Browning's Sonnet 13, By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Among the women poets in the nineteenth century, nobody was acknowledged and admired more for their independence, courage, and accomplishments than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She passionately wrote about the issues of social injustice and later on in her life she expressed her political opinions on the struggle with Italy and Austria.

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnet IV” is a sonnet spoken from the point of view of a woman who is permitting herself to remember an old lover over the duration of her cigarette. The poem is set up through the classical structure of a Petrarchan sonnet and shares the topic of a lost lover. The octave follows the course of the dream, which takes the form of smoke and shadows. The volta marks the end of the cigarette and the dream, but the speaker still continues her memories in the sestet to follow. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnet IV” is similar to other Petrarchan sonnets in both structure and topic. Upon closer inspection, however, Millay’s poem challenges the classical topic of love seen in Italian sonnets by reversing the typical attempt at immortalization of the lover’s beauty and greatness through memory. This is creates a tension which aids to divide the poem into two parts, the octave and sestet. Through these lines of the poem, Millay employs enjambment throughout both the octave and sestet and end stop in only the volta. This aids in drawing attention to the change in diction from long, euphonious, and elevated words in the opening portion of the poem, to shorter, more cacophonous words in the final six lines. In the final two lines of her sonnet, Millay utilizes a metaphor of a setting sun to compare the speaker’s moment of memory to the sun setting behind a hill. St. Vincent Millay makes use of this contrast and these literary devices to emphasize her critique,

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnet IV” follows many of the conventions of the traditional Petrarchan sonnet. It follows the traditional rhyming scheme and octet, sestet structure. However it challenges the conventions of the typical subject of the Italian sonnet, unrequited love. In the octet at the beginning of the poem Millay uses images that give a sense of transience and in the ending sestet of the sonnet she contrasts the sense of impermanence given earlier with the idea that the speaker cannot forget the smiles and words of their ex-lover. This contrast between permanence and transience illustrates Millay’s interest in a fugacious relationship with everlasting memories. After further analysis of Millay’s highly structured rhyming scheme which puts emphasis on the last words of each line. She uses these words to further express her interest in exploring impermanent relationships by using words that are associated with an end or death.

She says that she loves him to the depth and breadth and height, which indicated that her love is long lasting. The image “by sun and candlelight” that Barrett Browning creates, is that her love may be ordinary like the sun, but its continuous since the light keeps shining day and night, which is why she uses the candlelight to represent the light she has for him is still on at night. Another image that Barrett Browning conveys is “I love thee freely, as men strive for Right, I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise”. This line shows that her love for him is of her own free choice and she compares it to the nationalists that fight for their countries, indicating that their love is as strong as a person’s love is to their country. Barrett Browning also says, “I love thee with the passion, put to use/In my old greifs… and with my childhood’s faith” here, the poet redirected her emotions from her past concerns onto her love. She states that her she loves him with her childhood’s faith, which could mean that she loves him with unquestioning confidence, just like a naïve child might.

Elizabeth Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese was published during the Victorian Era, which was an intense time where poetry was governed by male poets and writers. Women were to remain silent in poetry, pursue their education, and be controlled by the desires of their father or other male authoritative figure. The sonnets, at this time, were a form often used for poetry where the men would address a maiden as an object and subject of love. Elizabeth’s sonnets was a representation of her response to the society’s tradition, which brought about a challenge to modern concepts of gender equality. They not only relate a courtship between a man and a woman, but also a transformation of a woman to a poet. This shows the proto-feminist side of the speaker, but she does not solely focus on this matter throughout the sonnet, instead she focuses solely on the equality that men and women achieve through love. In Sonnets from the Portuguese, the speaker frees herself from being both the object and subject of love and poetic thought by addressing a man as an object and controlling her own voice and desires to obtain equality.

In the poem "Sonnet 43" Elizabeth Barrett Browning use the theme of love to express her love feelings about her husband Robert Browning. tone: Elizabeth express her love by saying "i love thee with a love i seemed to lose". Her love looks sincere,and she also express her love with figurative language.

She then seems torn and goes between wanting him to love her and hating him. Throughout the poem are contrasts of heat and chill. “And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn (6)” and “fires shall scorch and shred (13)” are examples of heat, and “The ashes at thy feet (4)” and “What a great heap of grief lay hid in me (5)” signify cold.

