Style Era

All of them, whether stained with your blood or not

Nothing at anything to you (Browning, 1890, II. 196 – 198).

In this way, the female body comes under scrutiny, creating tension in the politics that Browning seeks to address. If women, as she so firmly thinks, are intellectually inferior to men and lack first-hand knowledge of modern political matters, how can they justify their artistic endeavours?

The battle between two types of bodies—the wider societal body the poet aspires to reflect and the skewing influence of her own embodied, feminine sensibility—is at the heart of Aurora Leigh’s political poetics, according to the critic (Barrow, 2015, pg. 243).

In keeping with the previously discussed female duty, Aurora tries to save Marian and by doing so, “becomes the embodiment of Barrett Browning’s idealised vision of social amelioration” (Thorne-Murphy, 2005, pg. 242). This tension is heightened by Browning’s desire to become a “true poet-prophet” (Thorne-Murphy, 2005, pg. 242), making it clear that action was needed to eliminate sexual violence and ultimately

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