MARRIAGE PLOT AS a CHALLENGE TO GENDER CONVENTIONS IN AURORA LEIGH BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Abstract

Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her long narrative poem titled Aurora Leigh portrays a heroine that struggles to be a poetess rather than a submissive wife in accordance with gender conventions. Her struggle shows that women attempting to go beyond domesticity to pursue a career encounter certain obstacles because marriage is regarded supreme career for them. Despite those obstacles and gender-specific applications, Aurora Leigh, the heroine, becomes a poet and marries her cousin. Her poetic career and marriage display that womanhood is not an obstacle to pursuing a career. By such a plot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, challenged patriarchal society and the attribution of both frailty and certain fixed roles to women. Rather than presenting a conventional marriage in the end, Browning utilizes an unconventional marriage as a challenge to the patriarchal Victorian society because she underlined the fact that a marriage is not a career for women but a necessity. Discussing unconventionality of the marriage in Aurora Leigh, this study investigates how Browning problematizes conventional gender roles and presents marriage as a part of women’s powerful side rather than as a sign of subjection.