Sonnet 43 (Elizabeth Barrett

Browning)
• LO1: Understand the context of the poem Sonnet 43.

• LO2: Annotate the poem, considering the views of

relationships it demonstrates.

• LO3: Explore language, form and structure of the poem

Sonnet 43
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
•Browning’s Life:
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1806 in
Durham.
• In 1835 she moved, with her family, to London.
• There she began gaining fame as an anonymously
published poet.
• She attracted the attention of the prominent poet
Robert Browning.
• Between 1844 and 1846 Elizabeth and Robert wrote
574 letters to each other, and in 1846 they eloped to
Italy.
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnet 43 is one of the Sonnets

from the Portuguese, poems composed during Elizabeth and
Robert’s love affair and shortly before their marriage.
While she wrote many other poems, including the narrative
poem ‘Aurora Leigh’, it is for these sonnets – and
particularly Sonnet 43 – that she is mostly remembered.
Elizabeth did not actually show her husband the sonnets
until 1849, and it was at his insistence that they were
published.
Throughout the sonnets Elizabeth’s husband appears as a
saviour, which is hardly surprising, given his part in rescuing
his wife from her tyrannical father. She became friends
with the writer Robert Browning and the courtship and
marriage between the two were carried out in secret, for
fear of her father's disapproval
Sonnet 43
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
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. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
 Language
The poem makes use of repetition: "I love thee" is used eight times and reflects the devotion the poet feels for her
lover as well as the persistent nature of that love. Repetition is also used in a list on line 2 "depth and breadth and
height" to suggest this poem is comprehensive; it aims to fully define the poet's love. Repetition here also suggests
breathlessness and excitement.

Love is compared to weighty, important concepts like "Being and ideal Grace", "Right" and "Praise". Browning's use
of capital letters emphasises these words.

The opening rhetorical question implies a conversation between lovers, and the exclamation mark at the end of the
first line makes the poem seem lighthearted and playful. The speaker is responding enthusiastically to the challenge
of listing the ways in which she experiences love.

Lines become frequently broken up by punctuation by the end of the poem, another suggestion that the speaker is
excited. "I love thee with the breath,/ Smiles, tears, of all my life!". She is passionate in her explanation.
 Structure and form
Sonnet form – often used to write about love Iambic Pentameter

Petrarchan sonnet – 14 lines, the first 8 lines introduce the problem, the last 6
offer a solution
The turning point in the poem where it shifts from the problem to the solution is known
as the Volta

Regular rhyme scheme – different pattern before and after the volta
First 8 lines – ABBA rhyme scheme
Last 6 lines, every other line rhymes

Constant repetition of ‘thee’ – her thoughts go back to him again and again
 Structure

Sonnet 43 is the length of a traditional sonnet (14 lines) but

otherwise does not follow the rules. There is a fairly regular
rhyme scheme, but this is flexible, and Browning often makes use
of assonance (for example "Praise" and "Faith"), which is striking
because the poem is about defining the perfect love, and yet the
poem avoids perfection. Perhaps this is deliberate.
 Attitude, Themes and Ideas
Sonnet 43 presents the idea of love as powerful and all-encompassing; her love enables her to reach otherwise impossible extremes:
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

As well as the use of lists to imply the comprehension of her love, "feeling out of sight" tells us that the speaker sees her love not as
something tangible but instinctive or even spiritual.

The poem is autobiographical: it refers to "my old griefs". (Browning had strong disagreements with her parents and was eventually
disinherited.) The passion she applied to these "griefs" has been applied more positively to her love, demonstrating that she sees love as a
positive, powerful and life-changing force.

