ABSTRACT

This chapter takes up the political criticism levelled at Barrett Browning by Cora Kaplan and explores it further in the context of both Aurora Leigh and Barrett Browning's other political poetry. Rather than seeing Barrett Browning's attitude to the working classes as an excusable blot on an otherwise laudable feminist poem, Deirdre David presents the poet's conservative political stance as central to her position as a 'traditional' intellectual. A poem that begins with the admonition from Ecclesiastes, 'Of writing many books there is no end', Aurora Leigh is pervaded by metaphors of writing, the most notable being that employed by Aurora in likening man's soul to a multiply inscribed text. To understand the full significance of these evils in Aurora Leigh and the conservative weight of their remedies, it is necessary to examine the antagonism to English middle-class values expressed in Barrett Browning's other political poetry.