A review by arielmagicesi
Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

4.0

Honestly, reading this on Serial Reader was probably a mistake, because I think I would have greatly benefited both from potential footnotes and from being able to flip back to be like "wait, who was that again?" Browning's writing reminds me of a part from Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own", where she gets on Charlotte Bronte's case for going on too much about misogyny and derailing the plot. I think there's a similar issue here- there's a plot, and then there's Aurora's deep emotions about the trials of being a female writer. Both are really well-written, but they're not interwoven as cohesively as I would have liked. The writing is just stunning, though. But I had trouble following the plot. I still can't tell you when Aurora published her books. I also was half-convinced that she and Marian were going to end up together. I know this was published in the nineteenth century but I'm telling you, I really thought that Aurora and Marian were going to be the romantic endgame for a minute there. Anyway, I think I'm gonna read some of Elizabeth Browning's shorter poems so I can experience her fantastic writing without trying to follow a plot.