Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnets have a definite form, in general fourteen lines and a certain rhyme scheme, but more than that, sonnets seek answers. Sonnets are an attempt to answer a question. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “#43” from Sonnets from the Portuguese is her endeavor to describe the love between herself and Robert Browning.

The famous poem begins by stating the question it intends to answer, “how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” (line 1, 534) The main problem Barrett Browning runs into in trying to describe love is its myriad expressions because love is, as commonly said, “a many splendored thing.” Her “#43” is a poem of contrasts. Love is a grand phenomenon, so immense it is of indefinite proportions, “…to the depth and breadth and height/ My soul can reach” (lines 2-3, 532). Love makes the couple involved better people in an ideal sense, “…when feeling out of sight/For the ends of Being and ideal Grace” (lines 3-4, 532). Yet love is also simple and personal. It is not confined to fairy tales, but is a miraculous every day occurrence. Barrett Browning notes, “I love thee to the level of everyday’s/ Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light” (lines 5-6, 532). Not only is Robert Browning a light in her life, she loves him “everyday”, from the first rays of sunrise until after sundown when candles must be lit to light the darkness.

Another contrast given in the poem is between the heights of love and the lost passion of childhood. Adult love seems to outweigh, or at least match in intensity, any sorrows from childhood. Barrett Browning seems to have rediscovered love with Browning. She notes, “I love thee with the passion put to use/In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. /I love thee with a love I seemed to lose/With my lost saints” (lines 9-12, 532). It is interesting that Browning notes that she loves him “with my childhood’s faith” (line 10,532). Children are known to see right to the heart of matters of faith in a way that adults cannot; hence, the saying “out of the mouth of babes.” There is also a certainty and purity in her love implied by the comparison to a child, as children are innocent beings, incapable of malicious wrong. The fact that she lost the love with her “lost saints” seems to imply that she admires Browning in a similar way. Just as Christians look to the saints as models of Christ-like behavior, so too may Elizabeth Barrett Browning have esteemed Robert Browning. Indeed, her admiration may even approach a sort of reverence, as she earlier compares love and worship, “I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise” (line 8, 532). Since Sonnets from the Portuguese was written before Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning became husband and wife, they probably represent the idealized “honeymoon” stage of the relationship in which one cannot find fault in one’s lover.

Love, in Barrett Browning’s case, was almost certainly a choice. Robert Browning had to ask for an audience to see her, and she was certainly free to refuse him. Their eventual romantic relationship directly defied Barrett Browning’s father’s command that none of his children marry. Marrying Browning was a momentous decision for Barrett Browning. Perhaps this is why she included the line, “ I love thee freely, as men strive for Right” (line 7, 532). However, it is also said of love that it is a destiny. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, at least, seems to feel that her life built up to her meeting and falling in love with Robert Browning. She exclaims, “…I love thee with the breath, / Smiles, tears, of all my life!” (lines 12-13, 532). So it was not just a chance encounter that led to their becoming Mr. and Mrs. Browning, but a fulfillment of fate.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in typical form, focuses on the present. According to the podcast, she was a proponent of authors writing about their own eras. However, it is also interesting to note that she writes about both the past and the future in addition to the present. She mentions the past in her discussion of how she loves Robert Browning with a love she lost in childhood (line 10, 532). Her focus on the past shifts to the present and then finally to the future in the final lines, “… and, if God choose,/ I shall but love thee better after death” (lines 13-14, 532). She indicates that although the past led to her present joy, their love can only soar to new heights.

Whatever the reader’s personal feelings about love, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet “#43” makes one thing very clear: counting the ways one lover loves the other is an effort to describe the indescribable. Love is so many things, fourteen lines can barely scratch the surface, yet alone comprise a complete list. Love is about the past, the present, and the future. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s writing about love is reminiscent of the earlier Romantics trying to describe the infinite; I do not think it can ever really be done accurately or fully, but throughout history writers have never ceased to try.