble goal, but still a goal framed within traditional values. Another point made by David, which could be considered a logical certainty, is that "to speak of a male intellect evidently presupposes a female one" (David, 1985) and this is exactly what Aurora does when she says that Romney “misunderstand[s] the question as a man” (Browning, 1864, 2.468). In order to generalize about men, one must also be able to generalize about women, and Aurora's assumption that there is a male way of thinking that always works in a certain way implies that there must be a female way of thinking with the same conditions. Suchgeneralizations are contrary to progressive values ​​and, indeed, to Aurora's ability to achieve the task it sets out to do. Ultimately, the ideas of feminism and progressive gender values ​​were, during the Victorian era, confusing and unfocused because they required of the believer such widespread upheaval in how they defined gender. This “crisis of faith” centered entirely on how people viewed gender, and was a considerable force in the Victorian era and, especially, on Aurora Leigh. There are striking contrasts in the text too, between the meaning of the poem and the form of the poem. The first example is the use of classical mythological references that would be unknown to most women of the time, such as Aurora's description of her mother as "a fearless Muse" (Browning, 1864, 1.155) and "a quiet Medusa " (Browning, 1864, 1.157). This is another device that shows the changing social ideals of the time; the poem has a female protagonist and yet is full of such references. It is almost a subterfuge, moreover, that Aurora Leigh is an epic poem; Traditionally associated with heroic deeds of national importance and dating back to the very birth of poetry, the epic poem does not usually deal with topics such as Romney's failed social reform and a girl's decision to become a poet. In a sense, it presupposes its own importance in a way that gives it significant self-referential weight when viewed in context. The use of the epic poem in particular has further interpretive relevance; according to the critic Herbert F Tucker, in his book Epic, “the splendor of the epic, so the lesson goes, is a glory that was” (Tucker, 2008). While Aurora Leigh may be thought of this way, to do so would be to ignore its social relevance; writing an epic poem about social reform implies that reform has already occurred, and one might conclude that the combination of these ideas makes the reader think the same thing. Something that would compound this hypothesis is that there is evidence that the epic was falling out of favor in the mid-19th century. Alfred Lord Tennyson himself, in a letter to his publisher Ticknor and Fields, said: "I should be mad to attempt [an epic] in the heart of the 19th century" (Tennyson, 1858). To revive an archaic genre in this way, and in a sense corrupt it to act both as a Bildungsroman and as a vehicle for socially progressive visions, is to increase its impact on the reader. The juxtaposition between 'feminine' content (i.e. with a female protagonist) and 'masculine' form, combined with all the elements mentioned so far, induces confusion regarding the gender gap; Why is the story of a girl realizing her dream less important than an epic battle? Barrett-Browning's poetry, however, is in many ways identical to classical epic; the use of classical and biblical references. Perhaps the most significant of the latter is in the finale: “'First jasper,' I said,/'And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony;/the rest in order, . . finally an amethyst" (Browning, 1864, 9.988). This ending, with the synergy of Aurora and Romney and the description of the walls of the holy city, creates a strongly positive image. In itself, it is the marriage of the progressive (Aurora blossoming as a poet) and the traditional (Christian theology), and a very fitting conclusion to the poem as one sees the holy city as almost a mirror entering heaven. Even this small study of a small part of Aurora Leigh's depiction of the “crisis of faith” in Victorian society proves to be extremely fertile material (much more could be written on this topic alone). The "third gender" created in Aurora's father sets the tone for the rest of the novel-poem, which aims to examine the emerging female literary presence of