Elizabeth Barret Browning
and
Robert Browning.
A comparison
of the role
of the women.

Antonio Soriano Vidal.

Grupo: A

Poesía Inglesa de los Siglos XIX y XX.

Index:

1- Introduction

2- Abstract

2.1- Elizabeth Barret Browning

2.2- Robert Browning

3- Personal opinion

4- References

1- Introduction:

In this paper I’m going to compare two of the greatest authors of the Victorian era Elizabeth Barret Browning and her husband Robert Browning.

Elizabeth Barret Browning (March 6, 1806 – June 29, 1861) was one of the most respected poets of the Victorian era. Elizabeth was educated at home and attended lessons with her brother's tutor and was thus well-educated for a girl of that time. The first poem we have a record of is from the age of six or eight. A long Homeric poem titled "The Battle of Marathon" was published when she was fourteen, her father underwriting its cost. In 1826 she published her first collection of poems, "An Essay on Mind and Other Poems." Its publication drew the attention of a blind scholar of the Greek language, Hugh Stuart Boyd, and another Greek scholar, Uvedale Price, with both of whom she maintained a scholarly correspondence. At Boyd's suggestion, she translated Aeschylus's "Prometheus Bound". The abolition of slavery was a cause which she supported. . The publication in 1843 of "The Cry of the Children" gave it a great impulse, and about the same time she contributed some critical papers in prose to Richard Henry Horne's A New Spirit of the Age. In 1844 she published two volumes of Poems, which included "A Drama of Exile", "Vision of Poets", and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship".

Mrs. Browning was a woman of singular nobility and charm. Mary Russell Mitford described her as a young woman: "A slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam." Anne Thackeray Ritchie described her as: "Very small and brown" with big, exotic eyes and an overgenerous mouth.

Barrett Browning is generally considered one of the great English poets. Her works address a wide range of issues and ideas. Her own sufferings, combined with her moral and intellectual strength, made her the champion of the suffering and oppressed. Her gift was essentially lyrical, though much of her work was not so in form. Her weak points are the lack of compression, an occasional somewhat obtrusive mannerism, and experimentation both in metre and rhyme.

Her most famous work is Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of love sonnets.

Her Petrarcan Sonnets from the Portuguese are exquisite; she was also a prophetic, indeed epic, poet, writing Casa Guidi Windows in support of Italy's Risorgimento.

By the other side but in the same way it is Robert Browning (May 7, 1812–December 12, 1889) was a British poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. Robert's father amassed a library of around 6,000 books, many of them obscure and arcane. Thus, Robert was raised in a household of significant literary resources. In childhood, he was distinguished by love of poetry and natural history. By twelve, he had written a book of poetry, which he destroyed when no publisher could be found. After being at one or two private schools, and showing an insuperable dislike of school life, he was educated by a tutor.

Browning was a rapid learner and by the age of fourteen was fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin as well as his native English. He became a great admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley. Following the precedent of Shelley, Browning became an atheist and vegetarian, both of which he later shed. Through his mother he inherited musical talent and he composed arrangements of various songs.

In 1845, Browning met Elizabeth Barrett leading to their secret marriage in 1846. (The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's father disapproved of marriage for any of his children.) From the time of their marriage, the Browning’s lived in Italy. He would, in later life, say that 'Italy was my university'.

Browning's poetry was known to the cognoscenti from fairly early on in his life, but he remained relatively obscure as a poet till his middle age. (In the middle of the century, Tennyson was much better known.) After his wife's death, in 1861, he returned to England. In 1868, after five years work, he completed and published the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book, Based on a convoluted murder-case from 1690s Rome, the poem is composed of twelve volumes. The Ring and the Book was the poet's most ambitious project. The poem was a huge success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought and deserved for nearly thirty years of work. The volume Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper included a spiteful attack against Browning's critics, especially the later Poet Laureate Alfred Austin.

The Browning Society was formed for the appreciation of his works in 1881.

In 1887, Browning produced the major work of his later years, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day. It finally presented the poet speaking in his own voice, engaging in a series of dialogues with long-forgotten figures of literary, artistic, and philosophic history. Once more, the Victorian public was baffled by this, and Browning returned to the short, concise lyric for his last volume, Asolando.

