Victorians! discussion

Book 2

It is Aurora’s 20th birthday. It is June and she spends an early morning delighting in the gardens and the splendor of the outdoors. Her cousin Romney appears and he proposes to her. She refuses him on account that she only has friendship for him but not romantic love. Her aunt is irate at her refusal and hopes Aurora will change her mind. Due to the entails on the estate it is Romney who will inherit, not Aurora. Unbeknown to Aurora until now, she and Romney were “betrothed” when they were still children so Aurora won’t be shut out of the estate. Weeks pass by and then suddenly the aunt dies. Romney takes possession of the estate, still maintaining that he loves her, but Aurora will not be bribed into marriage. She has £ 300 per year to live on and moves to London.

Book 3

Aurora lives in an apartment in Kensington. To make a living she writes and has some success with the young romantics, but the more sophisticated verse of which she has always dreamt of eludes her. Aurora receives a visitor, Lady Waldemar, who professes to love Romney and he has his sights set on marrying someone else below his class. She implores Aurora to visit Romney and talk him out of it. Aurora goes and pays a visit to Miriam Erle, a seamstress, the woman Romney has chosen. Here Miriam tells her of her wretched past and how she was rescued by Romney.

I really enjoyed the long scene with Romney in book 2. In spite of their friendship, he displays a fundamental misunderstanding of Aurora's spirit when he says "men, and still less women, happily, / Scarce need be poets". He is dismissive of her book even when he admits he hasn't read it, and he diminishes her concerns as being small and individual when there is much greater work to do. The proposal is of course very unattractive, but I suppose if we are being fair to Romney, he seems very bitter towards the injustices of the world so his primary concern at the time is to do all he can to make things better, not to flatter Aurora with romantic words. As she says to him: "You have a wife already whom you love, / Your social theory"! On some level Aurora seems to admire this since she admits that he is "princely" and the encounter leaves an impression on her, but not enough for her to reconsider the proposal when Romney writes to her in softer terms. She is strong enough to stick to her guns and follow her own path - she must know that Romney will only ever see her poetry as frivolous in comparison with his social calling. I love how she stands up to him: "You misconceive the question like a man, / Who sees a woman as the complement / Of his sex merely."

Again in book 3, it struck me how good EBB is at bringing dialogue to life in the form of verse and how clearly the characters of the two women were drawn in the scene with Lady Waldemar. She was a surprising character and I wonder whether we will encounter her again. I liked her bitter analysis of her hopeless love for Romney - apart from anything else, he is so concerned with the poor and needy that he would never be interested in a titled lady. I loved the analogy of herself as "a pictured ceiling overhead / Good painting thrown away." Also the image of Romney's potential lower-class marriage as "a fire escape / To future generations" - the idea of the family name sliding down a long chute or staircase from high to low.

In book 2 I was struck by the numerous references to being snared/captured/caged/trapped-as a falcon, a lion, a mouse-which clearly represented for her her life in the country with her Aunt. By contrast, even when living in London in her 3 storey walk-up she feels freer, although constrained to earn her living by writing journal articles/short stories to support herself in writing the poems that are her vocation.

I was surprised that the "story within a story" of Miriam Erle was not somehow set apart-even a new chapter-rather than coming in the middle of book 3 and then continuing into book 4.

Romney is an intriguing character-very different from what I had imagined him to be in the first 2 books-or perhaps he has been somehow changed by Aurora's refusal.

It was also very telling to me that Miriam's goodness and worth is represented by her love of reading, much less so by her beauty or her good works or her hard work or filial attachment-a contrast to Dickens' poor but worthy heroines.

In book 1, I understood Aurora's character enough to know that she is a spirited individual. So it was not surprising that she turned down Romney's proposal. It wasn't attractive anyway since he utterly failed to understand her spirited nature. Still, one cannot blame Romney, for the mindset of men of that time was that women were "helpmates" and not independent individuals who have thoughts and feelings. Aurora says there is no love between them. But to me, Romney's subsequent conduct shows love for Aurora. Of Aurora, it's not clear. But I feel that there is a deeper feeling within her for Romney which she hasn't examined properly.

Romney piqued my interest. He is portrayed as a socialist and a social reformer. I'm curious to know what Barrett Browning has in store for him and what she aimed to drive at through him. :)

Lady Waldemar is a stereotypical upper-class woman. She is self-centered and is driven through a selfish passion. Aurora is right not to side with her, but at the same time, some of Lady Waldemar's words have sunk into Aurora. So she visits the girl, Marian Erle to judge her suitability for any alliance with Romney. This shows that Aurora has a deeper care for Romney Leigh.

The narrative becomes more intriguing in books two and three. I agree with Piyangie that Aurora does have feelings for Romney. She may not understand them fully as yet, but she also feels that Romney’s protestations of love are false.

