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Writing as a challenge to victorian patriarchal values: Elizabeth Browning's Aurora Leigh
(2016) Kaya, Soner
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's long narrative poem Aurora Leigh tells the story of a woman who strives to be a poet in the Victorian period. However, writing poetry was not easy for women due to gender inequalities and obstacles in this period. By discussing the gender-specific applications in many spheres such as marriage, employment, education and literature, I will try to display the fact that women faced different obstacles in those spheres in the Victorian period. Despite those obstacles and inequalities, Aurora Leigh, the heroine in Browning's poem is determined to be a poet. At last Aurora succeeds in becoming a poet and marries her cousin Romney Leigh. Her success and this marriage plot show that womanhood is not an obstacle for being a poet. This thesis aims to deal with the difficulties Aurora faces in her journey towards being a poet as a woman due to the values of the patriarchal Victorian society. Depiction of every stage of Aurora's growth and her experiences with some other characters in the poem show men's vision of womanhood. Discussing this vision of patriarchal society, this thesis shows how Browning problematizes conventional gender roles in the Victorian society, gives voice to women in the world of poetry, and uses writing as a challenge to the values of the Victorian patriarchal society by her Aurora Leigh.