“How Do I Love Thee?” Understanding the Victorian Era Through Browning and Stickney Ellis

The Victorian Era in English history was a period of rapid change. One would be hard-pressed to find an aspect of English life in the 19th century that wasn’t subject to some turmoil. Industrialization was transforming the citizens into a working class population and as a result, it was creating new urban societies centered on the factories. Great Britain enjoyed a time of peace and prosperity at home and thus was extending its global reach in an era of New Imperialism. Even in the home, the long held beliefs were coming into conflict.

During the Victorian Era, the concept of how a “proper” man and woman were to behave came under fire and there were men and women on both sides willing to argue for their beliefs. Though the traditional Victorian Era attitude is long since gone and devalued, it can be very enlightening to see the ways in which these attitudes surfaced themselves in the literature of the time. Sarah Stickney Ellis wrote The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits from the viewpoint that women should self-abnegate their own beliefs and become fully interested in the man. And to illustrate this point, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 43” will be closely looked at along with the essay to make some critical points.

In “Sonnet 43,” Browning wrote a deeply committed poem describing her love for her husband, fellow poet Robert Browning. Here, she writes in a Petrarchan sonnet, traditionally about an unattainable love following the styles of Francesco Petrarca. This may be partly true in Browning’s case; at the time she wrote Sonnets from the Portuguese, Browning was in courtship with Robert and the love had not yet been consummated into marriage. But nevertheless, the sonnet serves as an excellent ...

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...time. The undying devotion from a woman to a man, still existed in Ellis, but with the feeling that it was to the religious salvation end. For Browning, these ends were simply obstacles that were lost to her as the wear of sickness ground on her. Within her deep relationship with Robert, was still a meaningful relationship that Ellis may argue with. But such arguments were frequently held over these ideas in the Victorian Era.

Works Cited
Ellis, Sarah Stickney. “The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J.H. Dettmar. 4th Edition. New York: Pearson Education, Inc, 2010. 1525-1527.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. “Sonnet 43.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J.H. Dettmar. 4th Edition. New York: Pearson Education, Inc, 2010. 1148.