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emma_in_dreamLet me tell you how I came to *Aurora Leigh* (1856).
I read Joanna Russ’ rebuttal of Virginia Woolf’s analysis of EBB’s *Aurora Leigh*. Of course they would all be interested in *Aurora Leigh*. It is a lengthy narrative poem about the difficulties in being a woman writing.
Aurora Leigh, the narrator, was raised by her bookish father in Italy, then orphaned and lived with her cold aunt in England. She was close to her cousin Romney Leigh but he rejected her poetry without bothering to read it.
That book of yours,
I have not read a page of; but I toss
A rose up–it falls calyx down, you see! . .
The chances are that, being a woman, young,
And pure, with such a pair of large, calm eyes, . .
You write as well . . and ill . . upon the whole,
As other women. If as well, what then?
If even a little better, . . still what then?
We want the Best in art now, or no art.
Romney proposes but really wants a helpmeet to assist him in his social causes. Aurora refuses him. After her aunt’s death, Aurora goes off and becomes a professional writer. There’s some voice of experience stuff about how many different forms of writing she has to undertake to support herself.
Romney tries to marry a pauper and then a mean wealthy woman, and it doesn’t work out. And then he marries Aurora after he realizes he does love her.
They are to combine art, love and work for social causes. Specifically, she espouses a kind of contemporary poetry, not one set in a romantic past, but one which grapples with contemporary issues.
Beloved, let us love so well,
Our work shall still be better for our love,
And still our love be sweeter for our work,
And both, commended, for the sake of each,
By all true workers and true lovers, born.
The poem is one long meditation (like 11,000 words of blank verse)* on what it means to dedicate yourself to art, what it means to love, whether marriage and art are compatible, how female artists are treated, whether poetry should be contemporary, urgent and radical (her answer to that one was a resounding yes).
Of course this theme preoccupied EBB who wrote despite being effectively locked in a tower for twenty years by her father; of course it was central to Virginia Woolf’ life, a woman who didn’t even have what education a governess could supply and who nonetheless became a great novelist; of course Joanna Russ wanted to talk about it in *How to Suppress Women’s Writing*. It is really a privilege to hear three such intellects in conversation.
I don’t have much to add to the conversation beyond highlighting this passage.
We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits . . so much help
By so much rending. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth– '
Tis then we get the right good from a book.
So, EBB, Virginia Woolf, Joanna Russ – all in one long conversation.**
And some extra stuff:
Also, I was struck by some of the topical allusions. Potatoes – will they cease to exist with the potato famine?
And are potatoes to grow mythical
Like moly? will the apple die out too?
Mastadons – apparently on EBB’s mind.
Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret-room
Piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large,–where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first.
And I like her description of a baby:
There he lay, upon his back,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with life
To the bottom of his dimples,–to the ends
Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face;
For since he had been covered over-much
To keep him from the light glare, both his cheeks
Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose
The shepherd's heart blood ebbed away into,
The faster for his love.
• Apparently longer than the twelve book Paradise Lost.
** Having written this, I remember that Russ also wrote a rebuttal of Robert Heinlein's *Farnham's Freehold* and I imagine him joining in the conversation. My goodness.
I read Joanna Russ’ rebuttal of Virginia Woolf’s analysis of EBB’s *Aurora Leigh*. Of course they would all be interested in *Aurora Leigh*. It is a lengthy narrative poem about the difficulties in being a woman writing.
Aurora Leigh, the narrator, was raised by her bookish father in Italy, then orphaned and lived with her cold aunt in England. She was close to her cousin Romney Leigh but he rejected her poetry without bothering to read it.
That book of yours,
I have not read a page of; but I toss
A rose up–it falls calyx down, you see! . .
The chances are that, being a woman, young,
And pure, with such a pair of large, calm eyes, . .
You write as well . . and ill . . upon the whole,
As other women. If as well, what then?
If even a little better, . . still what then?
We want the Best in art now, or no art.
Romney proposes but really wants a helpmeet to assist him in his social causes. Aurora refuses him. After her aunt’s death, Aurora goes off and becomes a professional writer. There’s some voice of experience stuff about how many different forms of writing she has to undertake to support herself.
Romney tries to marry a pauper and then a mean wealthy woman, and it doesn’t work out. And then he marries Aurora after he realizes he does love her.
They are to combine art, love and work for social causes. Specifically, she espouses a kind of contemporary poetry, not one set in a romantic past, but one which grapples with contemporary issues.
Beloved, let us love so well,
Our work shall still be better for our love,
And still our love be sweeter for our work,
And both, commended, for the sake of each,
By all true workers and true lovers, born.
The poem is one long meditation (like 11,000 words of blank verse)* on what it means to dedicate yourself to art, what it means to love, whether marriage and art are compatible, how female artists are treated, whether poetry should be contemporary, urgent and radical (her answer to that one was a resounding yes).
Of course this theme preoccupied EBB who wrote despite being effectively locked in a tower for twenty years by her father; of course it was central to Virginia Woolf’ life, a woman who didn’t even have what education a governess could supply and who nonetheless became a great novelist; of course Joanna Russ wanted to talk about it in *How to Suppress Women’s Writing*. It is really a privilege to hear three such intellects in conversation.
I don’t have much to add to the conversation beyond highlighting this passage.
We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits . . so much help
By so much rending. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth– '
Tis then we get the right good from a book.
So, EBB, Virginia Woolf, Joanna Russ – all in one long conversation.**
And some extra stuff:
Also, I was struck by some of the topical allusions. Potatoes – will they cease to exist with the potato famine?
And are potatoes to grow mythical
Like moly? will the apple die out too?
Mastadons – apparently on EBB’s mind.
Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret-room
Piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large,–where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first.
And I like her description of a baby:
There he lay, upon his back,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with life
To the bottom of his dimples,–to the ends
Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face;
For since he had been covered over-much
To keep him from the light glare, both his cheeks
Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose
The shepherd's heart blood ebbed away into,
The faster for his love.
• Apparently longer than the twelve book Paradise Lost.
** Having written this, I remember that Russ also wrote a rebuttal of Robert Heinlein's *Farnham's Freehold* and I imagine him joining in the conversation. My goodness.
