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Sonnet 43 Elizabeth Barrett Browning Essay

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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