The Uncertain Literary Afterlife of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In the article "The Uncertain Literary Afterlife of Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Fiona Sampson on the Vicissitudes of the Male Viewpoint," Sampson explores the legacy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and how she was perceived after her death by a literary market that was almost exclusively male and a society that excluded women by way of denying them an education, disenfranchising them and preventing them from participating in democracy through voting, passing legislation so that a married woman could not own property of her own, and the myriad other ways women have been marginalized and silenced throughout history.

In one encyclopedia entry, it states that "Mrs. Browning's enthusiasms... gave her husband much grief." The entry in question is from the 1973 Oxford Anthology of English Literature. A full century after her death in 1868, precious little had changed regarding the perception of her in society. She was seen more as a hindrance to her husband, who was also in the literary world, rather than as a poet in her own right. Sampson argues that the legacy Browning left was severely undermined by the male gaze and the rigid patriarchy of the society within which she lived and wrote.