Browning’s fame today rests mainly on his dramatic monologues, in which the words not only convey setting and action but also reveal the speaker’s character. Unlike a soliloquy, the meaning in a Browning dramatic monologue is not what the speaker directly reveals but what he inadvertently "gives away" about himself in the process of r. Browning chooses some of the most debased, extreme and even criminally psychotic characters rationalizing past actions, or "special-pleading" his case to a silent auditor in the poem. Duke of "My Last Duchess," perhaps the most frequently cited example of the poet's dramatic monologue form. In other monologues, such as "Fra Lippo Lippi," Browning takes an ostensibly unsavoury or immoral character and challenges us to discover the goodness, or life-affirming qualities, that often put the speaker's contemporaneous judges to shame. Ironically, Browning’s style, which seemed modern and experimental to Victorian readers, owes much to his love of the seventeenth century poems of John Donne with their abrupt openings, colloquial phrasing and irregular rhythms. Browning essentially endorses such a position because he sees an immanent deity that, far from remaining in a transcendent heaven, is indivisible from temporal process, assuring that in the fullness of theological time there is ample cause for celebrating life. Browning's is assuredly at once the most incarnate and dynamic of deities, in Christianity and perhaps in any of the world's great religions.

Browning was the first person to ever have his voice heard after his death. On a recording made by Thomas Edison in 1889, Browning reads "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" (including apologizing when he forgets the words). It was first played in Venice in 1890.

2- Abstract:

Later of explain a little bit about the two authors that I’m going to based on to produce my paper, I’m going to compare them using the next topic “The role of the women in the Victorian era”.

The Victorian era seems like another world to us. For much of this century the term Victorian, which literally describes things and events (roughly) in the reign of Queen Victoria, conveyed connotations of "prudish," "repressed," and "old fashioned." Although such associations have some basis in fact, they do not adequately indicate the nature of this complex, paradoxical age that saw great expansion of wealth, power, and culture. The Victorian age was not one, not single, simple, or unified, only in part because Victoria's reign lasted so long that it comprised several periods. More than anything else what makes Victorians Victorian is their sense of social responsibility. Yet the late Victorians were very familiar with many of the things we use everyday. The Victorian Age was characterised by rapid change and developments in nearly every sphere - from advances in medical, scientific and technological knowledge to changes in population growth and location. Over time, this rapid transformation deeply affected the country's mood: an age that began with a confidence and optimism leading to economic boom and prosperity eventually gave way to uncertainty and doubt regarding Britain's place in the world.

Victorian England was a deeply religious country. A great number of people were habitual church-goers, at least once and probably twice, every Sunday. The Bible was frequently and widely read by people of every class; so too were religious stories and allegories. Yet towards the end of Queen Victoria's reign, the hold of organized religion upon the English people began to slacken for several reasons.

Education in nineteenth-century England was not equal - not between the sexes, and not between the classes. The curriculum was heavily weighted towards the classics schools. Gentlemen would be educated at home by a governess or tutor until they were old enough to attend. They might also study mathematics, law, philosophy, and modern history

A lady's education was taken, almost entirely, at home. There were boarding schools, but no University, and the studies were very different. She learned French, drawing, dancing, music, and the use of globes. If the school, or the governess, was interested in teaching any practical skills, she learned plain sewing as well as embroidery, and accounts.

The one thing that was different was the place of women in society. There were of course perceptive women of independent original thought, but for the huge majority life was easier if they accepted that a woman's place was in the home. To lump all women of the Victorian era as one body would be wrong.

The accepted reasoning was that the career for women was marriage. To get ready for courtship and marriage a girl was groomed like a racehorse. In addition to being able to sing, play an instrument and speak a little French or Italian, the qualities a young Victorian gentlewoman needed, were to be innocent, virtuous, biddable, dutiful and be ignorant of intellectual opinion.

A woman's prime use was to bear a large family and maintain a smooth family atmosphere where a man need not bother himself about domestic matters. He assumed his house would run smoothly so he could get on with making money.

Whether married or single all Victorian women were expected to be weak and helpless, a fragile delicate flower incapable of making decisions beyond selecting the menu and ensuring her many children were taught moral values. A gentlewoman ensured that the home was a place of comfort for her husband and family from the stresses of Industrial Britain.

