Preview

Compare the Different Ways in Which 19th Century Female Poets Explore the Theme of Love

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2029 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Compare the Different Ways in Which 19th Century Female Poets Explore the Theme of Love
In the 19th century women were not treated as they are today. Women had very little rights, in fact women and children had about the same amount. Women could not vote or sue or own property, even if it was inherited from her family. Women were seen to be there only to provide children and do all the domestic chores. The only occupation that women could have was of a teacher or a domestic servant. Women were also not allowed to own checking accounts or savings. In this era many men idolised women and saw them as being pure and clean. This was the traditional view of women, not only was there a view on women but also one of love.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the author of How do I love thee? .This poem is a traditional Victorian love poem which follows the rigid sonnet structure. Using this structure places limits on what you want to say and how you can describe things, but the poet has used this form to show how serious her love is. This structure also gives the poem authority.
The rhythm of Iambic Pentameter emphasises the important words at the end of each line. It also creates a joyous musical tone. The use of Iambic Pentameter steers away from the rigid structure and helps the reader feel like the poem is flowing and it also helps to create a rhythm. To help create the rhythm and flow the poet uses stressed syllables such as “breath” and “thee”, these words have an exaggerated vowel sound.
This poem is full of Imagery especially religious. The poet uses religious imagery to describe her love for her husband is almost like her love for her God. She claims to love her husband “purely” which is the way that she should/would love her God. She is comparing the way that she loves to many religious things. She compares loving her husband to thinking about heaven “My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight”. But because she is comparing her love for her husband to her God it almost seems as if to a certain extent that her love for her God is not as important

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    ‘How do I love Thee?’ is a poem written by Elizabeth Browning in 1850 in which she explains her intense love for a man. This is a Petrarchan sonnet; made up of fourteen lines, contains an octave, sestet, and volte. It is written in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme of the octave being different from the sestet; that is abba, abba, cdcdcd to make the poem a question and answer poem. The octave poses a rhetorical question in the first line of the poem saying “how much do I love thee?” and the sestet gives the answer to how much she loves him. She uses alliterations like thee/ they, soul /sight, and passion/put to give rhythm to the poem. Elizabeth Browning expresses an intense love for her man in which she says she loves him to the depth and breadth and height her soul can reach implying the extent and wideness to which she feels for him. She says she loves him so much so that she can take care of his needs in the day and in the night and she uses the sun and candle to express the day light which gives one a visual imagery of what she means. In line seven, Elizabeth Browning says she loves her man freely and purely which means that she loves him genuinely and willingly without expecting anything in return. She is faithful to her husband, with her love as innocent as that of a child as she explains in line ten. The theme of the poem is about intense love for the man, as intense as she says in line fourteen that even after death she will still love her husband, meaning…

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Prominent Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browing first published Sonnets from the Portuguese in 1850. These sonnets were written as a personal declaration of love to her husband, Robert Browning. She implied that these sonnets were originally written by someone else in Portuguese and that she had translated them when in reality these were her own authentic compositions. She initially planned to call the collection Sonnets from the Bosnian, but Robert insisted that she claim they are from Portuguese, mainly because "my little Portuguese" was a nickname he had for her. ("Sonnets from the Portuguese") Perhaps the intimate origin of the sonnets is what led Elizabeth to create such intimate sonnets, such as "How do I love thee? (Sonnet 43)" easily being one of her most famous sonnets. This sonnet not only paints the many ways to love someone…

    • 1303 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Many poems, written before the 1900’s, express the emotion of love. Each poem explores the meaning in a different way and in different forms. In this essay I will be investigating three different poems/sonnets; La Belle Dame Sans Merci written by John Keats, Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning and last but not least Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. All of these have very different aspects and views, this is what makes them so interesting to compare because of the wide contrast involving the three poems.…

    • 2818 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Barrett Browning and Khalvati use a wide range of poetic techniques in their poems to emphasize their feelings of love. In Sonnet 43, Barrett Browning makes the use of anaphora, which is the deliberate repetition of a word or phrase to establish the tone regarding love, for example she repeats the phrase “I love thee” through out the poem. This gives an effect that her love for him has no boundaries and that she loves her partner in many different ways and she is listing some of them in her poem it also reinforces how much she loves him, whereas in Ghazal, the use of anaphora is not to the same extent. She repeats, “If I am” often throughout the poem to link herself to the person, showing perhaps that her love is unrequited. Khalvati uses the idea of assonance to create possibly a rhythm to the poem, such as “blow through me. If I am the rose and you the bird, then woo me.” In these sentences, “through”, “you” and “woo” all have the same ending sound, this makes it catchy for the reader and is also a way of rhyming, it also gives a very passionate feel to the poem. Barrett Browning also uses the technique of rhyming in Sonnet 43, which gives the same effect.…

