The relevance of this today is as important as ever, since women are now in almost every profession as men, and the female and male spheres are rapidly disappearing. Wollstonecraft and Browning acknowledged that the first step to this would be an in depth, proper education, not a limited one. 
Browning meant that women were pretty things, like exotic birds, trapped in a cage and only able to move side to side, never making any progress or breaking free from their restraints. The ability to stay in the home and be free there was thought to be sufficient for women.

Browning and Eliot’s social satires were directly reproaching stories such as “Angel in the House” by Coventry Patmore that lauded praise to the loyal, loving housewife that fulfilled all male expectations. The poem described the marriage of author Patmore’s and the harmony of it, and it was later criticized for reinforcing this formulaic life of a woman and “for the oppressive effect of this ideal on women’s lives” (1613). Everything about “Angel in the House” meets the criteria that Eliot and Browning were so strongly aligned against. Most of the poem is spent patronizing the wife, placing her on a golden pedestal. The act of men praising women and viewing them as delicate, perfect beings that could never be lowered into the same line of work as men is precisely what many women thought was hindering their progress.

This poem’s commitment to defining women as servants to their husbands confirms what George Eliot and Elizabeth Browning disliked so fiercely about the state women were in.
