Questions tagged [elizabeth-barrett-browning]
For questions about the life and works of the Victorian-era English poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861).
25
questions
12
votes
1answer
256 views
What is "vulgar white of personal aims"? Why is it "white"?
From Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
'I have not stood long on the strand of life,
And these salt waters have had scarcely time
To creep so high up as to wet my feet.
I cannot ...
8
votes
1answer
177 views
Meaning of "I shut my tongue against my fly"
From Aurora Leigh:
Poor child! I would have mended it with gold,
Until it gleamed like St. Sophia's dome
When all the faithful troop to morning prayer:
But he, he nipped the bud of such a ...
7
votes
2answers
184 views
Meaning of "you wear your blue so chiefly in your eyes ... it comforts me entirely for your fame" in Aurora Leigh
From Aurora Leigh:
She said her name quite simply, as if it meant
Not much indeed, but something,–took my hands,
And smiled, as if her smile could help my case,
And dropped her eyes on me, ...
5
votes
1answer
305 views
To what extent is Aurora Leigh autobiographical?
I've been reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, and as I read through Aurora's early life and adolescence, I came to wonder if the poem was inspired at all by Barrett Browning's own ...
5
votes
2answers
124 views
Meaning of "I own myself incredulous of confidence like this availing him or you"
From Aurora Leigh:
'- That is said
Austerely, like a youthful prophetess,
Who knits her brows across her pretty eyes
To keep them back from following the grey flight
Of doves between the ...
4
votes
1answer
328 views
Who are the “men of the west” who eat clay in “Aurora Leigh”?
In Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora's cousin Romney Leigh complains about the character of the times:
We’re too materialistic,—eating clay,
(Like men of the west) instead of ...
4
votes
1answer
67 views
What does “men in us” refer to in “Aurora Leigh”?
In book VI of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the heroine collides with a man in the streets of Paris:
A gentleman abstracted as myself
Came full against me, then resolved the ...
4
votes
1answer
86 views
Meaning of "He says it still of truth, which is his own" (in "Aurora Leigh")
From Aurora Leigh:
The book has some truth in it, I believe:
And truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.
I know we talk our Phædons to the end
Through all the dismal faces that we make,
...
4
votes
1answer
85 views
Meaning of "to risk, in turn, a woman's paradox"
From Aurora Leigh:
To have our books
Appraised by love, associated with love,
While we sit loveless! is it hard, you think?
At least 'tis mournful. Fame, indeed, 'twas said,
Means simply ...
4
votes
2answers
133 views
Meaning of "gambled" in "whose wasted right hand gambled against his left" (Aurora Leigh)
From Aurora Leigh - what is the meaning of gambled here? It's hard to understand. I first thought his wasted right hand was somehow pinned to his left one using the brass button, but the dictionaries ...
4
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0answers
93 views
What inspired the “lava-lymph” in Elizabeth Browning’s “Aurora Leigh”?
In book V of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the narrator asks herself what she expects to achieve in her poetry:
Shall I hope
To speak my ...
3
votes
2answers
212 views
Why is Aurora Leigh proud of “colonising beehives” in the poem by Elizabeth Browning?
In book 2 of Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora’s cousin Romney doubts there is any value in women writing poetry:
‘Who has time,
An ...
3
votes
1answer
68 views
How does “the socket drop them through” in “Aurora Leigh”?
In book V of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sir Blaise claims that in former days men chose their wives for their virtue and not for their décolletage:
“My dear young friend, if ...
3
votes
2answers
204 views
What's the significance of “Collegisse juvat” in Aurora Leigh's fan-mail?
In book III of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the narrator, who has published some popular poems, reads her fan-mail, which includes:
… rarer tokens from young bachelors,
Who ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views
Who inspired Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "Mother and Poet"?
"Mother and Poet" is an emotional and moving poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning about a woman poet who loses both her sons in battles in Italy. The emotions seem so raw that one might assume it ...
3
votes
1answer
86 views
Meaning of "and beauty keeps itself still uppermost" (Aurora Leigh by Liz Browning)
From Aurora Leigh:
Until at last, as one, whose heart being sad
On hearing lovely music, suddenly
Dissolves in weeping, I brake out in tears
Before her . . asked her counsel . . 'had I erred
...
3
votes
0answers
51 views
Why is Romney’s pattern “on his nail” in “Aurora Leigh”?
In Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the character Romney Leigh has a “pattern on his nail”:
To think,—I have a pattern on my nail,
And I will carve the world new after it,
And solve ...
2
votes
2answers
241 views
What is ‘the secret of Da Vinci’s drains’ in ‘Aurora Leigh’?
In book I of Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the speaker sketches the character of her father:
My father was an austere Englishman,
Who, after a dry life-time spent at home
In ...
2
votes
1answer
89 views
Meaning of "that all the towns make offal of their daughters for its use on summer-nights"
From Aurora Leigh:
Thus is Art
Self-magnified in magnifying a truth
Which, fully recognized, would change the world
And shift its morals. If a man could feel,
Not one day, in the artist's ...
2
votes
1answer
52 views
Meaning of "who bespoke our place so far in the east"
From Aurora Leigh:
So it is:
We covet for the soul, the body's part,
To die and rot. Even so, Aurora, ends
Our aspiration, who bespoke our place
So far in the east.
What is the meaning ...
1
vote
1answer
46 views
Meaning of "not conclude at yours"
From Aurora Leigh:
Have you learnt
No more of women, 'spite of privilege,
Than still to take account too seriously
Of such weak flutterings? Why, we like it, sir,–
We get our powers and ...
1
vote
1answer
90 views
What inspired the "fakir in a box" in Elizabeth Browning's "Aurora Leigh"?
In book V of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the narrator makes an elaborate simile between the condition of the Earth in the interval between the Fall and the Incarnation, and a ...
1
vote
1answer
85 views
Why is it a mistake to “eliminate” rather than “analyse” in "Aurora Leigh"?
In book I of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the eponymous narrator describes the process of forming her values and beliefs out of a throng of idées reçus:
...
1
vote
1answer
100 views
What does Elizabeth Browning mean by "turning up their under-natures"?
In book I of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1856), the eponymous narrator describes the experience of reading poetry:
But the sun was high
When first I ...
0
votes
1answer
96 views
What is the correspondence of flowers with the spirit-world in Elizabeth Browning’s “Aurora Leigh”?
In book V of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the narrator says:
there’s not a flower of spring,
That dies ere June, but vaunts itself allied
By issue and symbol, by ...