SOURCE: Wallace, Anne D. “‘Nor in Fading Silks Compose’: Sewing, Walking, and Poetic Labor in Aurora Leigh.” ELH 64, no. 1 (1997): 223-56.

In the following essay, Wallace explores themes of gender, labor, and writing in Aurora Leigh, linking these motifs with the georgic and peripatetic literary genres.

The November 1993 conference, “Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Victorian Culture,” opened with readings from a drama based on Aurora Leigh and continued with eleven presentations, in a total of forty-two, on Barrett Browning's novel-poem.¹ The MLA Bibliography tells a similar story. Of 142 Barrett Browning entries from 1981 through early 1995, thirty-one name Aurora Leigh as a specific object of study, more than any other single Barrett Browning title.² Such a concentration of effort may be problematic, but there it is: Aurora Leigh is the text of the moment in Barrett Browning studies. Our primary concern, as revealed by both these conference presentations and other recent scholarship...