Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:24:39.582Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

DESTRUCTIVE MATERNITY IN AURORA LEIGH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2013

Laura J. Faulk*
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University

Extract

While it is well-known that Victorian women married for financial stability, sexual desire, or social standing, doctors of the time provided another reason: health. Medical texts warned women to make use of their reproductive abilities, to have children to avoid becoming masculine old maids. One anonymous contributor to an 1851 issue of the Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology believed the old maid to be physically unwomanly as a result of childlessness.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Acton, William. A Complete Practical Treatise on Venereal Diseases, and Their Immediate and Remote Consequences, Including Observations on Certain Affections of the Uterus Attended with Discharges. Second American ed. New York: J. S. Redfield, 1848. Google Books. Web. 25 May 2010.Google Scholar
Acton, William. The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs in Childhood, Youth, Adult Age, and Advanced Life. Fourth American ed. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1875. Google Books. Web. 26 August 2010.Google Scholar
“Assize Intelligence: Child Murder for Burial Money.” Examiner 2359 (16 April 1853): 252. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
“Assize Intelligence: The Esher Murders.” Examiner 2428 (12 August 1854): 512. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
Rev. of Aurora Leigh. Leader 7.349 (November 1856): 1142–44. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
Rev. of Aurora Leigh. New Quarterly Review 6.21 (January 1857): 33–35. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett. Diary by E. B. B., The Unpublished Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1831–1832. Ed. Kelley, Philip and Hudson, Ronald. Athens: Ohio UP, 1969.Google Scholar
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Aurora Leigh. Ed. Reynolds, Margaret. New York: Norton, 1996.Google Scholar
Buchan, William. Domestic Medicine, or, a Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases, By Regimen and Simple Medicines: With Observations on Seabathing, and the Use of Mineral Waters. Exeter: J. and B. Williams, 1839. Google Books. Web. 12 July 2010.Google Scholar
Byrd, Deborah. “Combating an Alien Tyranny: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Evolution as a Feminist Poet.” Ed. Sandra Donaldson. 202–17.Google Scholar
Calcraft-Rennie, Mairi. “Maternity in the Poetic Margins.” Studies in Browning and His Circle 19 (1991): 718.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Mary Wilson. “Blinding the Hero.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 17.5 (2006): 5268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Robert Brudenell. On the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria. London: Churchill, 1853. Google Books. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
Cooper, Helen M. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Woman and Artist. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988.Google Scholar
Dalley, Lana L. “‘The least ‘Angelical’ poem in the language’: Political Economy, Gender, and the Heritage of Aurora Leigh.” Victorian Poetry 44.4 (2006): 525–42. Project Muse. Web. 10 April 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
David, Deidre. “‘Art's a Service’: Social Wound, Sexual Politics, and Aurora Leigh.” Browning Institute Studies (1985): 113–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Deplorable Case of Seduction, Murder, and Suicide.” Examiner 2127 (4 Nov. 1848): 716–17. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
Dever, Carolyn. Death and the Mother from Dickens to Freud: Victorian Fiction and the Anxiety of Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, Sandra, ed. Critical Essays on Elizabeth Barrett Browning. New York: G. K. Hall, 1999.Google Scholar
“Dreadful Murder of Six Children by their Mother.” Examiner 2420 (17 June 1854): 380. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 Aug. 2010.Google Scholar
Flanders, Judith. Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England. New York: Norton, 2003.Google Scholar
Graham, Thomas John. “Early Marriages of Excellent Tendency.” Ed. Taylor and Shuttleworth. 187–88.Google Scholar
Hickok, Kathleen. “‘New Yet Orthodox’ – The Female Characters in Aurora Leigh.” Ed. Sandra Donaldson. 129–40.Google Scholar
“Law: The murder at Uxbridge.” Examiner 2515 (12 April 1856): 236. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
Lewes, G. H.Currer Bell's Shirley.” The Edinburgh Review 91 (January 1850): 153–73. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
Lewis, Linda M. “Rape and Resurrection in Aurora Leigh.” Studies in Browning and His Circle: 19 (1991): 5665.Google Scholar
Loudon, Irvine. Death in Childbirth: An International Study of Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality, 1800–1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mermin, Dorothy. “The Idea of the Mother in Aurora Leigh.” Aurora Leigh. Ed. Reynolds, Margaret. New York: Norton, 1996.Google Scholar
Michie, Helena. Victorian Honeymoons: Journeys to the Conjugal. Cambridge: Cambridge UP: 2009.Google Scholar
“A Mother.” Reynolds's Miscellany of Romance, General Literature, Science, and Art 8.195 (3 April 1852): 172. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
“Offenses: Alleged Murder of a Child.” Examiner 1896 (29 June 1844): 411. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. Web. 31 August 2010.Google Scholar
“Quicken.” Oxford English Dictionary Online. Web. 12 July 2010.Google Scholar
Richardson, Ruth. Death, Dissection, and the Destitute. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, Virginia V. “Images of ‘Mother-Want’ in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh.” Victorian Poetry 21.4 (1983): 351–67. JSTOR. Web. 10 April 2009.Google Scholar
Stephenson, Glennis. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Poetry of Love. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 1989.Google Scholar
Surridge, Lisa. Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction. Athens: Ohio UP, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Jenny Bourne, and Shuttleworth, Sally, eds. Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts, 1830–1890. Oxford, Oxford UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Taylor, Olivia Gatti. “Written in Blood: The Art of Mothering Epic in the Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.” Victorian Poetry 44.2 (2006): 153–64. Project Muse. Web. 16 Sept. 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thorne-Murphy, Leslee. “Prostitute Rescue, Rape, and Poetic Inspiration in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh.” Women's Writing 12.2 (2005): 241–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thum, Maureen. “Breaking Loose from ‘Chin-Bands of the Soul’: Barrett Browning's Re-Visioning of the Patriarchal Family in Aurora Leigh.” Family Matters in the British and American Novel. Ed. Herrera, Andrea O'Reilly, Nollen, Elizabeth Mahn, and Foor, Sheila Reitzel. Bowling Green: Popular, 1997. 7996.Google Scholar
“Woman in Her Psychological Relations.” Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology 4 (1851): 1850. Google Books. Web. 20 July 2010.Google Scholar