Sonnet 43 Flashcards
Rough plan
Opening - ideal love
Middle - free, everyday love
End - strength of love as strong as grief, theme of loss permeates
Opening quotes
‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’
‘I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/ My soul can reach’
Middle quotes
‘I love thee to the level of every day’s/ Most quiet need, by sun and candelight’
‘I love thee freely, as men strive for right’
End quotes
‘With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath,/ Smiles, tears, of all my life!-‘
‘if God choose,/ I shall but love thee better after death.’
‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’
- rhetorical question paired with personal pronoun ‘thee’ positions poem as an apostrophe to beloved
- swiftly answers through declarative statement indicating eagerness to demonstrate love
- if love has to be counted must be large in this love
- lack of name or gender makes it seem universal suggesting anyone can experience such love
- echoes traditional poetic form but subverts by not focusing on appearance but on depth of emotion
‘I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/ My soul can reach’
- anaphora of ‘I love thee’ reiterates love, perhaps insecurity of unrequited
- metaphor provides image of speaker’s soul expanding and growing to accommodate such vast love
- polysyndeton and tricolon
- soul metonymically stands for emotion/feelings
- soul has religious connotations suggesting love transcends life on earth
‘I love thee to the level of every day’s/ Most quiet need, by sun and candelight.’
- anaphora continues, never ending love
- juxtaposes previous line of expanding love demonstrating that this love can exist domestically too
- simple sentence with enjambment suggests that this ordinary love flows easily in day to day life
- juxtaposition of sun and candlelight shows love to exist throughout the day but still always with a light present
- love seen as heavenly and earthly
‘I love thee freely, as men strive for right’
- love shown with freedom, linking to her eloping with Robert and going against patriarchal conventions
- asserts agency, indicating that love should transcend social expectations
- choice significant as much of it spent under her father’s control
- sees her love as empowering and associated with a range of ethical values (simile), morally enriching
- not a passive lover
‘With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath,/ Smiles, tears, of all my life!-‘
- intensity of love parallels her grief during childhood of losing her siblings
- lost saints also implies lost faith, which she has no rekindled perhaps due to love
- frequent caesurae present breaks breathing sounding almost breathless and full of emotion
- ‘breath’ keeps her alive as does this love
- juxtaposition of smiles and tears demonstrates love transcending all emotion
- asyndeton mirrors excitement with these words hinting at biblical marriage vows
‘if God choose,/ I shall but love thee better after death.’
- hope that God supports their love, belief in purity, subordinating herself to God’s will
- their love will transcend life, lasting longer than she does
- subversion of traditional wedding vows ‘til death do us apart’, indicates transgressing norms
- god is a part of love who will correct any imperfections in Paradise
- ultimately this love cannot be counted as its present everywhere in earthly and spiritual realms
Structure
Petrarchan sonnet (octet,sestet) - traditional love
Iambic pentameter & Rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDCDCD - everlasting, strong love
1st person - personal poem
Written as 1 stanza conveying two parts divided by the rhyme scheme which are inextricably linked
Context
- her father disowned all daughters that married, including herself
- eloped when marrying Robert Brownign
From 15 had chronic illness - head, spine - deeply religious describing her faith as ‘the wild visions of an enthusiast’
- eldest of 12 children, and experienced pain of 1 sis, 2 bros dying
- died in husbands arms - last words being ‘beautiful’
Overview
Browning uses her poem Sonnet 43 to explore the transcendent and multifaceted nature of love, addressing her husband, Robert Browning, through an intimate apostrophe. Her decision to elope with him to Italy, despite being disowned by her father, exemplifies the profound lengths to which she was willing to go for love.