Whether or not you agree with the facts today, the attitude of men toward women in the Victorian age was highlighted by Tennyson who wrote of women staying by the hearth with their needles whilst men wielded their swords.

Until late in the century in 1887, a hypocritical period when relationships were quite artificial, a married woman could own no property. Then in 1887 the Married Woman's Property Act gave women rights to own her own property. Previously her property, frequently inherited from her family, belonged to her husband on marriage. She became the chattel of the man. During this era if a wife separated from her husband she had no rights of access to see her children. A divorced woman had no chance of acceptance in society again.

A wealthy wife was supposed to spend her time reading, sewing, receiving guests, going visiting, letter writing, seeing to the servants and dressing for the part as her husband's social representative. For the very poor of Britain things were quite different. Fifth hand clothes were usual. Servants ate the pickings left over in a rich household. The average poor mill worker could only afford the very inferior stuff, for example rancid bacon, tired vegetables, green potatoes, tough old stringy meat, tainted bread, porridge, cheese, herrings or kippers. By the end of the Queen Victoria's reign there were great differences between members of society, but the most instantly apparent difference was through the garments worn. The Victorian head of household dressed his women to show off family wealth. As the 19th century progressed dress became more and more lavish until clothing dripped with lace and beading as the new century dawned. A wealthy woman's day was governed by etiquette rules that encumbered her with up to six wardrobe changes a day and the needs varied over three seasons a year. A lady changed through a wide range of clothing as occasion dictated. Yet change was happening everywhere. Many women adopted the tailor made garment that showed their more serious concern to be recognised as thinking beings with much to offer society beyond being a social asset for a husband.

2.1- Elizabeth Barret Browning:

From one hand it’s the position of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Aurora Leigh (1856) is an epic/novel poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the name of its heroine. The poem is written in blank verse and encompasses nine books (the woman's number, the number of the prophetic books of the Sibyl). It is a first person narration, from the point of view of Aurora, who is modeled on Elizabeth Barret Browning's dead friend, Margaret Fuller, while its other heroine, Marian Erle, is an abused self-taught gypsy who resembles EBB with long spaniel curls. EBB sets the poem in Florence, Malvern, London, Paris and Florence. She uses her knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, while also playing off modern novels, such as Corinne ou Italie by Anne Louise Germaine de Staĕl, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and the novels by George Sand. Through Book 5, Aurora narrates her past, from her childhood to the age of about 27; in Books 6-9, the narrative has caught up with her, and she reports events in diary form. Elizabeth Barrett Browning styled the poem "a novel in verse", and referred to it as "the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered."

In "Gender Construction and the Kunstlerroman: David Copperfield and Aurora Leigh," Gail Turley Houston discusses the conflict of a woman poet: "Aurora continually talks about and exposes the practical concerns of her craft. What she reveals is that in a market system not only were Victorians prostitutes, but women as writers and human beings became the signs of market transactions" (224-5). As a poet, Aurora has a public voice but as a woman, she is supposed to remain silent. Her one memory of her mother's voice is "hush! Hush! Here’s too much noise!" (AL I, 17) Houston poses the question of how a woman poet who because of her gender was supposed to remain silent and act strictly within the domestic sphere "inscribe herself" as Barrett Browning does herself. Houston writes,

Relegated to the private sphere, the angel of the house was expected to purge the taints of the male's own daily prostitution of himself in the public sphere; at the same time, she was also expected to act as the very reward that made such prostitution possible. Thus to the Victorians the distinctions between the prostitute and the wife was very tenuous, for the prostitute just made money doing what Victorian angels/queens were expected to do without pay: that is, to fulfill and reflect the desires of their procurers without expressing any desires of their own. (225)

Barbara Charles worth Gelpi addresses this dichotomy between the woman and the poet in Aurora Leigh, where Aurora views the role of the mother as a betrayal of the artist and aspires to while taking a derogatory stance towards feminine ability similar to Romney's own criticisms of women poets. Deirdre David takes this argument further and claims that Elizabeth Barrett Browning reinforces Victorian deification and disempowerment of women by using a female narrator to reinforce patriarchal values. "The art of the woman poet performs a service for a patriarchal vision of the apocalypse. In Aurora Leigh, woman's art is made the servitor of male ideal...her novel-poem is an integrated expression of essentialist and ultimately non-feminist views of sex and gender, despite sharp attacks on sexual hypocrisy and devastating satire of women's education...Aurora Leigh is certainly confrontational: its antagonist, however, is more the middle class materialism which found a convenient ally in Victorian patriarchal formations than it is patriarchy itself" (113-14).

·Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. Aurora Leigh. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

·David, Deirdre." 'Art's a Service': Social Wound, Sexual Politics, and Aurora Leigh." Browning Institute Studies .13. (1985): 113-36.

·Gelpi, Barbara Charlesworth. "Aurora Leigh: The Vocation of the Woman Poet." Victorian Poetry 19. (1981): 35-48.

·Houston, Gail Turley. "Gender Construstion and Kunstlerroman: David Copperfield and Aurora Leigh." Philological Quarterly 72. (1993): 213-36.

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ebb/bv6.html

In an essay on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's novel in verse, Aurora Leigh, Virginia Wolff relays an account by Barrett Browning concerning her limitations as an artist. Within the body of this lament, the Victorian poet emphasizes how her disengagement from society hampered her growth and success as a poet:

Before this seclusion of my illness, I was secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the world who have not seen more, heard more, known more, of society, than I, who am scarcely to be called young now . . . Human nature, that my brothers and sisters of the earth were names to me, that I had beheld no great mountain or river, nothing in fact . . . And do you also know what a disadvantage this ignorance is to my art? Why, if I live on and yet do not escape from this seclusion, do you not perceive that I labour under signal disadvantages — that I am, in a manner as a blind poet? [p. 442]

Barrett Browning's insecurities concerning her ability to capture humanity without direct reference to human experience is reflected in the musings of her literary heroine, Aurora Leigh. Leigh both extols the ability of authors to depict the concrete reality of the present historical era, while simultaneously placing the art of the poet in the realm of the ethereal. The author seems almost contradictory when describing both the purpose and the worth of literary artists. For Barrett Browning manages to stress the necessity of grounding art in the sphere of the "Here and Now", as Graham Swift writes, while also purporting that it is the spiritual, rather than the material or formulaic, nature of poetry that truly epitomizes "living art" (150).

Immediately after Romney's wedding to Marian Erle fails tragically to unfold in Book Four, Barrett Browning launches Book Five with Aurora's pronouncements concerning the duties of the poet. These declarations and remonstrations seem not only to be directed at a general artistic audience, but also at herself. This long monologue serves to direct and mold Aurora's path to achieve poetic greatness in her age. The first aspect of this "treatise" on the nature and purpose of verse addresses the essentiality of grounding the subject of poetry in the present time, in the society that the poet and the poet's audience is experiencing at the time the words are being written. Aurora scorns authors who rely upon fables and fairytales of the past — a mythical age — to inspire great works of literary art.

Every age,
though being beheld too close, is ill-discerned
by those who have not lived past it . . .

But poets should
Exert a double vision; should have eyes
To see near things as comprehensively
As if afar they took their point of sight,
And distant things as intimately deep
As if they touched them. Let us strive for this.
I do distrust the poet who discerns
No character or glory in his times,
And trundles back his soul five hundred years,
Past moat and drawbridge, into a castle-court,
To sing-oh, not of lizard or of toad
Alive I' the ditch there, — 'twere excusable,
But of some black chief, half-knight, half sheep-lifter,
Some beauteous dame, half chattel and half queen,
As dead as dead must be, for the greater part,
The poems made on their chivalric bones;
And that's no wonder; death inherits death.
Nay, if there's room for poets in this world
A little overgrown, (I think there is)
their sole work is to represent the age,
their age, not Charlemagne's — this live, throbbing age. [Lines 167-203, pp. 148-49]

But soon after declaring the wisdom of capturing the present or the material reality of society in poetic lines, Aurora continues her discourse by emphasizing the virtues of poetry inspired by the spirit, rather than by the "external".

Never flinch,
But still, unscrupulously epic, catch
upon the burning lava of a song
the full-veined, heaving, double-breasted Age:
May touch the impress with reverent hand, and say
"Behold, — behold the paps we all have sucked!
This bosom seems to beat still, or at least
it sets our beating: this is living art,
which thus presents and thus records true life."

