preview

The Poetry Of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Better Essays

Among the women poets in the nineteenth century, nobody was acknowledged and admired more for their independence, courage, and accomplishments than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She passionately wrote about the issues of social injustice and later on in her life she expressed her political opinions on the struggle with Italy and Austria. Elizabeth Barrett was born at Coxhoe Hall, England, on March 6, 1806. She is the daughter of Mary Graham Clarke and Edward Moulton Barrett, who obtained large amounts of money from his Jamaican sugar plantations. Elizabeth lived a very privileged childhood in the country with her eleven younger brothers and sisters. Even though she was not always full of energy, she still enjoyed riding her pony and playing with her friends. She was a very intelligent child who excelled in reading and continued to impress her tutors by studying languages like Greek, the Bible in Hebrew, classical literature, philosophy, and history. Her father Edward was over protective and had forbidden her to marry. He encouraged Elizabeth to write poetry, and published fifty copies of her narrative poem “The Battle of Marathon” in 1820. Her father’s concern for her rose when she was struck with illness at the age of fifteen. Opium was prescribed to her and she would take it for various illnesses for the rest of her life. Since women were viewed to be dependent upon men, Elizabeth anonymously published “An Essay on Mind” with “Other Poems” in 1826.. Long afterwards in a response to an American critic she called the book “a girl’s exercise, nothing more nor less! .” The poem for which the book was named was an admired effort and a general understanding in an eighty eight page survey of the history of science, philosophy, and poetry, from ancient Greece to the present. Fourteen other poems were occasionally written in a personal nature which did not show the author’s voice. Out of the two journals, one is noted for its mystery of language and “barren themes,” and the other journal directed the reader to forget one’s greed and look closer at nature. After publishing this novel Elizabeth developed one of the most important friendships of her life. Hugh Stuart Boyd, who was a completely blind middle aged

Get Access