The Brownings

I don't want to get in the habit of posting these kinds of reading-related items on the blog (I use the announcements section of the course website for this purpose, of course), but since the College of Arts & Sciences's server has been down over the past day or two, and since they still have not been able to restore my directories and websites, I figured I'd put these thoughts on the blog and hope at least some of you stop by these parts before class on Friday. Thus:

We move from the brother-sister Rossettis to the husband-wife Brownings: Elizabeth Barrett and Robert. The former (1806-1861) actually outshone Robert in both general popularity and critical esteem for a good while and, really, was probably the most celebrated woman poet of the Victorian era (these days, Robert is generally deemed to be the greater poet, but she rightfully remains a major figure). She suffered from ill health in childhood and essentially was reduced to invalid status, and eventually moved to the south coast of England where she lived a rather reclusive, Lady of Shalott-like existence. Her courtship with and subsequent marriage to Robert, though, led to sixteen happy years and an outpouring of creative energy.

The poem you'll read, Aurora Leigh, is one of the best-selling, most ambitious, most feminist and longest poems in the English language. As what's called a verse novel (you'll notice the poetry reading nearly like prose fiction), Aurora Leigh becomes a kind of female counterpart to Wordsworth's The Prelude, an autobiographical epic poem that puts the life of the poet at its center (rather than battles and traditional epic fare). Along with C. Bronte's novel Jane Eyre, Aurora Leigh is probably one of the two most indispensable feminist texts of the Victorian era. You might pay particular attention to Books I and V (only portions of the poem are included in your anthologies), and especially to the figure of the aunt in the beginning (e.g., Book I, lines 270-309), the aunt's plan for educating Aurora (e.g., Book I, lines 399-449, and Aurora's subversive resistance to that plan (e.g., Book I, 465-480). In Book II, you might take note of how Aurora fights back against male prejudices (lines 342-364 and 433-439) in debating with Romney, her aristocratic cousin. Then, in Book V, the poem ends with a rather rousing and celebrated admonishment of her (male?) Victorian peers. As you read lines 183-222, consider how she might be critiquing poetry like Tennyson's and try to figure out what she's arguing about the Victorian age.

As for Robert Browning (1812-1889), he was perhaps second only to Tennyson in terms of widespread cultural pertinence and critical acclaim. He's a master of the dramatic monologue, which is probably the Victorian alternative to the Romantic lyric. You'll read one of his earliest (1836) and most shocking dramatic monologues, "Porphyria's Lover," which will serve as a kind of devilish warm-up to the more subtly chilling (and more famous) "My Last Duchess." With "Porphryia's Lover," you might try to identify the "plot" of the poem and maybe think about characterizing just what kind of woman and what kind of man the two "characters" in the poem are. Is he plainly and simply mad, in your estimation? Can we have any sympathy, at any level, for this murderer? Can you in any way connect this poem and its subject matter/concerns with anything else we've read so far this semester? Then, with "My Last Duchess" (which is actually loosely based on 16th century historical events), try again to determine the situation, the context, the plot of this poem. How does the Duke wants us to think of him? What kind of person does he think he is? Subsequently, perhaps beginning at around line 13, what do we in fact come to realize about him? What is his grievance against his previous duchess and how did he deal with that grievance? As you reach the conclusion in lines 47-56, you'll want to look for the aggressively ironic choice of words and imagery as the Duke continues to negotiate for a second marriage.