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
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There are six stanzas each of eight lines.
Cousin Kate is a poem about love and commitment but is not a traditional love poem. There is a theme of bitterness and injustice running throughout the poem. The poet is outraged by the inequality between men and women – she is a ‘cottage maiden’, ‘his plaything’ was seduced by the lord and used like a ‘silken knot’. She uses a simile in line 14, stanza 2 ‘he changed me like a glove’, addressing the lords commitment to Christina (the poet) as flexible, indifferent and not stable. Her life has been ruined while the lord just moves on.
This poem is also about rejection. There is a certain bitterness to the poem, the poet having been passed over in favour of her cousin. Even Cousin Kate isn’t happy and secure – there is the “fret” or worry of not having an heir for the lord. Included in this is the attitude that perhaps women can be bought – Kate has been, according to the speaker, with the lord for his “land” and “ring”. The speaker implies that she went with him for love, not money, but she still was “lured” to his “palace home”.
“…my love was true, you’re love was writ in
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The simile in the second stanza that she is “like a glove”, suggests how easily she was cast aside. It also emphasises how little power she has. This is contrasted with how the speaker “might have been a dove” – a traditional symbol of innocence. This image is picked up later in the poem with idea of Kate’s “stronger wings”, which means she is able to fly higher – that is to marry the lord of estate.
Yet there is some undermining of Kate’s freedom in the fourth stanza that suggests the lord "bound" her "with his ring", as if he has captured her. This is emphasised by the line "You sit in gold and sing". She seems to be like another possession, this time a living one, but still captured in some way.
The final image of the poem takes the traditional metaphor of a child being a "gift". Unlike the possessions that "bought" Kate, this is something she cannot have. The contradiction in the speaker’s assertion that her son is both her "shame" and her "pride" serves to underline the tensions in the poem.
There is strong use of assonance in parts of the poem, particularly of ‘o’ sounds, as in the words "woe" and "moan" and "howl". These seem to emphasise the speaker’s sense of sorrow. Towards the end of the poem the narrator tells her son to "cling closer, closer yet", and the alliteration emphasises both the love she has for him, and the potential fear that he may be taken
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.
Anne Bradstreet's poem, To My Dear and Loving Husband, shows her profound love and undying affection for her husband. For a Puritan woman who is supposed to be reserved, Bradstreet makes it her obligation to enlighten her husband of her devotion. She conveys this message through her figurative language and declarative tone by using imagery, repetition, and paradoxes.
This poem by Charlotte Mew tells a story in which a farmer marries a very young girl who could not be less ready to marry. The maid in this poem is abused throughout the poem by her so called husband who does not treat her even as a human. Her marriage arranged at a young age the girl is forced into adult duties and actions much too early. This cause many issues to her mental health and her trust towards other humans. The farmer, as the narrator, uses several similes throughout the poem comparing the maid to a rabbit. This shows how he views her and why he treats her like he does in the poem. The six uneven stanzas allows Mew to express her intentions not limited to another's style. This allows for amazing line placement throughout the poem, and the only form she follows throughout the poem is iambic tetrameter. There is no rhyme scheme allowing Mew to have freedom like the girl so much desires. In “The Farmer’s Bride”, Charlotte Mew uses irregular rhyme and form with iambic tetrameter, as well as thorough imagery and comparison to show the broken marriage in this poem.
A scene that I think is very meaningful is when Kate describes Mrs. Mallard in at her window. For example, “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.” I feel like this quote describes that she is now free to live without her husband. It symbolizes freedom that she has been wanting as you can tell later on in the
In stanza 12, she tells us that he has “bit her pretty red heart in two.” Next, she states that he died when she was ten, and when she was twenty years old, she attempted suicide - “…I tried to die, to get back back back to you.” In stanza 13 is where she starts talking about her husband. She says that instead of dying, her friends “stuck her together with glue,” and since she could not die to get back to her father, she would marry someone who was similar.
