And the Aurora Leigh saga continues! We are on Book Four and practically half way there! This section focuses quite a bit on the relationship between Aurora and Romney, and I think most of all, we feel sorry for Aurora here. Things have not gone the way she would have liked, and her prospects for marriage soon become uncertain…

Aurora Leigh – Book IV

I kissed the lips that ended.–’So indeed
He loves you, Marian?’
                    ‘Loves me!’ She looked up
With a child’s wonder when you ask him first
Who made the sun–a puzzled blush, that grew,
Then broke off in a rapid radiant smile
Of sure solution. ‘Loves me! he loves all,–
And me, of course. He had not asked me else
To work with him for ever, and be his wife.’
Her words reproved me. This perhaps was love–
To have its hands too full of gifts to give,
For putting out a hand to take a gift;
To love so much, the perfect round of love
Includes, in strictly conclusion, the being loved;
As Eden-dew went up and fell again,
Enough for watering Eden. Obviously
She had not thought about his love at all:
The cataracts of her soul had poured themselves
And risen self-crowned in rainbow; would she ask
Who crowned her?–it sufficed that she was crowned.
With women of my class, ’tis otherwise:
We haggle for the small change of our gold,
And so much love, accord, for so much love,
Rialto-prices. Are we therefore wrong?
If marriage be a contract, look to it then,
Contracting parties should be equal, just;
Bit if, a simple fealty on one side,
A mere religion,–right to give, is all,
And certain brides of Europe duly ask
To mount the pile, as Indian widows do,
The spices of their tender youth heaped up,
The jewels of their gracious virtues worn,
More gems, more glory,–to consume entire
For a living husband! as the man’s alive,
Not dead,–the woman’s duty, by so much,
Advanced in England, beyond Hindostan.

I sate there, musing, till she touched my hand
With hers, as softly as a strange white bird
She feared to startle in touching. ‘You are kind.
But are you, peradventure, vexed at heart
Because your cousin takes me for a wife?
I know I am not worthy–nay, in truth,
I’m glad on’t, since, for that, he chooses me.
He likes the poor things of the world the best;
I would not therefore, if I could, be rich,
It pleasures him to stoop for buttercups;
I would not be a rose upon the wall
A queen might stop at, near the palace-door,
To say to a courtier, ‘Pluck that rose for me,
‘It’s prettier than the rest.’ O Romeny Leigh!

NB: I am half way through my final year assignments, so hope to have some better quality blogs written and published soon – more theatre criticism and book reviews (yay!!!) – but at the moment, I am just sticking with short quotes, poetry and small ponderings, which come to me in the evenings : usually after a day, attempting to write about narratology or French feminism, like today! Never fear, the good stuff will return ASAP!

Today, we get onto the Third Book Aurora Leigh. I like this book as it explores the Aurora in her apartment, in London and she is doing small pieces of writing, for magazines and newspapers. For me, it echoes with ‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Virginia Woolf – and that what a woman needs to do in order to write (fiction – but i feel there is still the same sentiment!), is have a room of their own, and perhaps I see this idea within this epic poem/novel. It’s also nice to see the London poet in this extract – the reader get’s an inside into the creative process of Aurora, and an understanding her vision of the world a bit better! It also reiterates her point of not needing a man in order to produce something beautiful!

Aurora Leigh – Book III

So, happy and unafraid of solitude,
I worked the short days out,–and watched the sun
On lurid morns or monstrous afternoons,
Like some Druidic idol’s fiery brass,
With fixed unflickering outline of dead heat,
In which the blood of wretches pent inside
Seemed oozing forth to incarnadine the air,–
Push out through fog with his dilated disk,
And startle the slant roofs and chimney-pots
With splashes of fierce colour. Or I saw
Fog only, the great tawny weltering fog,
Involve the passive city, strangle it
Alive, and draw it off into the void,
Spires, bridges, streets, and squares, as if a sponge
Had wiped out London,–or as noon and night
Had clapped together and utterly struck out
The intermediate time, undoing themselves
In the act. Your city poets see such things,
Not despicable. Mountains of the south,
When, drunk and mad with elemental wines,
They rend the seamless mist and stand up bare,
Make fewer singers, haply. No one sings,
Descending Sinai; on Parnassus mount,
You take a mule to climb, and not a muse,
Except in fable and figure: forests chant
Their anthems to themselves, and leave you dumb.