Women’s Writing, Volume 12, Number 2, 2005 241 Prostitute Rescue, Rape, and Poetic Inspiration in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh LESLEE THORNE-MURPHY ABSTRACT In Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning portrays a poet who attempts to reorganize society radically solely by inspiring her readers. At the end of the narrative, however, we are left wondering what a world reformed by poetry would look like. What would a Barrett-Browning-esque Utopia be? Barrett Browning refuses to answer this question directly, with one notable exception. The social concern whose remedy she most consistently weaves into her narrative is the elimination of sexual violence, addressed through discussions of rape and prostitution. In this article, the author explores the Greek myths of rape that Aurora uses as metaphors for her own poetic inspiration. Aurora’s revision of these myths is completed by her quest to “rescue” Marian (who she presumes is a prostitute) from the streets of Paris, and by her confrontation with and acceptance of Marian’s rape. A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast… Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? (William Butler Yeats, “Leda and the Swan”) In her epic novel-poem Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning offers an overarching philosophy of a poetry which would fundamentally alter society’s organization. Discussion of a poet’s social mission permeates the text, and