’ ‘Why, sir, you are married long ago.
You have a wife already whom you love,
Your social theory. Bless you both, I say.
For my part, I am scarcely meek enough
To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse.
Do I look a Hagar, think you?
’ ‘So, you jest!’
‘Nay so, I speak in earnest,’ I replied.
‘You treat of marriage too much like, at least,
A chief apostle; you would bear with you
A wife . . a sister . . shall we speak it out?
A sister of charity.’

Her disappointment because Romney does not get in touch with her whilst she toils away in London bears this out.

’ And he . . my cousin Romney . . did not write.
I felt the silent finger of his scorn
Prick every bubble of my frivolous fame
As my breath blew it, and resolve it back
To the air it came from.’

I thought that these lines at the end of book two meant that they would never meet again….

’ Even so, we let go hands, my cousin and I,
And, in between us, rushed the torrent-world
To blanch our faces like divided rocks,
And bar for ever mutual sight and touch
Except through swirl of spray and all that roar.’

Now having read book three and Aurora’s meeting with Miriam I am not sure.

Yet again I highlighted many lines of poetry in these sections….

‘Why what a pettish, petty thing I grow,
– A mere, mere woman,–a mere flaccid nerve,-
A kerchief left out all night in the rain,
Turned soft so,–overtasked and overstrained
And overlived in this close London life!
And yet I should be stronger.’

The London fog

‘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.’

My favourites were these two - the first reminded me of the author’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’

I love love: truth’s no cleaner thing than love.
I comprehend a love so fiery hot
It burns its natural veil of august shame,
And stands sublimely in the nude, as chaste
As Medicean Venus. But I know,
A love that burns through veils will burn through masks
And shrivel up treachery.’

and finally….

’ …………..We’re nettles, some of us,
And give offence by the act of springing up;
And, if we leave the damp side of the wall,
The hoes, of course, are on us.’

Thanks Trev those are indeed beautiful excerpts-I was also particularly struck by that last passage-what an apt imagery for the poor and "unworthy" in society-their very presence is unwanted, particularly if they try to leave their appointed and unpleasant place in life in which case they are mowed down as quickly as possible.

Aurora's refusal of Romney reminded me of Anne of Green Gables when Anne refuses Gilbert Blythe. Anne is not yet ready for marriage. We'll see if Aurora will get a second chance. There is definitely a connection between them, but it can't be forced by betrothal but has to blossom naturally.

Romney seems very much burdened by his privilege. He wants to help the poor, and this is definitely noble, but it is so consuming Aurora calls it his spouse. She feels left in the role of the Old Testament's Hagar. Hagar, in a nutshell, is the maid of Abraham's wife Sarah. Sarah is barren and she persuades Abraham to have relations with Hagar so he will have offspring, and Hagar bears a son, Ishmael. The story doesn't end well for Hagar.
Wow, Aurora, that's quite a pointed arrow!

Romney, true to being a young man of the mid-19th century, has soaked up some of the secularist zeitgeist.

But I, I sympathise with man, not God,
I think I was a man for chiefly this;
And when I stand beside a dying bed,
It’s death to me.
Observe,— it had not much
Consoled the race of mastodons to know
Before they went to fossil, that anon
Their place should quicken with the elephant;
They were not elephants but mastodons:
And I, a man, as men are now, and not
As men may be hereafter, feel with men
In the agonising present.’

He doesn't quite understand Aurora's wonder at the natural beauty around them, a beauty she wants to capture in verse. He indulges her because he loves her, but he is not aware that he himself lives in a dis-enchanted world. It will be interesting to see how this develops further.

Kerstin wrote: "Aurora's refusal of Romney reminded me of Anne of Green Gables when Anne refuses Gilbert Blythe. Anne is not yet ready for marriage. We'll see if Aurora will get a second chance. …………. He doesn't quite understand Aurora's wonder at the natural beauty around them, a beauty she wants to capture in verse. He indulges her because he loves her, but he is not aware that he himself lives in a dis-enchanted world. .."

I like the way you have contrasted the beauty within Aurora’s poetry with the grim poverty of Romney’s world.

I think that Aurora feels slighted that Romney shows no respect for her talents or her future potential as a poet. He scoffs at her poetry book and denigrates all women’s abilities to write poetry with any substance. She wants mutual respect for what they both do and Romney is too submerged in his own crusade to understand and acknowledge Aurora’s abilities. She admires his work a great deal but is bitterly disappointed that Romney thinks very little of her own talents beyond those of being a wife.

I read a note on these chapters that Robert Browning did not like socialism/communism as he thought that it had no place for poetry. It is interesting to see Aurora's rejection of Romney in that light, and I am intrigued to discover how her presentation of Romney and his treatment of the poor will develop. Is there a bigger issue of collective good against individual rights to happiness being explored alongside the obvious feminist reading of a woman's position in a man's world?

My other side note was how little anyone is shown to care when the aunt dies. Much more room is given to the discussion of inheritance than to the passing of a human life.