Barrett Browning mentions her loss of religious faith in this sonnet: "I love thee with a love I seemed to lose/With my lost Saints!" Her
lover becomes a spiritual saviour. She is not totally without faith, however: "if God choose,/I shall but love thee better after death". Here
she asserts the idea that if God controls her future then she hopes to be reunited with her lover in the afterlife.
 Quote Explode
2. What is the effect of the
rhyme here? What is Challe
nge: C
1. What is the overall significant about the word contex an you mak
tual re e
effect of the quote? ‘depth’- how does it show levanc any
love? e

‘I love thee to the depth & breadth & height’

3. What is the authors
intentions with this
4. What is significant about the 5. What is the readers
quote?
word ‘height’ how reaction to this?
 Quote Explode
2. Why do you think Browning has used 4.Thinking about
natural imagery with the noun ‘sun’? Browning’s own life.
1. What is the overall
How does it resemble love? How does the word freely
effect of the quote?
link to this?

‘by sun and candle-light- I love thee freely,’

’
an y 3. What is 6. What is the 7. What is the
m a k e
y o u significant about the authors readers
g e : Can levance use of imagery with intention?
en re reaction?
Chall ntextual a ‘candle- light’
co
Sonnet 43, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Question :
In this sonnet Browning explores ideas about love. Write the ways in which Browning presents love in this
poem.
• We haven’t much discussed the form of the poem, except to note that it’s a sonnet; this is particularly apt for Browning’s How Do I Love Thee. In Italian, sonnet means ‘little song’
and is a form of lyric poetry, perfect for exploring meanings and expressing emotions at the same time (think of how a song might create ideas through words and feelings through
melody). Two forms of sonnet – Petrarchan and Shakespearean – helped associate the sonnet with love poetry: Petrarch, in particular, was a fourteenth century Italian love poet.
Browning chose to use the Petrarchan sonnet form for Sonnet 43: it has a tighter rhyme scheme, ABBA, ABBA, CDCDCD requiring only four sounds to end all fourteen lines (a
Shakespearean sonnet requires seven different sounds arranged in an ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG pattern.) The unity of sound suggests closeness and intimacy, both of which she
comes to share with Robert. Sonnets are usually composed in iambic pentameter, a regular de-dum, de-dum rhythm that associates easily with heartbeats and therefore love. Not
to forget, the sonnet has a long and distinguished literary tradition in English poetry. As an emerging poet, it would have been necessary for Browning to grapple with this form, a
bit like how, if you want to be a really good musician, you have to master your scales.
• What the sonnet form also demands is a volta or turn; a moment in the poem where there is a shift in the course of the argument or a ‘refreshing’ of imagery. Shakespeare liked
to turn in the final couplet; Petrarch arranged his sonnet in an initial eight lines (the octave) and a following six lines (sextet) between which he liked to turn. The volta is often (but
not always) pinpointed by the change in the rhyme scheme or a connective (yet, but, alas, thus and the like). To be honest, many sonnets don’t necessarily signpost their turn so
precisely. You might argue there are two possible places where Browning’s Sonnet 43 turns. The first is between the octave and sextet. The semi-colon at the end of line 8
(after Praise😉 signposts the volta. Before this point Browning was describing the abstract concept of love in a universal way: yes, she still usedI love thee, but her descriptions were
not necessarily personal only to her. After the semi-colon, she uses examples from her own experience (old griefs, lost Saints).
• You might agree that the turn in the following lines, at the end of the poem, is more in keeping with the spirit of a volta, even if the position is not exactly Petrarchan:
• – I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after my death.
• Both the hyphen (–) and if God choose signal the turn formally. And the final line certainly shifts the perspective: Browning argues that even death will be no barrier to loving. In
fact, it will only give her the opportunity to love better. As a final observation, the last lines also suggest that her love is not as infinite as the initial images in the poem made it
seem. She accepts that her obeisance to god (if God choose) would limit her ability to love under these circumstances, and counterbalances the somewhat hyperbolic intensity of
these last couple of lines.
• This turn – the requirement to shift perspective, or change the direction of an argument, or describe something anew – is what gives the sonnet so much of its power. Reading a
sonnet, you’re almost waiting for the change to happen, wondering where the poet might take you. Re-reading Sonnet 43, I was wondering about that phrase if God choose. All the
while it seemed that her love was limitless, reaching as far as a soul can reach. Then, out of nowhere, she seems to check herself, and accept that the promise to keep loving even
after death isn’t fully hers to grant. It’s a bittersweet ending to one of the greatest love poems of all time.