Elizabeth+Barrett+Browning+and+Hellenism

Walter Pater famously called “Hellenism [… the] principle of intellectual light,” [1] drawing explicit associations between Greek culture and thought with the long-standing and dominant tradition of Western androcentric (male-oriented) intellectualism and discourse. Simply defined, Hellenism is the admiration and adoption of Greek ideas, aesthetics, and culture. From a very early age, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (EBB) distinguished herself as a poet with her intense interest in Greek culture and literature. Described as “the most scholarly woman poet of the nineteenth century,” [2] EBB was educated at home in the Greek and Latin languages and developed a love of Greek literature. This interest in Hellenism was fostered in large part by EBB’s lengthy correspondence with Greek scholar Hugh Stuart Boyd. [3]

EBB’s early writing reflects her keen admiration of Greek culture: at the age of fourteen, fifty copies of her first major poetic work, //The Battle of Marathon//, were privately printed by her father. [4] Four books long and over fourteen hundred lines in length, //The Battle of Marathon //is unique because of its subject matter—instead of dealing with issues of love, religion or nature, EBB writes about the Athenian victory over the Persian invasion in 490BC. EBB establishes herself apart from her poetic female contemporaries because she chose to write in the traditionally masculine form of the epic and also because she focuses on celebrating masculinity and the Greek male hero. [5] However, read as a critique of the pre-democratic battle culture of Greek epics, //The Battle of Marathon //becomes an attempt to subvert this overtly masculine world and tradition, with EBB suggesting that changes in dominant ideologies—i.e. androcentric ones—can give rise to a kind of new democracy. [6]

One year later, in 1821, EBB transitions from writing about ancient Greek history to penning verse about the unstable political atmosphere of the country itself. Her first formally published poems (printed in May and July of 1821 in //New Monthly Magazine //) [7] take for their subject the Greek War of Independence. These two poems, “Stanzas, excited by some reflection on the present state of Greece” and “Thoughts awakened by contemplating a piece of palm which grows on the summit of the Athenian Acropolis,” illustrate EBB’s growing concern with Greek politics. EBB notes that although Greece was once the “conqueror of the world, the parent of the free,” she is now “a dying woman bound in chains, her heroic and mythical figures long departed and her native muses silenced.” [8] EBB’s genuine interest in the political climate of Greece distinguishes her as a woman writing poetry in the nineteenth century, and these early works (particularly //The Battle of Marathon //) illustrate how her intellectual passion allowed her to move outside of traditional feminine poetics into the realm of masculine discourse.

In //An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems//, EBB adopts the form of the poetic essay—developed by Pope in the eighteenth century to facilitate philosophical discussion—to explore the importance of intellectual and political liberty. EBB draws on earlier ideas expressed in //The Battle of Marathon //, stressing the importance of freedom of thought and democracy and citing them as the fundamental precepts underlying human liberties. Critic Marjorie Stone describes the piece as “an intellectual revolution,” [9] and Dorothy Mermin notes that it is EBB’s “threshold work,” highlighting her remarkable self-confidence and intellect. [10] EBB’s third volume, //Prometheus Bound, and Miscellaneous Poems//, contains a translation of Aeschylus’s tragedy that she finished in just two weeks during February of 1832. Critics have speculated that EBB’s interest in Prometheus lies in the fact that he is an emblem of resistance against political and intellectual tyranny. [11] Because he holds a passive role in the text, Prometheus can be seen as a feminine figure and “a victim of patriarchal power systems.” [12] EBB’s decision to place her translation first in a collection that is otherwise comprised of original compositions speaks to her interest in exploring and writing about how figures who are seemingly in positions of powerlessness (i.e. minorities, including women and women poets) can articulate their power through language in a way that might “challenge and undermine […] institutions of authority.” [13]

One of her last published poems, //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0066cc; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Aurora Leigh //is another EBB text that is associated with Hellenism. A bildungsroman centered on a woman poet who loves Greek language and culture, the poem makes multiple allusions to classic texts and is modeled after both ancient epics and modern romances. [14] Keeping with the tradition of her previous works, this piece can be read as a “sophisticated form of feminine protest” [15] because its heroine is intellectually empowered. <span style="color: #0066cc; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Amy Levy (a 19<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">th century British poet and novelist) reviewed EBB’s //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Aurora Leigh //at age 13 and commended her for tackling the subject of inequality in the education of women. Although she does criticize EBB for “introducing too many learned allusions” in her work, [16] Levy acknowledges that it is natural that women would want to display what public opinion denies them, namely a classical education. [17] Breaching the previously exclusive realm of androcentric discourse, EBB’s Hellenic poetics can thus be thought of as a larger argument for the importance of an inclusive education for women. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: right;">-- A. Yurgensen, UVic Engl 386/2012W <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"> Notes: <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[1] T.D. Olverson, //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Women Writers and the Dark Side of Late-Victorian Hellenism //, (London: Palgrave Macmillian, 2010), 8. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[2] Isobel Hurst, //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Victorian Women Writers and the Classics: The Feminine of Homer //, (NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 101. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[3] Simon Avery and Rebecca Stott, //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Elizabeth Barrett Browning //, (London: Pearson Education, 2003), 61. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[4] Ibid, 45. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[5] Ibid, 48. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[6] Ibid. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[7] Ibid, 55. Note: these poems are distinguished as being formally published because they were printed in a magazine (compared to //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">The Battle of Marathon //, which was printed privately by her father). <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[8] Ibid, 57. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[9] Marjorie Stone, qtd. in //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Elizabeth Barrett Browning //, 59. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[10] Dorothy Mermin, qtd. in //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Elizabeth Barrett Browning //, 59. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[11] Simon Avery and Rebecca Stott, //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Elizabeth Barrett Browning //, (London: Pearson Education, 2003), 62. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[12] Ibid. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[13] Ibid. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[14] For further information see, //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Elizabeth Barrett Browning //, 113-133. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[15] Amy Levy, qtd. in //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Women Writers and the Dark Side of Late-Victorian Hellenism //, 56. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[16] Ibid. <span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">[17] T.D. Olverson, //<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',sans-serif;">Women Writers and the Dark Side of Late-Victorian Hellenism //, 56.