Notes on Browning Guest Speaker

She used Opiates.

She had four miscarriages from the drugs.

Did not have the baby until she was forty-three.

Aurora is stuck in the middle of two different aspects for women, Mother-Italian amd Aunt English.

She realizes she should fit into the "grey" space between the two stereotypes for women.
She published under an anonymous name after she was married.
She was more wealthy than her husband but lost her money when her father did not approve of her marrying.

Book IV Notes Lines 320-40.

Romney is angry at Aurora for not marrying her and he has to settle for his second choice. "less mutual love than common love" (330). I believe Romney is setting up Aurora to bash her for not accepting his marriage proposal.

You did not, do not, cannot comprehend
My choice, my ends, my motives, nor myself:
No matter now–we'll let it pass, you say.
I thank you for your generous cousinship
Which helps this present; I accept for her
Your favourable thoughts. We're fallen on days,
We two, who are not poets, when to wed
Requires less mutual love than common love,
For two together to bear out at once
Upon the loveless many. Work in pairs,
In galley-couplings or in marriage-rings,
The difference lies in the honour, not the work,–
And such we're bound to, I and she. But love,
(You poets are benighted in this age;
The hour's too late for catching even moths,
You've gnats instead,) love!–love's fool-paradise
Is out of date, like Adam's (Aurora Leigh Book IV 324-40).

After Romney explains how he feels about the love between his second choice and what his love would have been if Aurora did accept his marriage offer.
(You poets are benighted in this age;
The hour's too late for catching even moths,
You've gnats instead,) love!–love's fool-paradise
Is out of date, like Adam's (Aurora Leigh Book IV 324-40).

Romney dissolves into a whiny child who did not get his way by bashing Aurora's trade with the above quote, because he decides to tell Aurora "You poets are benighted in this age;" Yet poets are never benighted because some of the most famous poets were the very educated and informed, Milton and Shakespeare.