What form is best for poems? Let me think
of forms less, and the external. Trust the spirit,
As Sovran nature does, to make the form;
for otherwise we only imprison spirit
and not embody. Inward evermore
to outward, — so in life, and so in art
which still is life. [Lines 213-29, p. 150]

·Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Aurora Leigh. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.

·Wolff, Virginia. "Aurora Leigh" in Browning, Aurora Leigh.

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ebb/vanbrunt7.html

Barrett Browning's poem employs a contemporary setting and contemporary social issues as a context for an inquiry into the relation between gender and genre. The poem, which explores the Woman Question, as it was called by contemporaries, dramatizes the modern woman's severe need for mothers — for, that is, nurturing political and literary female ancestors. In examining the growth and development of a woman poet, Aurora Leigh shows that women cripple themselves by internalizing patriarchal or andocentric conceptions of them. When Aurora Leigh first rejects her arrogant beloved, her rejection does not free her from the grip of interiorized male constructions of women, for she merely displaces Romney from the centre of power, speaks about herself with images of male power, and feminizes him. Only when both can break free from the conceptual structures that oppress them can she fully become the woman, wife, and poet she wants to be.

In presenting her heroine's path to poetic and personal maturity, Barrett Browning not only explored the Victorian relation between gender and genre but she also created a female literary tradition by alluding to her predecessors. Her work draws upon novels written by women, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) being one major source: the female protagonist's status as an orphan, the figure of a cruel aunt, the proposal by St. John Rivers, and Rochester's blindness all appear in Aurora Leigh.

A second contribution to a female tradition appears in the poem's continual use of a gynocentric, as opposed to an andocentric, imagery. Barrett Browning's long narrative poem thus substitutes female, rather than male, types from the Old Testament and even when describing men uses female figures from myth as the source of analogy. These analogies and images, which are driven by the poem's most serious concerns, represent an important imaginative achievement in themselves.

According to Stone, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is "defiantly indecorous" in her handling of genre rules. "As early as 1845, she had conceived the work as 'a sort of novel-poem,...running into the midst of our conventions, & rushing into drawing-rooms & the like 'where angels fear to tread'; & so, meeting face to face & without mask the Humanity of the age, & speaking the truth as I conceive of it, out plainly.'(29) As her term 'novel-poem' implies, Barrett Browning does not merely mingle genres; she fuses them together to form a new whole. Aurora Leigh combines a verse buildungsroman or spiritual epic like The Prelude, tracing the growth of a woman poet's mind, with a treatise on poetics (including a survey of poetic genres) and a heavily plotted novel in the manner of George Sand, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte — all enlivened by liberal dashes of racy social satire in the manner of Byron's Don Juan. (115)

Stone further continues that subverting genre subverts gender,

Since Victorians viewed epic, philosophic, and racy satiric poetry as male domains, but thought the novel more suited to female writers. Beyond associating the skills of the novelist with the supposedly female virtues of the heart, Victorians found the writing of novels by women more acceptable than attempts in the major poetic genres because, as Gilbert and Gubar observe, novels did not require or display the knowledge of classical models barred to most women, novelists did not aspire to be priestly or prophetic figures interpreting God and the world to their fellows, and the novel was less subjective than the prevalent lyric and confessional poetic forms and therefore more congruent with the self-effacing role prescribed for Victorian women. Precisely these feature of the major poetic modes — the imitation of classical models (above all, the epic), prophetic aspirations, and confessional subjectivity — are the most prominent in Aurora Leigh.

·Marjorie Stone, "Genre Subversion and Gender Inversion: The Princess and Aurora Leigh," Victorian Poetry 25: 2 (Summer 1987).

