Yinuo (Emily) Chen

  

Volume 9 | Issue IV | December 2025

Branksome Hall ’26

Ontario, Canada

  

I have always been fascinated by how the double poem crops up so insistently in Victorian imagination. According to Mathew Arnold, this was when “the dialogue of the mind with itself” commenced, and poetry came to question its own place in a technologically developing world. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh is a poem of dualities, mixing novel and verse, ongoing and retrospective narration. My essay explores the themes of double vision and poetic embodiment, based on Aurora’s reconciliation of her womanhood and artistic identity. As a young adult and Chinese-Canadian, I struggle to balance East and West, academic pursuits with my personal life, and creative ideals with social impact. I was drawn to how a woman in literature navigates similar tensions. Working with the editorial team helped refine my structure and add nuance to my argument. Double readings offer alternative ways of seeing, inspiring me to integrate different cultures into my life. Like Aurora, I practice double vision – whether through performing multilingual theatre, publishing criticism, peering through the innocent eyes of a clown, or directing a feature-length film documenting unscripted moments between me and the twenty-one au pairs who shaped me. I hope my work will inspire others to embrace contradiction, see from more angles, and write from the in-between space where new creative forms emerge.