Aurora Leigh discussion

Elizabeth Barrett Browning biography: Elizabeth had many anxiety problems throughout her life. She was bedridden throughout much of her adolescence. Her father had forbade his children to marry, representing a strict and confining youth. She rebelled against her father though, and married Robert Browning. This biography helps explain her Aunt's strict and rigid disposition versus Aurora's own desire to be independent of these regulations. 

Passage no. 1:

"She had lived

A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,

Accounting that to leap from perch to perch

Was act and joy enough for any bird.

Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live

In thickets and eat berries!

I, alas, 

A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,

And she was there to meet me. Very kind.

Bring the clean water; give out the fresh seed."

Aurora is in essence choosing between this voluptuous, Italian, and free lifestyle, juxtaposed to the  marm-ish and rigid English lifestyle of her aunt. She compares both lifestyles to that of a bird; her aunt is a caged bird, who enjoys the subtlest jump from perch to perch - while she is the free bird, ready to spread her wings, yet encased in her aunt's cage. Her aunt wants to take care of her, raise her as an English woman, yet Aurora's mindset is entirely elsewhere. She wants to follow the footsteps of her wild mother, the farthest thing from her rigid aunt. Her aunt means well, but the English lifestyle is all that she knows and approves of, she neither understands nor advocates her Tuscan sister-in-law. Her aunt accuses Aurora's mother of stealing her brother and introducing him to a completely different lifestyle, controlled completely by his emotions. She accuses this lifestyle of draining him from any level-headed thought pattern, for he is a complete romantic. Aurora is stuck between these two lifestyles, for she knows the life of freedom, and thus, it is that much harder to cage a free bird. While the aunt thinks she is doing the right thing, she refuses to acknowledge both sides of the spectrum. She thinks she can almost re-train Aurora to live a devout English lifestyle. 

When thinking about the elements of a caged-bird versus a free-bird, I started to think of the transformation from high school to college. My roommate freshman year was a very conservative, family-rooted, homebody; that is until she came to college. She had been so rooted in this infrastructure, and then came to a place that had no limitations, no parent influence. This loss of structure led her to go completely wild. She now had a taste of the freedom that college could bring her, and she never wanted to revert back to her past ways. While this is opposite from Aurora (Aurora started in the wild lifestyle and then was introduced to the rigid, strict environment of her aunt), it still shows the power that freedom maintains. Once anyone has been given the taste of freedom, it is virtually impossible to go to back. You learn to be self-reliant; there is no longer any adult figure telling you what time to be home at night, or to finish your homework before you see your friends. Once you know what it is like to be on your own, you are spoiled into that sort of lifestyle. To go back home and have to follow rules once again becomes a major adjustment. It is also interesting how Aurora's aunt completely rebelled against this lifestyle. She had grown up living a conservative and strict existence, and when faced with the liberation of change, she preferred her past lifestyle. My roommate, on the other hand, had lived this obedient life, and then when introduced to this freedom, immediately accepted a new lifestyle. I think this has to do with different time periods. Where in Aurora's case, being a devout Christian was valued and appreciated, we no longer see the ultra-religious types as much now. We have now embraced what it means to be a democracy and to have freedom of thought and the ability to exercise one's own beliefs. I am most impressed by Aurora's acknowledgment of both lifestyles. Yes, she is a 'free bird' but she also understands her aunt's lifestyle, and that her aunt is trying to protect her. I think for my roommate, she could no longer balance both of these environments. Instead she began to resent her parents for their techniques in raising her. She could no longer understand that they were only trying to protect her, and she really lost the ability to reason between the desire to have ultimate freedom, and the responsibility to one's upbringing.