Aurora Leigh (cont.)

- Book III, 302-12
1. This passage suggests that Aurora cannot make a living on poetry alone. Though it is the superior medium to prose, it is not the mainstream and as such for her to support herself she must give in and take part in mundane prose occupations such as magazines and cyclopedias.
2. Aurora presents prose and poetry as juxtaposed. One is the hands and the other is the feet. One is a true art form while the other is purely for function. She clearly puts poetry on a plane that prose can never reach.
3. By use of a woman-artist writing a poem about a woman-artist who writes poetry it forms multiple layers of the idea of the importance of the medium. It just re-focuses over and over on the fact that poetry is an essential artistic form.

- Book II, 400-6
1. Aurora calls out Romney for loving a "cause" not a "woman." She is saying that his ends are excellent, and he has a noble cause, but that she is not worthy of it. She states that he loves what she COULD BE for him, not what she is.

- Book II, 671-85
1. Aurora wrote a letter to her aunt saying that God did not want her to marry Romney, and that "At least my soul is not a pauper." She would rather die a poor poetess but with her soul true, than live as a rich wife in a marriage solely for money and her poetry destroyed.