Firstly, Kate is noticeably affected almost immediately after the death of her mother and father. We see this by her descriptive quotes about how she was feeling and the observations she made about others in her life. Some instances include “I remember being rigid with fear, not daring to look at him” (19), “it was like being at the bottom of the sea” (53), and “...there was a whirlwind howling through me” (54). These quotes represent how Kate felt overwhelmed by unmanageable emotions; she felt almost numb and empty. She even ends up cutting her finger just to feel something and it hardly hurt at all. This is a confused, traumatized little girl. Next, Kate is affected by the basic principles her parents taught. The simple memory of her parents provoked thought of the Presbyterian Commandments they would follow. These principles shape who she is and represent a background where people do not talk about problems or share emotions. “No, you swallow your feelings, force them down inside yourself, where they feed and grow and swell and expand until you explode, unforgivably, to the utter bewilderment of whomever it was who upset you” (36). Lastly, the trauma she has endured has made her scared. Scared of sharing feelings, scared of commitment, scared of loving someone. Daniel, Kate’s boyfriend, feels he is in the dark when it comes to Kate’s past and her emotions. This is because Kate is simply scared to love him. She proves this and it’s connection to her past by saying, “people I love and need have a habit of disappearing from my life” (89). The death of her parents has definitely shaped who she is but some may say, it helped her show resilience and strength to embrace her past and move
In my opinion, the author is very open about how she feels about her husband. You can tell that throughout the poem she is repeating herself and stressing on the same idea over and over again. She praises, adores, and loves her husband and is taking an initiative to show it by writing this letter to him. It's interesting how she began the poem by using the word "ever" in the first two lines and how she ended it with the same word on line 12.
The two Robert Browning poems, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ were written in the infamous Victorian Era whereas the two Shakespearean Sonnets were written in the Elizabethan Era. The styles of the poems differ in accordance to the difference of the time in which they were written. Pre-Romantic Era poems moved away from the idealistic concept of love towards a more realistic consideration of it, taking into account the social
Contrary to some of her characters Kate was not an independent woman. She was only twenty years old when she got married, and in a period of seven years she had six children. In her early years Kate was always known as a "bright student and a great story teller", but her writing years did not came until the 1880's. (Wyatt) Kate had a hard life, and it is assumable that she wrote about her personal frustrations. Through her characters, Kate represented the idealisms of feminism.
The poem then transitions to the post-marriage life of the couple in stanza two. In lines eight through ten, the speaker states that she is too shy around her husband. Not only does she not smile, but also she does not answer her husband when he calls her. This shows that the speaker's life took a great emotional transition, as she is overly shy and feels uncomfortable around him. However, around the middle of the second stanza, the speaker transitions into another stage of
Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born March 6, 1806 in Durham, England to Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. She was the eldest of twelve. Her father made the family fortune from a sugar plantation. In 1809, the Barretts moved to an estate called Hope End in England. Elizabeth Barrett’s childhood was spent happily at the family’s home in England. She had no formal education, learning solely from her brother’s tutor and from her continuous reading. She managed over the years to learn Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. She learned rapidly and began writing at an early age.
But hark you, Kate, I must not have you henceforth question me whither I go, nor reason whereabout. Whither I must, I must, and to conclude, this evening must I leave you, gentle Kate. I know you wise, but yet no farther wise than Harry Percy’s wife. Constant you are, but yet a woman; and for secrecy no
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I love thee?" This poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is one of many she penned for her husband Robert Browning. Using the basic form of an Italian sonnet with its fourteen lines and strict rhyme scheme - she manages to produce a surprisingly passionate poem.
In "Sonnet 73", the speaker uses a series of metaphors to characterize what he perceives to be the nature of his old age. This poem is not simply a procession of interchangeable metaphors; it is the story of the speaker slowly coming to grips with the finality of his age and his impermanence in time.
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.