Browning’s Heroines

A work of criticism from 1913, this book reads the women in Robert Browning’s poetry and asks what kind of female character he actually drew. Mayne works figure by figure, from Pippa and Pompilia to the wronged wives and the great ladies, arguing that Browning’s heroines show a devotion that chooses rather than one that submits, with gaiety, courage, and trust as their shared marks. She reads the poems for their psychology as much as their music, treating each woman as a person with her own will. For readers who know Browning chiefly as a difficult stylist, the study offers a way in through his characters, and it stands as an early instance of a woman critic taking a major Victorian poet seriously on the question of how he imagined women.