News at Eleven: The Angel was the evil creation

of the Victorian writer Coventry Patmore, who invoked immolation of all ambition and desire as the feminine ideal. It was a heavy burden for women, and many rebelled against its strictures. American farm women were driven into psychosis by their isolation and heavy domestic burden; in the 1870s and 80s there was an epidemic of midwestern women burning down their homes, killing themselves and their families in the process.

Victorian writers tackled the Angel more creatively. A number, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Isabella Bird, took to their beds, but it was Barrett Browning who also first confronted the Angel head on in her 1856 poem, Aurora Leigh.

from The Guardian: Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Sara Paretsky

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