Jenkins, Review of Laura J. Faulk’s “Destructive Maternity in Aurora Leigh”

摘要

Feminist readings of Aurora Leigh (1856) are de rigueur. Indeed, as Laura J. Faulk acknowledges, "feminists revived Barrett Browning's poem in the 1970s after years of obscurity" (42). Yet, Faulk's essay suggests that most of these critics, though obsessed with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's romance and marriage, have neglected to discuss her difficult experiences with pregnancy. They have also overlooked the division of the poem into nine sections, "a significant number considering Aurora Leigh's connection with motherhood" (52). Faulk's essay is not the first work to discuss writing, rape, prostitution, and childbirth in the poem as separate concerns; she cites articles by Deborah Byrd, Mairi Calcraft-Rennie, Deidre David, Linda Lewis, Dorothy Mermin and several others. But Faulk hopes to redirect critical attention away from ubiquitous discussions of the dangers of childbirth for Victorian women, and towards the equally damaging before and after: the violent physical effects of pregnancy (sometimes exacerbated by rape or prostitution) and self- sacrificial mothering as akin to being "buried alive" (45).