Summary
Summary of Aurora Leigh
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Two callings divide Aurora and Romney
Aurora Leigh tells her own story, looking back on a life shaped by the desire to become a poet. Her cousin Romney wants to relieve the suffering of the poor. Each believes the other's chosen work matters less, setting love and ambition against a larger question about what people need.
The book is both a novel and a poem, bringing love, money, scandal and travel together with arguments about art. Neither cousin holds the whole truth, and their disagreement gives the story its central tension.
Key idea 2
Aurora keeps her ambition alive
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Key idea 3
Marriage cannot replace her calling
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Key idea 4
Writing becomes Aurora's daily work
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Key idea 5
Marian becomes part of Romney's argument
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Key idea 6
Private wishes unsettle public ideals
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Key idea 7
Aurora learns to offer practical sisterhood
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Key idea 8
Serving others need not silence a gift
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love stories in verse, care about the lives of women writers, or enjoy debates about art and social duty in the Victorian age.
What this book is
Aurora Leigh is a long story told in blank verse, about eleven thousand lines in nine books. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote it in Italy and published it in 1856. It follows a woman named Aurora from her childhood to her early adult life, and she tells it herself, looking back. Barrett Browning had been a respected poet for years. Here she set out to write about her own age, in her own century, with its cities, its poverty, its quarrels over class and the place of women.
The book is a novel and a poem at once. It has a plot, with love, money, scandal and travel. It also stops often for argument, for landscape, and for thoughts on what a poet is for. Aurora wants to write great poetry. Her cousin Romney wants to fix the suffering of the poor. Each tells the other that the other's life is the lesser one, and the book lets both of them be wrong and right.
In the next fifteen minutes you will meet Aurora, Romney, and the poor girl Marian Erle, who ties their lives together. You will hear what the book says about work, love and art, and why its heroine matters. We begin in Florence, where Aurora is born.
In this summary
- 1A childhood between Italy and EnglandFree
- 2Exile in her aunt's English house
- 3Romney proposes and Aurora refuses
- 4A woman poet makes her own living
- 5Marian Erle and the plan to marry across class
- 6Lady Waldemar and the wedding day
- 7Paris, Italy and the search for home
- 8What the poem argues about art, work and women
- 9How the poem is told and why it feels modern
Key point 1 of 9
A childhood between Italy and England
Aurora Leigh begins by telling her own story, and she says at once that she is writing it for herself. She is born in Florence. Her father is an English scholar and her mother is Italian. Her mother dies when Aurora is only four years old, and the child keeps only a faint memory of her face.
After that, her father raises her alone. He is a quiet, bookish man, and he does not shut her away from the life of the household or from the hills around Florence. She grows up speaking Italian and learning from the land as well as from the page. The Italian countryside is her first teacher of what beauty is.
Her father also lets her read freely in his library. She does not follow a plan. She wanders among books as she wanders among fields, and she learns to love language for its own sake. Here the poem plants an idea it will return to again and again, that a poet is made by looking and reading with real hunger.
Her mother, though, stays as an absence she feels all her life. Aurora imagines the mother she never knew and tries to read her face in a portrait. This makes her an unusual heroine for her time. She has no mother to teach her how a woman should behave, so she builds her own sense of herself from nature and from books.
The poem sets this childhood as a golden time that cannot last. When Aurora is thirteen, her father dies as well. She is left an orphan in a country she loves, and she is about to be sent to a land she barely knows. The poem calls this loss a kind of second birth, and everything that follows grows out of it.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Check yourself
Why does Aurora refuse Romney's proposal?
Right. “He loves an idea of a helpful wife, and she will not be bought for that.”Not quite. “He loves an idea of a helpful wife, and she will not be bought for that.”
How does Aurora respond after hearing Marian's account in Paris?
Right. “She offers help, friendship and a home, and she says that a woman should not be thrown away for what the world calls shame.”Not quite. “She offers help, friendship and a home, and she says that a woman should not be thrown away for what the world calls shame.”
What does the poem argue about art and social action?
Right. “The central argument of Aurora Leigh is that art and social action need each other.”Not quite. “The central argument of Aurora Leigh is that art and social action need each other.”
Who’s who
- Aurora Leigh
- The narrator and aspiring poet, born in Italy, resists her cousin Romney's expectations and seeks an independent artistic life.
- Romney Leigh
- Aurora's cousin and heir to Leigh Hall, he devotes himself to social reform and helping the poor.
- Marian Erle
- A gentle seamstress from an impoverished, violent family, she becomes closely connected with Romney and Aurora.
- Lady Waldemar
- A wealthy society woman attracted to Romney, she approaches Aurora with charm and an interest in his affairs.
- Aurora's aunt
- Her father's unmarried sister raises Aurora in England, imposing conventional expectations of feminine conduct and suitable marriage.
- Aurora's father
- An English scholar living in Florence, he introduces his daughter Aurora to books and intellectual life.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 90,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 6 h
- Listening time10 h 5 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 10 other languages
Questions about Aurora Leigh
What is Aurora Leigh about?
It follows Aurora, a young poet born in Italy and raised in England, as she refuses a marriage proposal, makes her living by writing, and becomes bound up with her cousin Romney and a poor girl, Marian Erle.
Is Aurora Leigh a novel or a poem?
It is both. It is a narrative poem in nine books, written in blank verse, but it has a plot, characters and social detail like a Victorian novel, which is why it is called a verse novel.
When was Aurora Leigh written and published?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote it in Italy and published it in 1856. It is a work of fiction, though Aurora shares some of the author's views about poetry, women and the duties of a writer.
Is Aurora Leigh hard to read?
The voice is lively and direct, and the story is clear, so reading it in sections or aloud makes it much easier.
What is the main message of Aurora Leigh?
The poem argues that art and social duty need each other, that women are fit for serious work, and that true love between a man and a woman must rest on respect between equals.
