Kerschen is a school district administrator and freelance writer. In this essay, she examines the influences that affected Browning's themes about women in Aurora Leigh and the allusions in the poem that indicate these influences.

In 1822, when Elizabeth Barrett was only sixteen, she started an essay, under the original title of “An Essay on Women,” that she never finished but whose subject matter found its way into many of her other works. Thus, it is apparent that women's issues were a lifelong cause for Browning that culminated in the publication of Aurora Leigh, a story about the woman as an artist. In the unfinished teenage essay, Browning argues that women's poetry was being suppressed by the dominance of poetic forms and subject matter that were male oriented. Consequently, Aurora Leigh is an experiment in a new poetic form, the verse novel, and has as its subject matter...