Mother Cries: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poetics of Maternity

Abstract

This essay explores Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s conflicted portrayals of maternity. By foregrounding the experiences of pregnancy, labor, birth, and death, Barrett Browning shows that motherhood is based on the physical acts of stretching, tearing, and letting go; indeed, such physical acts serve as metaphors for the emotional ruptures at the heart of the maternal condition, and in that insistent attention to loss, Barrett Browning articulates the desire for individuation—for mothers as well as for children. This article traces Barrett Browning’s portrayal of maternity chronologically through her oeuvre, revealing increasingly politicized images of motherhood after her own experiences of miscarriages and birth. The trajectory of Barrett Browning’s work suggests that motherhood creates a more politically engaged sensibility.