    • 1303 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    • 1349 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The success followed with the popular poem “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count thy Ways”. Her inspiration came from her courtship with Robert Browning. Elizabeth Barrett Browning expresses “I love thee with the passion put to use. In my old griefs, and with my child hood faith” (line 9-10), where she is revealing her love for Robert Browning which would not be possible without her past struggles and heartaches from childhood. This poem was part of Sonnets of The Portuguese which critics acclaimed to be her most inspirational work. Browning never won any award for her writing but was considered for the Poet Laureate of England, succeeding William Wordsworth.…

    • 1349 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’ is a poem written in the 19th century by a poet named Elizabeth Barret Brown. Assuming that this love sonnet was written from the poets point of view this poem is about how a lady loves her lover. The title suggests that this poet will list how she loves a certain person and in how many different ways and the poem does exactly that, Elizabeth also compares her love to things that it is not possible to live without. The language used in the title such as the word ‘thee’ instead of saying ‘you’ shows that modern day language will not be present.…

    • 1628 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “How Do I Love Thee?” is a sonnet written by Elizabeth Browning. The speaker begins by posing a question that the entire sonnet will go on to answer: "How do I love thee?" Both this poem and Romeo and Juliet present the theme of love. There are similarities in both views of love including love as everything in life. But there are differences in these two types of love like their maturity and desires in the love relationship.…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How Do I Love Thee?

    • 710 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The poem, "How do I love thee" is a passionate affirmation of love from Elizabeth to her lover Robert Browning. In this poem, Elizabeth declares her spiritual and pure love for Robert and describes the many ways in which she feels for him, and therefore defines her love. On the poem she express three different ideas of love which are the depth of her love, an attempt to describe the indescribable and the comparison to known feelings and interactions.…

    • 710 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the sonnet, Barrett Browning repeats “I love thee” over and over again rather than using different words for love. This anaphora is to enforce the already existing knowledge about the strength of her love, and that what she feels is love, nothing more and nothing less. Also, by repeating it she is enforcing it on the readers that she loves him and there is nothing else to do about it, nothing that will make her change her mind. Also in the poem, no gender is implied. She just keeps saying “Thee” which has a certain formality over it. This is a very powerful key factor to the poem because she uses no gender markers such as him, her, she or he which makes it possible for the poem to be read out loud to any gender with any sexual preference. When she mentions her childhood’s faith she is implying the innocence of their relationship and how they can be naïve sometimes. But love needs naivety to survive. If you cannot believe there is no need for even trying.…

    • 635 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem, How Do I Love Thee, love is everything. For Ms Browning, love is not a material, everyday concept but an infinite, eternal hold. The poem is not related to how she loves or why, but just the way in which she does so; freely and purely. It speaks of a valuable human emotion that so many people feel at some point in their lives whether or not the feeling is reciprocated. Ms Browning attempts to present this within the sonnet in such a way that can be appreciated and related to.…

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Effects of Poetic Devices

    • 1738 Words
    • 7 Pages

    ANGLO-CHINESE SCHOOL (INDEPENDENT) English Language and Literature Department Poetic Devices and their Likely Effects Alliteration Gains reader’s attention through repetition of a consonant sound, appeals to the sense of hearing, emphasizes words, links lines, unifies stanzas (or the poem as a whole), and enhances flow of poem. Draws attention to particular words or lines through repetition of a vowel sound, appeals to the sense of hearing, enhances the development of the image created by the words. Links and unifies lines (and the poem as a whole), emphasizes words, adds fluency to the poem. Appeals to the audience’s sense of hearing, enhances imagery of poem, and develops an image (positive or negative) by creating a sound word. Creates a set of rhythm for the poem, enhances flow of poem and its appeal to audiences, e.g. iambic pentameter creates a steady rhythm which has been noted as being similar to natural speech. Emphasizes two lines, enables the poet to develop a theme or mood more clearly, can serve like the punch line to a riddle or the answer to a problem. Moves the narrative or description swiftly and sometimes casually into the next line. Depending on context, it could lead to a building up of a certain emotion like anger or a sense of urgency, and this could imbue the lines with a feeling of discomfort or anxiety. Conversely, the lack of punctuation markers could also convey a tripping, breathless, or rambling effect as like a person ruminating. Caesura Controls the rhythm and pace of a line. Creates a break or pause in the thought process, gives a sense of an interruption. With many caesurae within a line, it can create a staccato effect and also quickens the pace. A jerky effect could also suggest a sense of confusion or muddled ideas. Appeals to the 5 human senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste), creates a vivid word picture in the mind of the reader, evokes emotions, encourages audience response, develops themes. Makes a strong comparison by…