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ebb/al2.html

Great changes in the situation of women took place in the 19th century, especially concerning marriage laws and the legal status of women. The situation that fathers always received custody of their children, leaving the mother completely without any rights, slowly started to change. The Custody of Infants Act in 1839 gave mothers of unblemished character access to their children in the event of separation or divorce, and the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1857 gave women limited access to divorce. But while the husband only had to prove his wife's adultery, a woman had to prove her husband had not only committed adultery but also incest, bigamy, cruelty or desertion. In 1873 the Custody of Infants Act extended access to children to all women in the event of separation or divorce. In 1878, after an amendment to the Matrimonial Causes Act, women could secure a separation on the grounds of cruelty and claim custody of their children. Magistrates even authorized protection orders to wives whose husbands have been convicted of aggravated assault. An important change was caused by an amendment to the Married Women's Property Act in 1884 that made a woman no longer a 'chattel' but an independent and separate person. Through the Guardianship of Infants Act in 1886 women could be made the sole guardian of their children if their husband died.

2.2- Robert Browning:

From the other side but in the same way it’s the point of view of Robert Browning. The central problem in Browning's love poetry is invariably one of communication between the sexes. The intangible influences which encourage or destroy intimacy between men and women elicit all his skill in psychological analysis; for love exists in and through human intuitions. Reference has already been made to the poet's belief that destined lovers recognize each other on first sight. But these moments of full and perfect communion are precarious; and, save for the most exceptional cases; the initial harmony does not survive social pressures or the importunities of individual temperament. It is rare in Browning's work to find such a poem as By the Fire-Side, in which the lovers have so come to exist in each other that one of them can say:

When, if I think but deep enough,

You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;

And you, too, find without rebuff

Response your soul seeks many a time

Piercing its fine flesh-stuff.

Ideal love is for Browning the consummation of an intuitive process by which the lovers transcend the barriers of their separate individualities and achieve spiritual union. Whenever this happens, there results the most exquisite and productive form of communication possible between human beings. The very possibility of a love like this excites the heroine of The Flight of the Duchess to say:

If any two creatures grew into one,
They would do more than the world has done:
Though each apart were never so weak,
Ye vainly through the world should seek[101/102]
For the knowledge and the might
Which in such union grew their right...

Browning's men and women, then, are always seeking to pierce the barrier which, in his favourite metaphor, separates two isolated souls reaching towards each other. The lover of In a Gondola pleads with his mistress:

Do, break down the partition-wall
'Twixt us; the daylight world beholds
Curtained in dusk and splendid folds!
What's left but--all of me to take?

As one would expect from what has already been said, Browning holds that undue reliance on the intellect with its ulterior motivations makes for failure in affairs of the heart. The feminine nature is wiser than the masculine in its instinctive response to emotional impulse. In a number of poems love is destroyed through the man's determination to establish his mental superiority over the woman. This is the theme of Mesmerism, for example, as well as of A Woman's Last Word in which the woman soliloquizes:

What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent's tooth is
Shun the tree-[102/103]

Since in the poet's thinking the intellectual faculties are self-corrupting and prone to infection by the uses of the world, another group of poems, written from the female point of view, lays blame for the man's infidelity on the temptations held out by society. Examples in this vein are Any Wife to Any Husband, and the group of highly sophisticated lyrics, James Lee's Wife. The comparatively early Cristina departs from the usual pattern of Browning's love poems after he had come to know Elizabeth Barrett. For here it is the woman who is found wanting to the moment of recognition when "mine and her souls rushed together":

Oh, observe! Of course, next moment,
The world's honours, in derision,
Trampled out the light for ever:
Never fear but there's provision
Of the devil's to quench knowledge
Lest we walk the earth in rapture!
--Making those who catch God's secret
Just so much more prize their capture!

Browning's conviction that the passionate intensity of romantic love is incompatible with conventionalized social morality leads him to glorify the one at the expense of the other. That perennial theme, the world well lost for love, is so appealing that Victorian readers in their sentimentality were apparently willing to overlook its frequent anti-social corollary in Browning's poetry, where the decision to give all for love more often than not involves some course of action at variance with established codes of conduct. Too extreme, perhaps, is the example of Porphyria's Lover where the demented narrator has committed murder and in this way made the final choice for a mistress

Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever. [103/104]

The social satire in The Glove results from a seeming paradox in the lady's behaviour. Her motive for casting the glove into the lion-pit seems purely capricious; and the reader's first inclination is to side with King Francis' court in its condemnation of the lady and approval of De Lorge when he flings the glove back in her face after its retrieval. On reconsideration, however, we perceive that our initial judgment was conditioned by a code of etiquette, rather than by any real concern for the heroine's situation. By trifling with convention in an apparently irresponsible way, she has shown up the ingrained conventionality of her admirer whose bravery, like his subsequent rudeness, was displayed not for the lady's sake, but solely to win popular approval. The dénouement reveals the poet's meaning. The lady, followed by the youth who alone comprehends her action, departs from the artificial life of the court, while De Lorge remains to marry a lady-in-waiting and to see her become the king's mistress, while he is relegated to the position of glove-bearer.

