Samantha RodriguezTerrie WilsonENGL 23239 november 2012Elizabeth Barrett Browning The early Victorian Age was a period of time when the process of industrialization in England was almost complete. The nation was no longer relaying in the ownership of land, instead, manufacturing and trade where the two main practices that brought the nation large economical growth and allowed it to become a modern urban nation. Some say that the progress that was achieved during the 70 years in which the Queen Victoria reigned was larger than the progress reached in the entire history of England. The transition from being a farmer society to a modern working class society caused major sentimentalism, and nostalgia, especially among writers, who would often argue that the industrial era made society believed that joy and happiness could be found in material goods, therefore intoxicating the soul with frivolity and ambitiousness. Authors begun to write about all the recent changes in their world; society, religion, and economic prosperity were the main themes which often inspired poems and novels. Elizabeth Barret Brownings Aurora leigh illustrates the changes in the Engalnd and emphasizes the oppression of woman.Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born March 6, 1806 in Durham, England. Her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, made most of his considerable fortune from Jamaican sugar plantations, and in 1809 he bought Hope End, a 500-acre estate near the Malvern Hills. Elizabeth lived a privileged childhood, riding her pony around the grounds, visiting other families in the neighborhood, and arranging family theatrical productions with her eleven brothers and sisters. Although frail, she apparently had no health problems until 1821, when Dr. Coker prescribed opium for a nervous disorder.Her mother died when she was 22, and critics mark signs of this loss inAurora Leigh. Barret was a voracious child, constantly craving for knowledge, she was self thought in almost every aspect, and she studied Latin, Greek and later Hebrew, to be able to read ancient texts. By thirteen she had already published her first volume of poetry. Barrets family experienced financial trouble when she was in her mid twenties, although they were never poor, they were force to move several times in a short period of time. Elizabeths brother died by drowning in one of the several houses that they were fored to move in, after that, she was never able to fully recover from the loss. She was living as an invalid in his father house and wasnt visited by many people except by close relatives and a few friends, among these friends was the poet Robert Browning, who later confessed his love for her. Elizabeth and Robert begun a secret relationship and soon after got married, fact for which Barrets father had a bad and almost inexistent relationship with Elizabeth. The Browning moved to Italy where Elizabeth regained health and strength to raise their son Pen. Barrett resided the rest of her live in Florence where she died presumably of tuberculosis in 1861.Barrets Aurora leight deals mainly with social injustice, but its subject was the subjugation of women to the dominating male. The novel is written in a first person point of view and features a young lady called Aurora The poem opens in Florence, Italy where the title character is born to an English father and an Italian mother. Both parents die while Aurora is young, forcing her to go to England to live with her father's sister. There she meets her cousin Romney Leigh with whom she differs on the vocation of women and the importance of art. Aurora rejects Romney's offer of marriage, preferring a single life as a writer. Ultimately, they agree to marry and work together because they never feel entirely succesful.In the First book of Aurora Leigh, Barrett browning let us see the bit of nostalgia that she was experimenting from the constantly changing England specifically in the first stanza where she recalls the tales of England told by his father:

Was this my father's England? the great isle?The ground seemed cut up from the fellowshipOr verdure, field from field, as man from man;The skies themselves looked low and positive,As almost you could touch them with a hand,And dared to do it, they were so far offFrom God's celestial crystals; all things, blurredAnd dull and vagueLater in the novel she harshly criticizes Her aunts live and labeled it as dull. She punishes her aunt becaused she always lived in the shadows of oppression:She had lived we'll say,A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,A quiet life, which was not life at all,(But that, she had not lived enough to know)In conclusion Barrets Aurora Leigh discussed Almost every aspect in a Victorian womens life. Among these, love life, place in society, and change played the major roles in life. These aspect helped determine who Barret and the othe Victorian era women were, hungry for freedom.