Revies on EBB in Appendix D6-D9

In this blog, I will be summarizing and analyzing three different texts from the “Appendix D 6-9: “The Italian Question, Reviews of Poems before Congress” section of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Selected Poems. These texts include “Poems before Congress” by Henry Forhergill Chorley, “Mrs. Browning’s New Poems, The Atlas”, and “Poetic Aberrations by William Edmondstoune Aytoun. These three blogs talk about women and some talk about EBB and others talk about women of the time.

Summary

The three of these articles were kind of confusing to follow along, but each article I read seemed to be a little different. In the first review I read, “Poems before Congress” Chorley talks about EBB and her writing. “She is more political than poetical, expressing her blind faith in Napoleon the Third as the hope of Italy, and flinging out a malediction against England” (351). I do agree that EBB is more of a political writer, but I don’t see anything wrong with that because women at this time didn’t like to know about politics let alone create poems about political issues. This review also says “…One who has written, in her time, better than the best of English poetesses” (352). I don’t think that EBB is one of the best English poetesses and I think that because I like Robert Browning’s poetry better. Elizabeth is still a very great poet, I just don’t “click” with her poems. In the next review, Mrs. Browning’s new poems, they also talk about how great of a poet EBB is! “a writer who unites the strength of a man’s intellect to the largeness of a woman’s heart” (353). He also talks about one of her other poems “A Curse for a Nation” and in this poem, Elizabeth talks about cursing her own country. At the time, this wasn’t right for people to do, not even a little bit. “A curse from the depths of womanhood, its very salt, and bitter, and good” (353). Then, in the last review that I read by William Aytoun he talks about women in general, not so much about EBB. He states that women shouldn’t interfere with politics. He says that “we love the fair sex too well, to desire that they should be withdrawn from their own sphere, which is that of adorning the domestic circle, and tempering by their gentleness the asperities of our ruder nature…” (354). I don’t think it’s “bad” that women can be involved in politics, I mean maybe it was like this at the time, but anyone who wanted to be involved could be. Like I mentioned above, these reviews were pretty hard to understand, so hopefully I got the basic information out.

Analysis

Even though I was a little confused on the reviews, I still liked reading them. I just find it very interesting that women were looked down if they were into politics, or even if they wrote about politics in their poems. Women are strong and independent and now that women have a say it shouldn’t matter if they want to talk about politics in their poetry or not. And I do agree that EBB is a great poet, but I don’t think she is the best female poet of this time.