Poetry - Sonnet 43 Flashcards
Who wrote Sonnet 43
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnet 43 context
1850
Written in the romantic period
Browning was desperately in love with this man but her dad said that she couldn’t marry him
She wrote loads of love poems about her husband and he then made her publish her poems in a book
Sonnet 43 structure
Petrarchan sonnet
Has 14 lines
Rhyming scheme of (ABBAABBA CDCDCD)
Sounds romantic and perfect to perhaps show how she feels about their relationship
‘I love thee’
Repetition and listing - to emphasise how much she loves him and listing all the reasons why she loves him.
“depth and breadth and height”
Repeated soft, gentle sound of ‘th’
She’s showing the dimensions of her love and how its never ending and massive.
‘the level of every day’s most quite need’
She still loves him in the quite days where not much happens
She loves him no matter what
‘by sun and candlelight’
Light imagery and metaphor to show her love is pure and power and strong she loves him through the good and the bad times.
‘In my old griefs’
Anything shes been through doesn’t matter.
He makes everything they’ve been through worth it.
His love solves everything.
All the pain vanishes when shes with him.
‘I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise’
As other people around them are losing faith (losing faith in god because Charles Darwin’s book of evolution has been spread) she isn’t to show that her love cant be shaken or doubted.
She doesn’t have to try and love him she does just (whereas men who go to church and believe in god have to go and are frowned upon if they don’t).
‘my childhood’s faith.’
Adjective
-to show her innocence
-shes got no doubt
‘lost saints’
Shes lost her family
-he’s got all her love now.
‘smiles, tears’
Juxtaposition/ oxymoron
-show the ups and downs in their relationship.
‘love thee better after death’
Suggests her love is eternal and is never ending
-there’s nothing that can happen to make her stop loving him.