    • 1738 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Position of women in the 19th century was certainly different from today. But what makes it interesting is the amount of variation from now and then. Today women are equivalent to men and can perform any task, take up any occupation, they have that right to choose their husband, divorce them, they can decide whether they want to have children, and also have inheritance rights. But back then in the 19th century these rights were alien to women, they were deprived of them rather they were at a worse category. Women were not measured equivalent to men, they were anticipated to be docile and delicate, someone who persistently required assistance and supervision. Whilst women were appointed the subordinate position to men, men enjoyed all lavishes, they could marry whoever, leave them, marry another, they had right to force them into sexual relationships, he could imprison her if she dared to oppose to his cruelties. The husband had right over all her inheritance; he could spend it wherever he wished to, even on prostitution. Men of that time never permitted their wives leave the houses unaccompanied, they were expected to stay at home and work like maids, women who were seen in the streets unaided were considered to be harlots. Women had no alternative to oppose to the disrespect, divorce was not even an option for them, and they had minimal rights and were treated next to animals.…

    • 1659 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Law and Society Essay

    • 664 Words
    • 2 Pages

    For women in the 19th century, marriage was a binding contract that required them to sign their life away to the man that they loved. They lost all of the rights to their property, their income, and basically their independence. Women were expected to keep the household tidy and running smoothly, as well as earn some type of living that didn’t require much of leaving the house. Women were also expected to present their husbands with everything they needed, and wanted, in a timely matter and without complaint. They had virtually no voice. Men were only expected to provide their wife with the necessities of life, and to protect her. This system or way of functioning was called “coverture”.…

    • 664 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Conduct Book Review

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages

    They were once thought of as props, fragile beings, and insignificant in many circumstances. They were not to take part in any physical activity, this was viewed as unattractive. They were expected to be advanced on instruments such as the piano or violin, sing, dance, and write poetry. Amiability and beauty were the basics of what men looked for in searching for a partner. Due to entailment, women had no choice but to basically throw themselves at any single man. (The richer and more well connected the better.) Conduct books like Fordyce's Sermons taught women how to walk, talk, sit, dress, and behave, as if they were completely clueless and individuality was non-existent. Reading these books on how to live life properly, made living life restricted and expected. Many women (aka Mary Bennet and Charlotte Lucas) were not their own people, because they did as someone else/something else instructed them at all times. They were not sincere; they were careful and plain. Men could do as they pleased, and often chose a wife from among a sea of girls, all vying for attention. Men had “superiority”, or so they thought. Even today this feeling of rank still…

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Women Role in Today Society

    • 3721 Words
    • 15 Pages

    A woman's ultimate purpose back when my grandmother was born was to find a man to marry, and then reproduce. If a woman chose to remain single, she could be ridiculed as an "old maid” or “trash” and become an outcast to the city or town. Underclass women had a rugged appearance, and often wore dirty clothes with messy hair. They had no education or respectable job and relied on relief organizations for survival. When this was not enough, some resorted to prostitution to earn a living, as there were no other jobs available. Their lifestyle was a result of their collective lack of jobs, family inheritance and financial support. Most women were in the lower working class. Like underclass women, their lifestyle and income did not permit them to dress elegantly, and they often wore dirty and old clothing. They had no inheritance in most cases, and some started working as early as 8 years old. These women's jobs included domestic servant, farm worker, tailor and washerwoman. Lower working class women not only had to work their low paying jobs, but they were also expected to be mothers and housekeepers. The 19th century's most prestigious female class dressed elegantly, often covered in lace, corsets, veils and gloves. These women usually had an inheritance passed down, and wealthy men often courted them. They generally did not work, and while women weren't usually allowed to receive an education, upper working-class women sometimes received a general education of reading, writing and arithmetic. In the case that a woman had an education, she…

    • 3721 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Powerful Essays