In the poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh described her education as torture. More specifically, she said “In looking down/ Those years of education (to return)/ I wonder if Brinvilliers suffered more/ In the water-torture.” Here, she is making a reference to Marie Marguerite, Marquise de Brinvilliers, who will be focused on in this blog post.
Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d’Aubray was born in 1630 in Paris, France. In 1651, she got married to an army officer named Antoine Gobelin de Brinvilliers. At the same time, she was the mistress to J.B. Godin de Sainte-Croix. Marguerite’s father was against the idea of her being in love with two people at once, so he had J. B. Godin arrested and sent to the Bastille for a year. This caused Godin and Marguerite to become angry, so they began plotting their revenge to poison her father.
In 1666, Marguerite poisoned her father but his death was seen as natural and no autopsy was done. However, she was not satisfied, and in 1670 she poisoned her two brothers. They died three weeks apart, and finally, Marguerite became a suspect. She tried to flee to England, and then the Netherlands, but she was returned to Paris and obligated to stand trial. In 1676, Marguerite was tortured by being forced to drink 16 pints of water. After this, she confessed to her crimes.
With this being said, it is clear that Aurora Leigh did not like receiving her education if she felt that it compared to Marguerite’s story.
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Indeed, perhaps slightly exaggerated is one’s response to being forced to do something, whether or not they actually hold interest in doing such a thing. Though on some level, it does appear that the comparison was not done simply because Marguerite’s experience was torturous, or rather involved actual torture; the period during which she is on the run bears striking resemblance to how humans react to do things they do not want to, likely because that is exactly what it is. Aurora, through trying her damnedest to avoid the specific education that she is being given, is undergoing the same process as Marguerite- the inevitable capture, torture, and the end result that all follow the evasion are mirrored in Aurora’s plight, though the consequences and significance of conflicts were considerably lower with Aurora.
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