"Sent to Mama..."
"Sent to Mama..."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Earliest Addresses to Her Mother

Author(s): Yana Rowland
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Theory of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Пловдивски университет »Паисий Хилендарски«
Keywords: Elizabeth Barrertt Browning; juvenile poetry; dedication; mother; memory
Summary/Abstract: This paper examines some of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s earliest written dedications to her mother (up till 1815). These provide sufficient material to stress the stimulating influence of the parent in the young poetess’s interest in writing as existence. I indicate a direct relation between parental care and literacy in the juvenile writer’s growing appreciation of time. The narrative essence of many of these early commemorative verses endorses the humanizing impact of memory which emerges alongside a sense of belonging and filial duty. The first poems suggest the poetess’s inability to be without an Other, without a guide in her aesthetic self-recognition. In the later dedications (up till 1828) Barrett gauges in a more dialectic manner the fruitfulness and rate of filial dependencies in the creation of a poetic selfhood of one’s own.

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