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A journey through Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s masks

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Version 2 2024-02-26, 09:13
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thesis
posted on 2024-02-26, 09:13 authored by María Quirarte Ruvalcaba

This thesis explores the creation and perpetuation of the legendary figure of Elizabeth Barrett Browning created initially by the poet herself and by the editor Richard Henghist Horne. This version of the poet was strengthened by her contemporaries and became part of popular imagination by the turn of the century, to reverberate in works of fiction, such as Virginia Woolf’s Flush (1933) and Rudolph Besier’s The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930). While this idealised version of Barrett Browning earned her a legendary place in literary history, it overshadowed her poetical work by creating an iconic sanctified version of her as poet. Legend has similarly affected understanding of the figure of Aurora Leigh as an autobiographical character from Barrett Browning’s poem of 1856. My discussion re-considers established accounts to reveal different perspectives on Aurora Leigh, emerging through the unmasking of the Barrett Browning of legend.

The idealised version of Barrett Browning was partially created through portraits shown to her audience. Chapter One explores the process of selecting and neglecting particular painted and photographic portraits of the author to re-visit the visually constructed image of the poet by Elizabeth and Robert Browning. My approach also traces connections between idealised pictorial versions of the poet and Aurora Leigh, and how an intertwining evolved into a merging of the poet with the character within popular imagination that was reflected in visual representations of Aurora Leigh.

As one of the main questions of the thesis concerns the damage of the legend to the poet and her work, in Chapter Two, I demonstrate ways in which the nature of Barrett Browning’s illness, along with her death, have become cornerstones for the development of legend. I postulate that her illness was unlikely to have been fatal, as suggested by most of her biographers, and that it was closely linked to the poet’s morphine dependence which has been largely disregarded. My analysis demonstrates how Barrett Browning’s morphine dependence is important in itself, both as a biographical fact and as an influence in her poetry. Chapter Three further discusses this influence in her poetry, which appears in what I suggest is ‘the opiate pattern working within different layers - the visual aspect, narrative sequence and sensory perception of the speaker. These, I argue, are consolidated in Aurora Leigh who emerges as an opium eater heroine.

While Aurora Leigh’s poetic development has been acknowledged as an autobiographical reference to Barrett Browning, Aurora was also constructed by Barrett Browning as a poet-prophet, heir to Miltonic tradition. In Chapter Four, I explore the diverse theological views, reinterpreted by Barrett Browning in her revision of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, The New Testament ‘Gospels’, the ‘Book of Revelation’ and the theology of Emmanuel Swedenborg. I show how this blend creates a unique spiritual collage which constitutes Barrett Browning’s personal theology which earned Aurora Leigh the label ‘Mrs. Browning’s Gospel’.

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  • Published version

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395

Department affiliated with

  • English Theses

Qualification level

  • doctoral

Qualification name

  • phd

Language

  • eng

Institution

University of Sussex

Full text available

  • Yes

Supervisor

Lindsay Smith

Legacy Posted Date

2022-01-26

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