If, for Browning, true love necessitates total disregard of the ways of the world, then it follows that self-interest is love's greatest enemy. A long succession of poems, concerned with individuals for whom the voice of society drowns out that of passion, dramatizes, on the negative side, the poet's sense that no worldly gain is ever achieved without spiritual loss. The disillusioned lover of Dis Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de nos Jours recalls in bitterness of heart how he let opportunity slip through his fingers from cynical disbelief that the good moment could be prolonged: [106/107]

She might take me as I take her.
Perfect the hour would pass, alas!
Climb high, love high, what matter? Still,
Feet, feelings, must descend the hill:
An hour's perfection can't recur.

Browning's most provocative examination of failure in love as the penalty of faint-hearted conformity to social conventions occurs in The Statue and the Bust. The duke first beheld the lady on the day of her wedding to another man, and at once their souls "rushed together." Neither is restrained by moral scruples; yet they postpone the consummation of their love. Each is content with the daily encounter when the duke rides under the window where his beloved sits like another Lady of Shalott, but more remote from reality in her too-patient waiting. So the passing of time and the inconsequential demands of everyday existence imperceptibly dull the edge of resolve, although the lovers continue to delude themselves with the belief that such steadfastness as theirs must eventually be rewarded. Meanwhile, it is better not to provoke a scandal: [107/108]

And still, as love's brief morning wore,
With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh,
They found love not as it seemed before.
They thought it would work infallibly,
But not in despite of heaven and earth:
The rose would blow when the storm passed by.
Meantime they could profit in winter's dearth
By store of fruits that supplant the rose:
The world and its ways have a certain worth:
And to press a point while these oppose
Were a simple policy; better wait:
We lose no friends and we gain no foes.

When it is too late, they awaken to the realization that they have wasted their lives in make-believe:

And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;
Which hovered as dreams do, still above:
But who can take a dream for a truth?
Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!

In the end the lovers call in art to eternalize their devotion; but the statue and the bust mock rather than glorify the impulse which brings them into being. Fixed in their apartness, they are as futile and as static as the couple they commemorate. Art has been made a substitute for, not a confirmation of life. That there might be no mistaking his meaning, Browning attached a coda to the poem. In Hamlet's phrase, "The readiness is all." Virtue is not in the goal, but in the passionate intensity of striving:

Do your best, whether winning or losing it,
If you choose to play! -- is my principle.
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will!
The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin:
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost [108/109]
Is -- the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

If we turn now to Browning's aesthetics, it is immediately apparent from such poems as Youth and Art and The Statue and the Bust that for this poet art could never supplant life. No position is more consistently maintained throughout his writing than the one deriving from the assumption that all enduring artistic expression is incidental to the experience which inspires it. Poems otherwise so different as The Last Ride Together, In a Balcony, Cleon, Old Pictures in Florence, "Transcendentalism: A Poem in Twelve Books," James Lee's Wife, and One Word More reiterate the author's vitalism. Art exists simply as one form of creative endeavor to educe life's meaning. The test of an artist's genius lies in his ability to move his audience to action. The Pied Piper, Fra Lippo Lippi, and the David of Saul have this faculty in common. The rats and children of Hamelin Town jubilantly follow wherever the piper's music leads. Fra Lippo is going to have to repaint his fresco of St. Laurence at Prato since the faithful are obliterating its details in their devout rage. The mounting ecstasy of David's songs lifts from Saul's spirit the gloom which has incapacitated him.

