“THE BRILLIANT, THE DOOMED, THE ADORED ELIZABETH BARRETT”: VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE MODERNIST REVISION OF VICTORIAN LIVES IN “AURORA LEIGH” AND FLUSH

In this thesis, I argue that “Aurora Leigh” (1932) and Flush: A Biography (1933), written by modernist author Virginia Woolf, are innovative biographical representations of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I relate these works to Woolf’s relationship with her Victorian heritage and argue that her exploration of Barrett Browning’s biography constitutes a feminist recovery project. My study investigates Woolf’s modernist reconfiguration of a female Victorian poet by addressing the cultural and historical amnesia surrounding Barrett Browning in the twentieth century. By assessing Woolf’s response toward Victorian culture and the subsequent impact on Barrett Browning’s portrayal in her work, I contribute to an emerging area of scholarship regarding the interrelation of Victorian and modernist literature. Although many modernists participated in a literary movement that was profoundly separate from their Victorian predecessors, I argue that Woolf explored the continuity between these eras through “Aurora Leigh” and Flush. I investigate the relationship between Barrett Browning’s early feminism and Woolf’s views on female authorship, especially as these areas relate to the woman artist in “Aurora Leigh.” Although many scholars remain convinced that Woolf creates canine subjectivity in Flush, I argue that Flush is an anthropomorphic representation of the trapped Victorian poet. By comparing the 1931 draft of Flush to the published version, I determine that Woolf initially intended to write a feminist biography of Barrett Browning, but later shifted to an autobiografictional mode after the passing of Lytton Strachey. Woolf blends biography, autobiography, and fiction in Flush, and I argue that this method deconstructs the biographical genre by including her own authorial voice alongside the voice of a neglected historical woman. Despite her revitalization of Barrett Browning’s biography, Woolf is limited by her Victorian past. While she does reclaim the poet for her modernist audience, “Aurora Leigh” and Flush reveal the need for a much larger, more detailed recovery of Barrett Browning’s life and works

"Frosty Cliffs," Frosty Aunt, and Sandy Beaches: Teaching Aurora Leigh in Oman

“Frosty Cliffs, Frosty Aunt and Sandy Beaches: Teaching ‘Aurora Leigh’ in Oman” describes the reception of the canonical poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning by a class of university students in a small town on the Arabian Peninsula. The essay conveys details of a typical Middle Eastern college classroom and demonstrates how literary meanings are constructed out of local values. The author discusses, in fine-grained detail, how words, phrases, situations and characters from Browning’s poem are interpreted within the value-system of Muslim students; these elements combine to highlight how Western and Middle Eastern perceptions differ over, for example, the personality of a character. Risse then addresses the question of whether, given that the difference in perception is based on cultural differences, the students’ understanding be ‘corrected.’ Using Stanley Fish’s concept of interpretative communities and Paulo Freire’s concept of liberation pedagogy Risse demonstrates how to navigate situations in which the teacher’s and students’ cultural frameworks produce opposing ‘readings’ of a literary text

Aurora Leigh And Elizabeth Barrett-Browning\u27s Most Convenient Cousin

The article examines the possibility that the fictional cousin marriage in Aurora Leigh was either a token of gratitude by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning for her real-life philanthropic cousin’s generosity to her or was a masked promise of immortality to him as he lay dying

Childhood disrupted : Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s unfinished autobiography Before the knowledge of evil

As Mary Jean Corbett in Representing Femininity (1992), Linda Peterson in Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography (1999) and David Amigoni in Life Writing and Victorian Culture (2006) have all noted, Victorian women could write about their lives in several ways: autobiographies, diaries, letters, journals, memoirs and disguised within their fiction. Braddon utilised several of these options, including diaries between the years 1880-1914 and an autobiographical account of her childhood that she tellingly entitled ‘Before the Knowledge of Evil’ (Reel 1).1 She began writing this account in 1914, but after one hundred and eighty-five pages of typescript she had only reached the age of nine; presumably she was going to continue to write her entire life history, but she died before its completion. Autobiographies can be used in several ways, and Braddon’s account will be discussed as an example of Victorian women’s autobiography of childhood; as a snapshot of history in the 1830-40s; as an exploration of the inner psychology of a child; as revealing Braddon’s nostalgia for a time past; and finally to explore how she makes a case for a child’s right to have a childhood

Growing like the Plants from Unseen Roots : The Equalizing Role of Plant Imagery in Aurora Leigh

Plant imagery abounds in Elizabeth Barrett Browning\u27s novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, and critical readings have not thoroughly explored the meaning of and intent behind that imagery. Plant metaphor and images in Aurora Leigh are used to challenge the concept of Victorian women\u27s inherently inferior nature and to present an argument for female equality. When traced throughout the work, plant imagery foreshadows Aurora and Marian\u27s ultimate personal independence and familial harmony and helps the reader to understand the poem\u27s controversial ending. Ties to three of Browning\u27s literary influences in the selection of plant images are explored: Emanuel Swedenborg, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Each of these three understood and used nature imagery to significant effect in their own writings, and Browning adopted and developed those images in her work

Authorizing a self : models of self-construction and expression in the texts of four British Romantic women writers

This work explores strategies of authorship and authorization--of self and text--in Charlotte Smith\u27s Elegiac Sonnets, Mary Shelley\u27s Frankenstein, Charlotte Bronte\u27s Villette, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning\u27s Aurora Leigh. It examines how these strategies mark each author\u27s text as Romantic and interrogates how these strategies facilitate self-formation and expression. Issues of selfhood (its formation, boundaries, power) are central to Romanticism, At the center of Romanticism is a speaking I, a self which perceives and creates, defines and orders, and, often, defies. Does it make a difference when that speaking I is a woman? Yes, it does, and the manifestations and significance of this difference are observable in the four works under consideration. These four authors\u27 central concerns, themes, images, and strategies mark them and their texts as Romantic and, at the same time, suggest the influence of the lived experience of gender difference in a world in which man is Man and woman is Other. Ultimately, what marks these four texts as being written by Romantic women writers is the exploration of issues relating to selfhood which are often left unexplored, or not dealt with as explicitly, in the texts of the most frequently canonized male Romantics. Smith, Shelley, Bronte, and Barrett Browning make gender, class, economic and political deprivation, parental nurture (or, more specifically, the lack thereof) matter when it comes to who and what we are (what formed the self), and who or what we may hope to be or do (what power this self really has). Reading these four texts together, one may discern a continuum of subject positions available within Romantic discourse for the woman writer. As Smith does, she may find a voice for her victimization. As Shelley does, she may critique/revise some aspect of Romanticism itself. AB Bronte does, she may highlight the difference gender and class make to the Romantic self. As Barrett Browning does, she may lay claim to the position and power of the Romantic bard. Within Romanticism, these four Romantic women writers found self-making--as both narrative theme and narrative project--possible

“Homer Undone”: Homeric Scholarship and the Invention of Female Epic

 This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Bloomsbury via the link in this recor