Mary Loeffelholz [ Relevant Information ] [ Home Page ]
Northeastern University
"Aurora Leigh in America"

Lucy Larcom, "An Idyl of Work"
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
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Josiah Holland, "Kathrina"
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* Lucy Larcom, "An Idyl of Work"

[a description of the room shared by the mill-girls Isabel, Eleanor, and Esther]

. . . [T]he room
Showed legibly its inmates' daily life.
Isabel's couch, a sofa-bedstead, worn
And faded, stood against the whitewashed wall,
The birds-of-paradise upon its chintz
Dim-plumaged; and-perhaps by accident-
A red shawl, flung across the sofa's arm,
Concealed its shabbiness. Above it hung
A colored wood-cut, of an arch-faced girl
Crossing a brook, barefooted, with a smirk
Of half-coquettish fear. Near Esther's bed
Raphael's Madonna from an oval gazed,
The Virgin with her Child alone, engraved
In some old German town, a relic left
From Eleanor's home. The bookshelf swung between
Two simple prints, --the "Cotter's Saturday Night"
And the "Last Supper," dear to Esther's heart,
Though scarce true to Da Vinci. On the shelves
Maria Edgeworth's "Helen" leaned against
Thomas à Kempis. Bunyan's "Holy War"
And "Pilgrim's Progress" stood up stiff between
"Locke on the Understanding" and the Songs
Of Robert Burns. The "Voices of the Night,"
"Bridal of Pennacook," "Paradise Lost,"
With Irving's "Sketch-book," "Ivanhoe," Watts's Hymns,
Mingled in democratic neighborhood. (42-43)