March 16- Aurora Leigh

<---Elizabeth Barrett Browning (EBB) born in 1806 and died in 1861. Her mother died when she was 20. EBB published her first book of poetry when she was 22 (1828). In 1844 she met Robert Browning via letter and eloped with him in 1845.

"Aurora Leigh"
-- Her mother dies when she is 4 and her father takes care of her till his death. Her father is a man of property and money in England. Since her father didn't get married after Aurora's mothers death the money passes to her aunt, taking away Aurora's right to be called "Lady."
Palmsest- a piece of parchment 0r paper that has many different layers of writing on it- this is what EBB/AL thinks our minds are like. Unlike tabula rasa, where your a mind is a blank slate yet everything you do and encounter makes an impresssion and shapes decisions.
Aurora Leigh is looking for the deep unconditonal love that a mother gives her child, she was "cheated" out of it when her mother died:

"My mother was a Florentine,
Whose rare blue eyes were shut from seeing me
When scarcely I was four years old; my life,
A poor spark snatched up from a failing lamp
Which went out therefore. She was weak and frail;
She could not bear the joy of giving life–
The mother's rapture slew her. If her kiss
Had left a longer weight upon my lips,
It might have steadied the uneasy breath,
And reconciled and fraternised my soul
With the new order. As it was, indeed,
I felt a mother-want about the world,
And still went seeking, like a bleating lamb
Left out at night, in shutting up the fold,–
As restless as a nest-deserted bird
Grown chill through something being away, though what
It knows not."

Aurora's mother died when she was four, not giving Aurora enough time to get to know her. Aurora wanted to "[feel] a mother," she wanted to know a mothers love and devotion, yet was unable to find something to fill that void left behind.