Elizabeth Barrett Browning has a knack for relying on her emotions to fill her writing with meaning. She grasps her readers through fear, desperation, hope, and unaffected admiration. With her large emphasis on emotions expressed not only directly through her writing, but also withdrawn from her audience’s own hearts, Mrs. Browning’s work has found a permanent stance within the study of British Literature. However, this excruciating display of emotions can be considered both good and bad. Due to her focus on relationships of a more romantic side, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s seeming dependence on her love-interests throughout her sonnets may be part of the cause for the lack of independence within relationships in the generations of students …show more content…
This is when one individual within a romantic relationship has the inexpressible feeling of attachment to their lover. They feel like they can’t live without their partner and that their life is doomed if the relationship were to ever end. Unfortunately, Elizabeth Browning has a few moments that glorify feelings of this type within her work. In her Sonnet 21, she was seen appropriating her feelings of reliance on her partner’s words. She asked him to repeat his feelings for her over and over. She said, “Say over again, and yet once over again, that thou dost love me”. The way she wrote of her desires made her seem almost desperate, or even solely dependent on his love and affection. Within her Sonnet 32, Elizabeth Barrett Browning put her self-loathe on display as if it were a positive effect of loving someone. She said, “And, looking on myself, I seemed not one for such man’s love! More like an out-of-tune worn viol.” Within this verse she was raising her lover’s worth above her own. She seemed in awe that he would choose someone-or something as she compared herself to an object in her simile- so below his status. These are prime examples of love-dependence within her work. It’s not wrong to love someone, however it is wrong to forget about your own health and prosperity in place of others, just like how Mrs. Browning put her love on display within her own …show more content…
However, the way she tends to speak of love throughout her poetry may have led to the broad acceptance of abusive relationships in today’s society. A study reported in the Journal of Psychology has concluded, “Results suggest that Western cultures' strong emphasis on the importance of romantic relationships may unduly amplify individuals' levels of loneliness.” This is a study that focused on the differences that occurred emotionally based off of societal expectations of relationship statuses between two very different cultures: the United States and Korea. It eludes that western hemispheric cultures have influenced a greater feeling of disappointment in association with someone not being involved in a romantic relationship. In short, Americans and Europeans are more driven to find love due to the pressures put on them to conform to the expectations their society provides. With the combination of poetry that appropriates clingy relationships and the pressure to conform due to society, there’s no wonder that Stockholm Syndrome is even a thing. Who needs to feel secure within your own mind when you atleast have someone to take home on Thanksgiving? Right? Not really, even though that’s what Americans are trained to
Have you ever fallen in love? Have you ever developed strong feelings for another? If problems arose between the two of you, were you able to overcome them? Well certain men in Robert Browning’s works couldn’t seem to. . . “overcome” these differences with their women. Browning grew up learning from his father’s huge library. His wife was much more successful at writing than him. Eight years after her death, his career turned around for the last 20 years of his life. During this time, he wrote many short dramatic monologues such as My Last Duchess and Prophyria’s Lover. These two very intriguing and disturbing Monologues, My Last Duchess and Prophyria’s Lover, by Robert Browning, involve two very messed up men whose actions are both alike in their idea of immortalizing their woman, but different in why they chose to commit the act between the two stories, and a conclusion may be drawn from this observation.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning follows ideal love by breaking the social conventions of the Victorian age, which is when she wrote the “Sonnets from the Portuguese”. The Victorian age produced a conservative society, where marriage was based on class, age and wealth and women were seen as objects of desire governed by social etiquette. These social conventions are shown to be holding her back, this is conveyed through the quote “Drew me back by the hair”. Social conventions symbolically are portrayed as preventing her from expressing her love emphasising the negative effect that society has on an individual. The result of her not being able to express her love is demonstrated in the allusion “I thought one of how Theocritus had sung of the sweet
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...
