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Elizabeth Barret Browning was the most important and highly acclaimed woman poet of the 19th
century. Writing at a time when poetry was declining and also when women were considered
incapable of writing serious poetry, Browning felt bereft of a poetic tradition, and was forced
to create a new tradition in women’s poetry. As her poems on the subject clearly show, Barrett
Browning was highly critical of the preceding generations of women poets, including Felicia
Hemans and L.E.L., for their exhibition of excessive feeling and emotional offusiveness, and
also for their lack of public voice. Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh culminates in her critique of her precursors and her efforts to create a new tradition in women’s poetry. Through the story of the life of Aurora, Barrett Browning shows readers what it meant to be a woman poet in the contemporary society and how they struggled to compromise between identities as woman and poet. At the same time, Barrett Browning presents readers with an unprecedented figure of the woman poet, radically revising the existing assumptions and conventions of women’s poetry into a new realm. (Hannam University)