Sonnet 43 By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnet 43, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is a classic love story written to explain how she feels about love. How Do I Love Thee, has a variety of interpretations, a multitude of symbols, follows an iambic pentameter, and tells the reader a story. Browning does all of this in a fourteen-line sonnet that she wrote for her beloved husband. To understand this, the reader has to make interpretations on their own.

The Sonnet sequence also involves the idea of identity with Barrett Browning coming to terms with her emerging sexuality and realisation of love. The sequence was written by Barrett Browning thus providing a personal voice to the sonnets allowing a portrayal of the sequence of events of her personal identity and expression of love. Throughout the sonnet sequence Browning develops a stronger sense and realisation of her love for Robert, hence shaping her identity. By sonnet 43 a series of elements introduced by the simple phrase “I love thee” where the repetition intensifies the affirmation, she declares that her love is free and pure and possesses passion. Most importantly Browning now holds a sense of identity as she has achieved her idealized type of love.

In Sonnet 13 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the beloved wants the speaker to transcribe the feelings that she has for him in a sonnet. However, even though she knows that her feelings are real, she is not yet comfortable with declaring her love in such a way. In her sonnet, Browning compares what she is feeling to a lit torch in rough winds: “And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, / Between our faces, to cast light on each?— / I drop it at thy feet” (3-5). In this metaphor, the torch acts to enlighten what is between both Browning and her beloved. Except, with external forces (such as the rough winds) battling against her increasing emotions, she feels as though she must focus on protecting her feelings. By the end of this quote, Browning drops the torch, thus representing the fact that she can’t go through with describing what she feels for her beloved. Ultimately, she tells her love, “My hand to hold my spirit so far off / From myself—me—that I should bring thee proof / In words, of love hid in me out of reach” (6-8). Here, she states that she can’t go through with risking herself. For now, he will have to settle with silence as his only answer. Simply by evaluating Browning’s response, we can see how much she cares for her beloved. First off, she worries about the possibility of risking or changing the strong emotions she has. Additionally, she believes that, given her profoundly heartfelt emotions, she will not be able to accurately depict their significance.

The poem “How do I love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways”, was written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1850. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1806 in England, as a child, she did not have the best childhood when she was growing up. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a young child when she was diagnosed with lung disease that required her to take medications for the rest of her life, and she had also suffered from an injury on her spinal cord when she was riding on her horse at the age of fifteen. The poem “How do I love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways” was one of the sonnets in Sonnet of the Portuguese which was dedicated to her husband Robert Browning. This poem was secretly written before she got married because her and Robert were exchanging letters

Browning’s abandonment of the Petrarchan form expressed her challenging yet submissive nature to her society’s intake of love. In sonnet one, she automatically assumed that her life would end with the hyperphora used in “Guess now who holds thee? – ‘Death’ I said.” However, the sudden imagery of “the silver answer rang” and the antithesis of “Not Death, but Love” introduced her lover in a way that created an unexpected scene for the persona.

The nonchalance of the speaker in “Porphyria’s Lover” reveals his inability to comprehend Porphyria’s extreme affection. Both speakers judgmental and critical attitudes towards women also contribute to these messages. The Duke’s impulsive decision to kill the Duchess creates an unsettling mood, and Porphyria’s unwanted affection creates a disturbing mood. Overall, Browning’s message based on both of these poems is it is best to have an equal balance of affection in any

Sonnet 43 is an old fashioned poem; you can see this from the form. It uses iambic pentameter which creates the feeling of real speech, as though she is truly saying it to her husband. By using the famous phrase “how do I love thee?” by William Shakespeare, gives it that old traditional feel, also with it having many references to religion, such as ‘if God choose,

In the poem “620. Sonnets from the Portuguese” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Barrett presents the narrator describing the unqualified love she feels for an unnamed character. Through the use of diction and tone, Barrett suggests that love should be unconditional, in order to be authentic. The author presents this idea to make the readers reflect on the similarities between a person who loves passionately and the way God loves his children.

Elizabeth Browning focuses on the values of hope and time influenced by context and past personal experiences, however, unlike in the Jazz age, she explores the hope of “eternal”, love.

Incorporated in the poem “Change Upon Change” is various amounts of diction and distinct tone to help represent the poem. Browning uses an immense amount of diction in the poem to allow readers to capture the fractured love during the seasons. The words used in the poem are recognizable, but Browning uses them in a different way. “Ah, sweet, be free to praise and go! / It was thy love proved false and frail.” (Browning 17-20). Diction such as “false” and “frail” are usually not recognized with the topic of love. Love is usually interpreted as beautiful, strong, and real. Though never the opposite, except for this situation written in the poem. These words are specifically used to finalize the broken love that can never be reformed, and the

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning said that in her poem “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” to show her love for her unnamed husband. She shows just from that statement her love for him if she is willing to make a list solely for the ways she love him. If that is true from the poem, it show that Browning has a problem with man. Maybe even an obsession to love her unnamed husband. The poem states that she loves him enough to make a list, that Browning loves the man from night to day, and lastly she writes that she has taken her love of God and put towards her love for him. Browning has just written about her obsession over her husband and how it seems to be a problem with her day-to-day routine

Browning's romantic setting--Porphyria "has come to [the lover] out of a world from which he is foreclosed"--implies that her "darling one wish" was something comparable to: "I want to be with you forever." The speaker misreads her comment in order to escape being "a loved object to be abandoned again." He states that Porphyria's feminine position is one far too weak to break the "vainer ties" in a world of which he cannot be a part of. "Torn between passionate possession of her and inevitable abandonment, he has murdered her in order to turn her into a fetishistic object which can never leave" (Ingersoll 154). The lover confirms that he is in control. He is the observer; she, the silenced object. Even God "has not said a word!" (60), "rendered silent in the face of the narrating of this masterful subject" (Ingersoll 154). Through the power of his monologue, this lover successfully defies God and remakes Porphyria into his own object of desire.

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

"Porphyria's Lover" is a poem during England's Victorian society about an adoring husband with hopes of equality for women. According to Masterplots II, “The title can be very misleading causing one to expect a perfect love relationship, perhaps two lovers in a cozy cottage retreating from the storm described in the opening lines. However, the perceptions reported by the lover soon alert the reader to his unbalanced perspective (Dickinson 3068).” A major theme occurring in “Porphyria's Lover” is love. The poem is about a women who having an affair which appeals to some people in Victorian society. Madness is a theme Browning uses in two of his works. The lover’s love makes him go crazy. He decides that in order to control what Porphyria does is to kill her. He knows she will not stay so he kills her. After killing her he shows no emotion. According to Dickinson, “A possible additional thread of meaning may be derived from the knowledge that the poem was first published with another poem, "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" and that the two poems were later grouped under the heading 'Madhouse Cells’ (Dickinson

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