Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How Do I love thee? Essay

Browning writes her poetry in a way that allows the reader to see what they choose to see. Since the poem How Do I Love Thee has different ways to understand its meanings, it allows us to go about understanding it how we chose. The most obvious way to understand this consists of the speaker asking the audience how they can love their beloved, and then attempts to list the ways. The love they possess seems to be eternal and exist everywhere, and if God will allow them, the speaker will love them after death. This interpretation comes from

The use of sound helped to make the poem light, but also intense. Her use of sound with certain words conveyed a more serious tone when expressing her depth of love but also added playfulness. In the opening of the sonnet she asks a question, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." The question is simple but gets the readers attention and interest in how she will answer. In line two she goes on to answer the question with, " I love thee to the depth and breadth and height." Her use of "thee" instead of "you" shows more of a deeper bond then simply using modern language. It explains how she will demonstrate her love by listing examples she has for him and how far her love stretches. Furthermore, she explains her concept of love, "My soul can reach when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace." To her, love for her significant other is stronger than faith. The way she wrote that line shows that her love can surpass all odds and obstacles, even when her faith is low. The words "I love thee" is used over and over in the poem to stress the importance and constant love that is there. The phrases that are used show how consistent her love is. The sound "th" that is used throughout the sonnet creates a breathiness, which helps to lighten the tone. The different sound play in the sonnet create a fun, but also seriousness to how deep her love is.

In the poem “How do I love thee?” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Browning asks how she loves her beloved and goes on to list the ways in which she loves him. Her love is seen as eternal and exists everywhere which brings to light the tone and styling of the poem and how it fits in the movement it was written in. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England. (Poetry Foundation) During the time of her writings, she was seen as one of the most influential poets for the “Romantic Movement.” Romantics focused on nature, human feelings and compassion, and rebelling for a cause, which Browning shows a lot of throughout her sonnet.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning began her poetry career at a young age and continued to write until her death. A fiercely political mind, Browning wrote “The Cry of the Children” as a girl in protest of child labor in factories during the Industrial Revolution. She also wrote “A Curse for a Nation”, a notable poem for its condemnation of American slavery. Through her political writing, Browning used her voice as a poet to give women a mouthpiece on issues affecting them. Most importantly, however, are Browning’s romantic poems, almost all of which are influenced by her husband and fellow poet, Robert Browning. In Sonnet 43, “How Do I Love Thee?” for example, Browning portrays the far-reaching extent of marriage by professing her love for her husband,

How do I love thee, let me count the ways” often is mistaken that it comes from Shakespeare. However it comes way after Shakespeare, it comes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning who wrote the sonnets, not as an abstract, but as a personal declaration of love to her husband, Robert .Elizabeth and her husband had a lot in common, but like anything else, also had many differences like : they both belonged to different social classes, they were educated and both had a great hunger for learning they both learned with different ethics and didn’t succeed in the same way. Robert Browning’s work reminds readers that the nature of truth or reality varies. He talked about evil people in his poems his poems who commit crimes and sins that fluctuated from

Love in repetition, the expression of emotion, devotion, and gentleness. This could only mean that the speaker is most likely a woman in love. “ I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning shows full emotion through this, not hiding any of her feelings. “I love thee purely.” Purely can be assumed something a woman in love would most likely incur, showing that Elizabeth must be talking about herself to her lover. “For the ends of being and ideal grace.” The ideal grace and being is also another pointer towards women as men aren’t seen to be ones thought of their grace. Her devotion during the poem is constant, never changing. The poem keeping it’s meaning throughout. There is even adoration, not a hint of bitterness or selfish longing. There is gentleness in her words. Love is continuously said, but other words are very carefully chosen. “Purely...Freely.” These passions flare off her love, as well as more feminine tones.

