ABSTRACT
In book v of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, the title character sits alone pondering the emotional costs of poetic vocation for a woman:
How dreary 'tis for women to sit still On winter nights by solitary fires And hear the nations praising them far off, Too far! ay, praising our quick sense of love, Our very heart of passionate womanhood, Which would not beat so in the verse without Being present also in the unkissed li"ps And eyes undried because there's none to ask The reason they grew moist.
