I agree with you so much about Aurora Leigh! I love it, but the romance is so awful. I wonder if it was like that for EBB when she was with Robert? I remember wanting to write fix-it fic for Aurora and Marian! It's a really interesting book though, it's very ahead of it's time in a lot of ways, and yet EBB wrote it when she couldn't get out of bed, so all the progressiveness is taken from her own thoughts (plus correspondence with others).