In the poem "Sonnet 43" Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses the theme of love to express her feelings about her husband, Robert Browning. In this poem she is trying to portray the unreal feeling of love by measuring how much her love means to her. Also, she expresses all the diverse ways of loving someone In "Sonnet 43" she repeats "I love thee" multiple times. This is to enforce her already existing knowledge on the strength of her love, and all she feel is what she love. Also, by repeating it she is enforcing it on her readers that she loves him and it is impossible to change that. Also, she implies no gender in her poem which is good because this poem is not read to one specific gender, it's read to all. When she mentions her childhood's faith,

Many authors are influenced by the society, culture, politic and economy during their period. Therefore, their literary works usually describe the condition of their period directly or indirectly. The two authors, Roberts Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, also expose the culture and the condition of the society of the Victorian era through their works. The authors are married couple authors of the Victorian era. Roberts Browning’s a typical literary work is My Last Duchess. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s one of the most famous work is Aurora Leigh. In the two poems, the authors mainly focus on the different gender roles. Even though the two Victorian era literatures, Aurora Leigh and My Last Duchess, demonstrate the social issue, which is a sexual discrimination during the Victorian era, each author emphasizes the seriousness of the issue by using different perspectives on women’s roles and positions.

“How Do I Love Thee?” is just one of the many love poems that Elizabeth Browning had written in her lifetime. It expresses the unconditional love she has for her husband by listing the many ways she loves thee. Browning lists these ways by using a sonnet layout, many metaphors, and daily situations.

“I love thee to the level of everyday’s/Most quite need, by sun and candlelight” (Browning Line 5-6) Browning continues using anaphora with the continually repeated “thee” (Browning Line 5) and “the” (Browning Line 5). Explaining how her love is persistent throughout every second of the day, even in the simplest of needs, synecdoche is used in “sun” (Browning Line 6) for day and “candle-light” (Browning Line 6) for night.

Light Tomorrow with Today, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning- Moulton. Believe that which you make in this life will always effect you in the end. Have you ever thought that, “I can do all things but fail”, always put that living light first, once you have applied that light, there is nothing you could possibly want. Elizabeth Browning – Moulton, imagined that one day one would put that beautiful light first in life, added things will keep coming in one’s favor. Elizabeth Barrett Moulton is known as one of the most famous British poets of all time during The Victorian Era. As a person of distinction Browning-Moulton made it through a struggle to be sick and to go through great pains to get where she was proclaimed as one of the most wonderful

Within Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems, “How Do I Love Thee (Let Me Count the Ways)”, “Love”, and “A Man’s Requirements”, a reoccurring theme of agape, unconditional, love appears. In these three poems, her expression of love is very evident and clear. However, the way she expresses love is quite different than many poets have and continue to do. Instead of showing love by saying she feels it or explaining her passion, she says she is committed and will love the reader through every emotion, experience, and circumstance.

Suddenly they have to live their life like they may be gone the next day and the day they are living in is their last day on this earth. There is a fire sparked in their life and everything that they do suddenly matters to them. Even the little things they do for a daily routine, such as brushing their hair in the morning or picking out an outfit the night before for the day to come. He could very well be trying to express this kind of love for her by stating it in the poem. Maybe he already does that and he wants to share it with the world. Like the fact that every little thing that she does may mean something to him and may put him in a state of awe. Or in the same sense he could be showing the world that he cares for her because he finds the little things in life that could make her happy.

Eternal Love is an intervention based on the poem My last Duchess by Robert Browning. By examining the poem, multiple variations to the ‘what if?” question were explored. (Pope 2002, pp. 2-4) This textual intervention was built on Browning’s original meaning of the poem, that the Duke is very possessive of his wife, and does not like her having relationships outside of their own. Prompting the question, what would happen if the poem was from written from the Dukes point of view?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning asks, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” (439). There are innumerable ways you are able to love to another individual. Each line of the poem answers her original question, and then goes on to prove (with evidence) that her love is indeed real. Browning describes and expresses her distinct feelings very literally about the one she loves in this poem. She explains love by listing and describing many of the ways that she knows how to love and compares it to circumstances which the readers can relate to. Browning uses love to show readers that there are immeasurable ways to have this passion in How Do I Love Thee? In this poem she expresses three major ideas of love: the