Elizabeth Barrett Browning

651 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Elizabeth Barrett Browning style of writing

“How Do I Love Thee?”( Sonnet 43) Elizabeth Barrett Browning is considered a great poet because of her sonnets and her love story between her and her husband.Browning was born on March 6,1806 in the United Kingdom and died in Florence, Italy on June 29, 1861. Browning started writing since age 6, her childhood was full of poems that her mother always kept.When entering adolescence, at age 15 Elizabeth got really ill, she suffered from spinal pain and later developed tuberculosis.Although Browning had many health problems she managed to write her sonnets that are what keep her remembered till today, such as “ How do i love thee”, and “Aurora Leigh”. Browning had an spiritual influence due to the fact that the majority of her sonnets have a religious …show more content…

I love thee to the level of every day’s”,(Ln2-4) this is a metaphor Browning used to explain the depth of her love to her husband, she loves every piece of him.The poem also has some symbolism, the writer uses “sun” to refer to the day or times of happiness, and “candle -light” as the night or times of sadness, and “thee” representing “Him” or the love she has for him. The poem’s tone is romantic, the first eight lines of the poem are happy and positive, readers can sense a loving and admiring attitude, but as the end approaches the poem shifts to a darker tone, the author starts using a depressive tone, “ I love thee with a love i seemed to lose.. With my lost saints.. I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life” (Ln11-13), the poems shifted to a sad tone making the readers imagine the pain she must have experienced. My first impression of Browning’s poem was that it was going to be about an ordinary woman describing and listing the ways she loves her husband, but it goes deeper than that. Browning composed the poem in such an strict and passionate way, making it seem as if loving her husband was the only reason for her existence, this makes me extremely emotional, sometimes love can make us all about someone, causing us to lose sight of

Show More
Related

  • How Did Elizabeth Barrett Browning Changed In The Cry Of The Children

    851 Words  | 2 Pages

    “One that values effective, gripping persuasion and relies on overt emotional, even sensational, expression and religious engagement--is applied to "The Cry of the Children" and other sentimental verses in poems” (Byrd). Lots of things that Browning valued were in her poems because those are the things that she cared about the most and her writing was mostly about things that were closest to her heart. Obviously it was a little easier for her to write about things she loved, because it is a little easier for everyone to write about things they know and

    Read More

  • The Holy Night Poem Analysis

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    For this essay, this essay will talk about the analysis of a poem written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1806 in Durham, England. She started reading and writing poems when she was 8 years old and her family published her first poem when she was 14 called, “The Battle of Marathon.” She was homeschooled and she studied classic works of literature at an early age. She taught herself Hebrew and Greek just to understand the bible and other poems in their original language. Her mother died 2 years after the collection was printed which is, An Essay on Mind and Other Poems. Her Father’s plantation in Jamaica financially forced the family because of the abolition of slavery. In 1835, she moved to London and published her second collection of poetry, The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838). Elizabeth then traveled to Torquay with her brother after The Seraphim was published but her brother died from

    Read More

  • Emily Bronte and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

    616 Words  | 2 Pages

    Elizabeth Barrett-Browning too wrote about her life but I saw her work as more direct and open than that of Bronte. Without the historical knowledge of Bronte's life at the time of her writing her poems are beautiful but the reader cannot fully appreciate the emotive elements behind the words. Barrett-Browning's works were much clearer as to their intent and even without a working knowledge of her relationship with Robert Browning the reader can fully appreciate the powerful dramatic emotions flowing through her words. Her most famous sonnet "How do I love thee?

    Read More

  • Necessity of Love in Browning´s Sonnets from the Portuguese

    906 Words  | 2 Pages

    Browning’s “Sonnet 43” vividly depicts the human dependency of love. She uses irony to emphasize that love overpowers everything. Browning starts the poem with “How do I love thee” (Browning). Ironically, she answers the very question she presents the reader by describing her love and the extent to which she loves (Kelly 244). The ironic question proposes a challenge to the reader. Browning insinuates how love overpowers so that one may overcome the challenge. People must find the path of love in life to become successful and complete. Also, the diction in “Sonnet 43” supports the idea that love is an all-encompassing force. The line, “if God choose, I shall love thee better after death” means that love is so powerful that even after someone passes away lov...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets From The Portuguese

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    The strongest metaphors that she produces are in lines 12 and 13: "I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!" This metaphor really puts her feelings on the table if the others haven’t already. Emily Barrett Browning has proved herself to be a fantastic poet through these incorporated elements. By referencing her feelings of intense grief, incredible bitterness, and also her portrayal of loss of innocence, Barrett Browning, who is the speaker of the poem, explains her intense love.

    Read More

  • Essay Comparing The Great Gatsby And Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    1280 Words  | 3 Pages

    At the beginning of her collection of sonnets, she is incredibly skeptical, describing Robert’s declaration of love “Who by turns had flung/A shadow across me”. The imagery of a shadow conveys the dark image of death and depicts how Browning easily mistakes love as death. This is very much a result of the expectations bestowed upon her by her Father. Due to various injuries and illnesses, Browning had been classified as an invalid and her Father was therefore very protective of her. This protectiveness manifested itself as great disapproval towards romantic exploits, which clearly fed into her own expectations regarding love. As her relationship with Robert continues, she writes in Sonnet 32 that “perfect strains may float ... from instruments defaced”. The metaphor of defaced instruments represents her own insecurity regarding herself. However, now she is confident in Robert’s sincerity and love for her, describing his love through the extended metaphor of music. Her growth is evident, however it is still visible that expectations still make her doubt herself. However, Browning ends up breaking free of these expectations, writing “Beloved... Contrarious moods of men recoil away.” By using the metonymy of “Beloved” to refer to Robert it shows how she has developed in her love for him.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Visual Imagery In Browning's Sonnet XLIII