The concept of Victorian masculinity is a diverse one since it was influenced by numerous aspects and factors such as religion, domesticity and gender roles, Imperialism, economy, sporting competition, manners, and much more. Some of these aspects seem to be quite naturally related to one another, while others seem profoundly none-relational. The concept of Victorian masculinity is a topic of interest in the context of Cultural Studies with a special emphasis on Gender studies. The topic is of much current interest in the areas of sociology, history, literary criticism, and religious studies. Those virtues that survived until today are of special interest to the researchers: the 'dominance of the Western male'. The concept itself shifted about the mid of the 19th century from a focus on a desired achievement of Christian maturity to a focus on hardiness. With the start of the Industrial Revolution, British culture experienced a "separation of spheres" into the public and the private sphere. Also, the Christian religion was a substantial part of British culture. The time between 1830 and 1860 was, for the most part, a period of peace, and men did not feel threatened to be called to a life as soldiers, etc. The result of these historic preconditions was a concept of masculinity which was clearly defined by domesticity, although this is generally believed to be a female domain. Naturally, this male domesticity is seen as being an instance of traditional gender roles and being motivated and governed by Christian beliefs and values. Christianity contributed much to the Victorian concept of masculinity. The real Victorian man was to be spiritual and a faithful believer. The Christian religion defined the status of the man within his home in terms of patriarchy, as Bible passages prove that were widely read as family prayers.

"Wives, submit yourselves to your own husband, as it is fit in the Lord.
Husbands love your wives and are not bitter against them.
Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well onto pleasing the Lord."

·The Bible (Col. 3, 18-22).

Early in the 19th century, domesticity was at the core of the concept of masculinity. Neither did men exclusively consider a wife and children as necessary components of his masculine status nor did they see their homes as property only. The home was for the Victorian man the place that satisfied his deepest needs. It meant a profound attachment in an emotional as well as in a physical sense. It provided privacy and comfort and it meant separation from the workplace, which places the concept of home into direct contrast to the public sphere. But contrary to the wide-spread opinion that the home was merely a female sphere, Victorian males were indeed active in the private sphere as well: they operated in both spheres. Like in the private sphere, men of the Victorian era were equally active in the public sphere (in contrast to women). Work was crucial in order to achieve a fully masculine status. This was especially true for the middle-class man; male members of the aristocracy were seen as idle because they generally did not work. By being active in enterprise, men fulfilled their duty as breadwinners in the sense that they had to provide for their family. Since home and work were perceived as very separate spheres, working at home was a delicate matter, for example for writers, who had to fear their masculine status being threatened. Besides work, Victorian men were also active in the public sphere of clubs and taverns, indulging in homosociality.

In the second half of the 19th century the ideal of Victorian manliness became increasingly defined by imperialism because the subordination of non-western cultures was on its heyday in Britain. Thus, part of the concept of masculinity became military and patriotic virtue, which defined the ideal man as courageous and enduring like hunters, adventurers, and pioneers, all of whom being profoundly self-sufficient, independent, and having broad scientific knowledge. This orientation towards hardiness and endurance was reflected by a change in clothing as well: rich colors and materials were banned in favor of dark colors, straight cuts and stiff materials. The overall concept of masculinity, which is not as timed as the concepts described above, is the underlying aspect of gentlemanliness. A Victorian gentleman was in theory defined by spiritual propriety, but in reality wealth was also crucial. Apart from that, education, manners and refined speech made the man a gentleman. Crucial were also the chivalric ideals, in the sense that a gentleman had to ensure the ceremony between the sexes, but aristocratic ancestry was no longer needed to define the 19th century.

3- Personal opinion:

I would like to say that before I have done my paper, I’m suppose to know all about the role of the women in the Victorian era, and I’m agree with this affirmation because, after I have done my paper I’m not aware of the capacity of the women, being in the scratch, to create a project to express their feelings like the Women’s Writing Project. I’m very surprised and happy with the capacity of not only the women, the men too, to leave out the bad things of the society and concentrate in what they like, write. Furthermore, now I’m aware of all the aspects of the fashion era, that it’s a very interesting thing.

Summarizing, from my point of view, I’m very happy of having choose that topic because I learnt a lot about this splendid period and those magnificent writers.

4- References:

· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Browning

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· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Barrett_Browning

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· http://victorianweb.org/authors/ebb/index.html

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· http://victorianweb.org/authors/rb/index.html

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· http://www.fashion-era.com/a_womans_place.htm

2- 1-2008 By Pauline Weston Thomas

· http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/VictorianEngland.htm