The strong theme of love and commitment runs through the three poems we have been studying in class. Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43 is a love poem, beautifully written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1845 and is one of a series of 44 sonnets, which Barrett Browning wrote in secret about the instance love she felt for her husband-to-be Robert Browning a poet himself. She called the series Sonnets From the Portuguese. The poem opens with a rhetorical question asking how she shows commitment to her husband not needing a response, “How do I love thee?” The poem is written in the form of a sonnet, a 14-line poem, and in iambic Pentameter, which means every line, is made up of ten syllables, which alternate stressed and unstressed

Browning stated many times that she does love thee but can't explain her love for him but saying it in her romantic ways of her love to thee. She detailed " I love thee to the depth and breadth and height" (Line 2), which possible means she love him from head-to- toe. In this line she is explaining that there isn't one aspect in which she doesn’t have feelings for. She continued by pointing out her nonstop feeling of love by describing that she loves thee by "Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight" (Line 6). Her feeling of love for thee is an external feeling. I think it means her love is like a bright light that always there and even if it is the sun that offering the light for the day or it the candle that offering light for

Within both poems, it is clear that both writers view the subject of love differently. Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a love poem written in the form of a sonnet. It is about Browning’s intense love for her husband to be, Robert Browning. The overall message of Valentine is how Duffy challenges society’s cliche ideas of love and Valentine’s Day and that one must experience being in a relationship to realise that society has greatly sold us into thinking that the cliche ideas of love such as roses or a satin heart that people give on valentines day is the presentation of love.

In Sonnet 142 (which is commonly linked with Sonnet 141), the speaker addresses what critics have called the "Dark Lady," a woman the speaker loves; he challenges her to return his love, and supposes she is having other affairs.

In John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 10, Donne expresses that he does not fear Death. This Petrarchan sonnet consists of a narrator, who is probably Donne, considering that the sonnet was written when he was old, and nearing death. Towards the end of his life, Donne became incredibly reflective and much more religious, and this work is a product of that. Donne relentlessly taunts Death, challenging his dominance and power over the course of the poem. He argues that Death is no longer as frightening, no longer as powerful, and no longer something that is revered. Donne enhances his argument via the use of figurative language, imagery, and form.

Barrett Browning’s seclusion allowed her pessimistic views of life to fester within her mental prison of her grief and worthlessness. As a result, Barrett Browning built walls that protected her from further heartache or pain. Barrett Browning writes, “I have grieved so I am hard to love” (35.12). Upon first developing their secret relationship, Barrett Browning describes Browning as a “princely giver” whose accomplishments and worth far outweigh her own (8.2). Barrett Browning takes on the persona of a peasant, who is unwelcome and unworthy of entering the royal court to which Browning belongs. However, Browning’s continued devotion and love allow Barrett Browning to see him as her knight in shining armor with the ability to give her “love’s own crown” (38.10). Realizing the potential to gain freedom from her entrapments, Barrett Browning encourages Browning to conquer her heart and rescue her from her mind’s prison. She begs her prince to “prevail against my fears and fling / Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow”

Throughout the next few lines, Browning deals with abstract ideas, and she does not give the reader any physical symbols of love to make it easier to grasp for the reader. However, one could assume that the abstract ideas in the work illustrate how large her love is for the person whom this poem is directed. She juxtaposes her ideas of love with death at the end of the first stanza. In the second stanza, Browning presents the first physical images of sun and candle-light. In these lines she is telling the reader that her love continues through night and day. She continually compares her love to the love men have for God, especially in the final stanza. In the final line, Browning finally states that death will only make her love

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry has been the subject of much criticism. Her elusive style prompted many critics to question Barrett's method of writing. In fact, some critics, like Alethea Hayter, go so far as to propose that an "honest critique of her work must admit that she often wrote very bad poetry indeed" (15). Accusations against Barrett's work were often targeted at her tendency for anonymity, her excessive development of thoughts, unsuccessful forced rhymes, and more often than any other of her familiarities, her tendency to create her own words. Despite being relatively shunned by the world of poetry, Barrett persisted in writing poetry, even though the majority of her writing