    784 Words  | 2 Pages

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning 's "Sonnet XLIII" speaks of her love for her husband, Richard Browning, with rich and deeply insightful comparisons to many different intangible forms. These forms—from the soul to the afterlife—intensify the extent of her love, and because of this, upon first reading the sonnet, it is easy to be impressed and utterly overwhelmed by the descriptors of her love. However, when looking past this first reading, the sonnet is in fact quite ungraspable for readers, such as myself, who have not experienced what Browning has for her husband. As a result, the visual imagery, although descriptive, is difficult to visualize, because

    Read More

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

    1181 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

  • Analysis of Two In The Campagna by Robert Browning

    1438 Words  | 3 Pages

    In conclusion, Browning uses many different techniques of conveying the complexities of human passion, and does this effectively from many points of view on love. However, it does seem that Browning usually has a slightly subdued, possibly even warped view of love and romance ? and this could be because his own love life was publicly perceived to be ultimately perfect but retrospectively it appears his marriage with Elizabeth Browning was full of doubt and possessiveness, as seen in ? Any Wife To Any Husband? which most critics believe to be based on the troubled relationship between the Browning?s.

    Read More

  • Sonnet 43 By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    453 Words  | 1 Pages

    She expressed herself through writing and longed to be loved and for affection. Browning was also a writer that was so compelled wrote about meeting her and eventually eloped in Italy in 1846. Her one particular piece compelled me to do additional research into the women she was, so I could discuss her writing and have understand of the meaning behind her writing. How do I love thee?

    Read More

  • Poem Analysis of Meeting at Night, by Robert Browning

    1337 Words  | 3 Pages

    Browning's amazing command of words and their effects makes this poem infinitely more pleasurable to the reader. Through simple, brief imagery, he is able to depict the lovers' passion, the speaker's impatience in reaching his love, and the stealth and secrecy of their meeting. He accomplishes this feat within twelve lines of specific rhyme scheme and beautiful language, never forsaking aesthetic quality for his higher purposes.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of How Do I Love Thee

    808 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the poem "How do I Love Thee", Elizabeth Barret Browning expresses her everlasting nature of love and its power to overcome all, including death. In the introduction of the poem Line 1 starts off and captures the reader’s attention. It asks the simple question, "How do I Love Thee?" Throughout the rest of the poem repetition occurs. Repetition of how she would love thee is a constant reminder in her poem. However, the reader will quickly realize it is not the quantity of love, but its quality of love; this is what gives the poem its power. For example she says, “I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” She is expressing how and what she would love with, and after death her love only grows stronger. Metaphors that the poet use spreads throughout the poem expressing the poets love for her significant other.

    Read More

  • The Concept Of Love In Elizabeth Browning's Sonnet 43

    861 Words  | 2 Pages

    By using references of her grief or her losses, Browning creates a more realistic view of her love suggesting that her love is sincere as it comes from a grieved person, which differs to the positive and idealistic feelings portray in the first octave. The poet then talks about her fondness of her love, revealing that her she lives for her love “ I love thee with the breath, / smiles, tears, of all my life;” (line 12-13), the asyndetic listings of the verbs ‘breath’, ‘smiles’ and ‘tears’, implying that her love can stem from different emotions she feels such as happiness and sadness, suggesting to her beloved that her love comes from good and sad points of her life.

    Read More

  • Who Is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Last Sonnet?

    917 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through the use of a spatial metaphor ‘Depth and Breath’ and polysyndeton to represent the scope of her love, we see the change in EBB’s voice as being confident and self-assured. This relates to her context as she is overcoming the social expectations of Victorian women in the 19th century. Professor Eric Robertson stated that “no woman’s heart indeed was ever laid barer to us, but no heart could ever have laid itself bare more purely”, from this we can recognize the astonishing bravery of EBB as she overcame the difficult social expectations laid upon women in the Victorian era. To continue, EBB’s poetic feminine voice is furthered with a parallelism “I love thee freely…I love thee purely…I love thee with the passion” suggesting and abolishing movement of women speaking out about their love. However this was criticized as it didn’t cohere with the values of the Patriarchal society. Furthermore, Browning was so captivated with the social expectations of her time to the extent that her silence made her lose the faith with her youth, nonetheless through the combination of asyndeton and synecdoche in the line “Smiles with tears, of all my life! – and, if God chose” suggests that the wiser and less conserved she has become the more she has been able to tap into her youth. The progression of EBB’s feminie voice is contrasted from sonnet (I) as her now jubilant tone and growth of her persona correlates to the eventual rise of women rights. The parallelism “I shall but love thee better after my death” acts as a balance to the sombre beginning and it also signifies the transformation of her persona as she now undermines the possibility of

    Read More

  • Dependency of Love

    947 Words  | 2 Pages

    Browning’s “Sonnet 14” exemplifies the theme of the dependency of love, through point of view. Browning uses first-person singular point of view to create an emotional connection between the speaker and the reader. However, “Sonnet 14” opens with “thou” which helps the reader connect to the speaker of the poem by directly addressing the reader (Biespiel 3521). The requirement that love must come from within made by the speaker, who is assumed to be a woman, are directed strictly towards the reader, an implied male. Browning harvests pity by addressing the reader directly as “thou.” The reader acknowledges that the speaker may not be receiving the love she needs to live. A critic affirms the necessity of love by his statement: “[Browning] wants the love to be lifted out of the realm of human passion into the realm of eternal heavenly passion” (Biespiel 3522). People live hoping to reach going to heaven by doing good deeds and living prosperously. Browning would like people to realize that by...

    Read More

More about Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Open Document