By educating and enlightening her readers on the plight of women during the Victorian era and showing the worth of all women, Elizabeth Barrett Browning explores and challenges traditional Victorian gender roles by attacking and exploiting societal injustices and using universal symbolism to establish a relatable and deeper meaning to her readers. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is one of the most prominent and influential poets of the Victorian age. Throughout her career, she would never shy away from an opportunity to express her opinion on controversial (including social or political) issues of the time. While other female poets of the time wrote about traditionally accepted topics for women, such as nature and romance (topics that …show more content…
Ever since she was a child she admired Mary Wollstonecraft, an English writer and poet who was an influential advocate of women’s rights. She was entranced by Wollstonecraft’s bold nature and exploration into controversial topics. Barrett Browning believed, starting from a young age, that education for women was very important to the advancement of women’s rights and the expansion of possibilities for the roles of women in the workforce and society. She realized that the only way women would be able to achieve meaningful roles in society which could be influential would be to attain a proper education. These beliefs then fueled her feministic movement through poetry, paving the way for new, modern gender roles and expectations in the future. As a child, Elizabeth grew up exposed to her father’s and brother’s participation in the Whig party, which at the time competed for power with their rivals, the Tories, and fought for individual rights of the people. This then influenced and revealed to Barrett Browning that her role as a poet was to attack the injustices of society and fight for liberty for all. Attacking these injustices in society became a common theme within her