Water as Metaphors of Self-Discovery in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh
Abstract
Due to her life history, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a poet who tends to be linked to the inner life, the seclusion within the urban and the sick room. Of all of her works, Aurora Leigh (1856), with its plot and settings, is perhaps the one that seems -at first glance- foreign to water as element and as metaphor. Much of the criticism of Aurora Leigh is focused upon the development of the main character as a poet, upon Aurora’s poetics or upon her spiritual vision of the world and the place of the woman artist. Mostly developed within an urban setting, Aurora Leigh might appear detached from Nature, except for the first two books with their evident Wordsworthian influence.
My aim is to explore the vital role that water plays in Aurora Leigh in relation to the construction and identity of its main character to demonstrate how water functions not only as a metaphor for the journey of self-discovery, but also how it becomes embedded into Aurora’s life experience and affects understanding of her place in the world. Water acts like a mirror, but also as a source of punishment and repression; as a destructive and constructive force, becoming an inherent part in Aurora’s understanding of her womanhood and through the process of forging her identity in adapting to the flow of life.
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