Sonnet 28, tracing the story of her love through the pile of love letters from Robert, gives an economical and powerful image of her own transformation from doubting individual to one who has experienced the intimacy of lovemaking . Her honest appraisal of herself is also evident in Sonnet 32 where she compares her no-longer-young body with an “out-of-tune worn viol”. Whereas Daisy’s identity is all in appearances and the glamour of her physical charms. EBB rather sees love, even physical love, as based more on the soul’s intensity ,“great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat.”)The “master-hands” of the genuine lover knows how to bring her to life and she accepts that to judge by outward appearances is to wrong the nature of love. This expresses how values of the time was based on identity and how individuals and society viewed
She talks about that love with a more realistic, relatable edge. The love she feels for whoever "thee" is, assuming it's Robert Browning, her husband, is passionate and beautiful, but she talks about her love only after she admits a group of less warm, loving feelings. It is very prevalent in each sonnet contained. It’s easy to see that loving her beloved, her husband, is the one of the ways she actually knows she exists. She tries to list the many different types of love that she so obviously feels, and also to figure out the many different types of relationships between these vast and different kinds of love.
Moreover, this scenario also reappears at the end of the sonnet, where Browning says, ". . . if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death" (13-14). In this comparison, Browning 's love is stretched past death to the afterlife, where death becomes a physical and visual reference point, however, the afterlife is not something the reader can visualize. Therefore, the relationship between Browning 's love and the afterlife could not be more ungraspable for the reader, as the reader has no insight into what Browning 's particular afterlife looks like, with respect to her sonnet. Furthermore, Browning 's ending verse, and the aforementioned two verses, all have a common idea: Browning 's comparisons all revolve around contradictions. The sonnet is essentially about the great, vast love Browning feels for her husband, however, that great, vast love is restricted by each comparison, as each comparison has an unwavering finality. For example, in the first verse mentioned, Browning 's love is being compared to a measureable quantity, "the depth and breadth and height[,]" (2) the volume, of her soul. In this case, how much her soul can contain is limited by the measureable quantity of volume. In addition, the second verse, at lines 5
In “Sonnet XVII,” the text begins by expressing the ways in which the narrator does not love, superficially. The narrator is captivated by his object of affection, and her inner beauty is of the upmost significance. The poem shows the narrator’s utter helplessness and vulnerability because it is characterized by raw emotions rather than logic. It then sculpts the image that the love created is so personal that the narrator is alone in his enchantment. Therefore, he is ultimately isolated because no one can fathom the love he is encountering. The narrator unveils his private thoughts, leaving him exposed and susceptible to ridicule and speculation. However, as the sonnet advances toward an end, it displays the true heartfelt description of love and finally shows how two people unite as one in an overwhelming intimacy.
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 ...
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.
In the end, Browning loves him freely, without coercion; she loves him purely, without expectation of personal gain. Her love is a sacrificial love, trials or tribulations can never waiver it. Browning uses numerous poetic devices such as metaphors and alliterations to amplify the implications she intends for the reader to feel. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” is a fairy tale transcended into reality. Love knows no reason but yet defies all reason. This very saying is the crux of Browning poem. In the end, she “shall but love thee better after death.” (Browning Line 14).
She says “writing can be an expression of one 's innermost feelings. It can allow the reader to tap into the deepest recesses of one 's heart and soul. It is indeed the gifted author that can cause the reader to cry at her words and feel hope within the same poem. Many authors as well, as ordinary people use writing as a way to release emotions.” She makes plenty points in her review that I completely agree with. After reading the poem I think that Elizabeth Barret Browning is not only the author of her famous poem, but also the speaker as well. She is a woman simply expressing her love for her husband in a passionate way through poetry. In the 1st Line it reads “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” A woman drunk in love she is, and next she begins to count the numerous ways she can love her significant
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the braver literary pioneers. Choosing to utilize the vocabulary she favored rather than submit to the harsh criticisms of those who held the power to make or break her is an applaudable novelty about her. Many writers, having been successful in their literary exploits, are susceptible to accusations that their work was catered to critics. Surely, this cannot and should not be said of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
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.
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...
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