The critical view of any literary work is always subject to the societal vices of the time. Judgement of a piece of writing changes over time because new view points, set to different fields of experience, fixed by completely different historical and social settings creates new conceptions that commonly conflict with ideas from the past. Criticism that is not considered contemporary to the piece in question is prevalently discordant with the opinions and insights of later literary critics, due largely in part to diversified sets of values. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a poet that has benefited from these changing mindsets as far as criticism goes, especially in regards to her explicit confrontation of political issues, particularly those concerning the social conditions of women at that point in history. Aurora Leigh is a poetic narrative that centers around Barrett's concern with women's issues, particularly the social restrictions placed on the mind and creative aptitude of women writers at the time. It is a piece of literary genius that was accepted with an incredible amount of resistance by many of her contemporaries; most of them denying that women even possessed the

History turned and twisted, women's suffrage and equal rights movements raged in the face of Western culture for nearly a century, still not totally quieted today, and the social commitment that Elizabeth Barrett-Browning's poetry emulates still stands as a firm support system for the beginning of all of those revolutionary movements. Our modern view of Aurora Leigh comes from a civilization defined by the changes that Barrett-Browning dreamed of setting into action with the themes of her poetry. The view has shifted to a more interpretive one, concentrating largely on the environment that she thrived in, and the historical background of that arena as material for critical analysis. We now attempt to transfer ourselves into the social setting of the author for a more complete understanding of the work itself and this pattern can be seen from a review printed in 1980:

"the first publication of the British Library Manuscript of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's forty four 'Portuguese' sonnets and the first twentieth century edition of her long prose-poem, Aurora Leigh, are crucial works dealing with issues at the heart of Victorian culture. In the erratic punctuation of the sonnets there is an energy and urgency close to Emily Dickinson's halting verse, whilst in the eleven thousand lines of the longer work, a 'sort if poetic art-novel', there is a sustained focus on the mind at play in the fiction which is peculiarly modern. The unifying subject of them both is the female psyche."3

Some common words found in the essay are:
Aurora Leigh, Barrett Browning, Literary Criticism, Edinburgh Review, Cowley Donne, Emily Dickinson's, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning's, Barrett Browning's, aurora leigh, elizabeth barrett, Elizabeth Barrett, elizabeth barrett browning, literary genius, confrontation political, barrett browning, modern view, historical background, social issues, issues particularly, poetic narrative,
Approximate Word count = 1039
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)