Sonnet 43

Question 1

Who wrote Sonnet 43?

Answer 1

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Question 2

Give a summary of the poem.

Answer 2

• Persona expresses her intense love for her lover, counting all the different ways in which she can love him
• She loves him so deeply, she sees their love as spiritual and sacred
• Her love is so great that she believes she will even love him after death

Question 3

What are the themes present in Sonnet 43?

Answer 3

• Love
• Power of love
• Traditionality
• Religion
• Relationships
• Healing

Question 4

Describe the structure of the poem

Answer 4

• shifts from present tense to past tense and finishes with future tense
• Poem is 1 stanza: poet conveys the 2 parts of the poem are linked
• Browning often uses assonance
• caesura and enjambment often used
• ‘I love thee’ is syntactically repeated, but oddly inconsistent

Question 5

What is the impact of the changes in tense?

Answer 5

→ her hubby is her present, past and future
→ gives poem temporal immorality, like her love

Question 6

What is the effect of the poem only being one stanza?

Answer 6

→ suggests that the idea of love joining people together
→ alludes to the belief that couples become a single unit
Regular repetitive rhyme scheme
→ establishes security and perfection

Question 7

What is the impact of the assonance?

Answer 7

Striking because the poem is about perfect love, which is being conveyed imperfectly

Question 8

Why does Barrett-Browning repeat the ‘I love thee’, and what is the irony of it being inconsistent?

Answer 8

• ‘I love thee’ is syntactically repeated
  → it attempts to answer the initial question
  → repetition shows how love is reinforced and reiterated, connoting that love is constant and perpetual
  → this repetition could suggest that through her husband, elizabeth expresses love not only for him, but also her deceased family members, almost as if the poem is grieving
  → the intensity of her love could come from her familial losses
• The anaphora, is however, inconsistent
  → questions validity of relationship
  → could argue that poem is trying to be humorous

Question 9

What is the impact of the enjambment and caesura?

Answer 9

• enjambment: is reflective of the magnitude of her love and its expansive nature
• The caesura implies her passion and ecstasy

Question 10

Describe the form of Sonnet 43

Answer 10

• Iambic pentameter used to reflect a heart beat (perhaps the speaker’s heartbeat whenever her husband is around)
• petrarchan sonnet
  → volta: ‘I love thee with passion put to use’
  → usually associated with men, Barrett-Browning reclaiming it as a woman
  → typically associated with love: her love is conforming
• Octave: introduces poem’s main theme: her intense and almost divine love
• Sestet: develops this theme by showing she loves him with the emotions of a lifetime: from childhood to the afterlife

Question 11

Describe the language of Sonnet 43 and its impact on the poem

Answer 11

• The persona shows the strength of her love through hyperbole and spatial references to imply the scale of her feelings
• Throughout the poem, religious imagery is applied to demonstrate that her love is spiritual and unconditional like her love of god. It is beyond the physical
• The anaphora ‘i love thee’ coneys the intensely personal and direct nature of her feelings - utter conviction about how she feels

Question 12

What is some context surrounding the poet?

Answer 12

• She wrote it as a part of a series of sonnets to her lover Robert Browning
• Elizabeth’s father disinherited her after they married
• They were published as if they were translations of foreign sonnets written by poets from Portugal so that her feelings were protected

Question 13

Complete the quote
‘How do I love thee? …

Answer 13

…Let me count the ways’

Question 14

Analyse the quote
‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’

Answer 14

→ rhetorical question, her aim is to explain
→ personal poem clearly
→ caesura creates pause as if the speaker is pausing for thought, and relishing the contemplation of her love
→ celebration of love
→ suggests an intimate conversation between lovers

Question 15

Complete the quote
‘Depth and breadth and height’

Answer 15

…my soul can reach

Question 16

Analyse the quote
Depth and breadth and height my soul can reach

Answer 16

→ syndetic listing
→ spatial metaphor
→ her love is comprehensive and allows her to reach impossible extremes
→ ironic, love cannot be quantified
→ fricative sounds ‘th’

Question 17

Complete the quote
I love thee with the love…

Answer 17

…I seemed to lose with my lost saints

Question 18

Analyse the quote
I love thee with the love I seemed to lose with my lost saints

Answer 18

→ he allows her to reconnect with the lost aspects of her childhood
→ suggests that when she lost faith in god, his love gave her faith in love again
→ could also be all of the family members
→ she channels her lost love for said ‘lost saints’ through robert

Question 19

Complete the quote
I love thee with the breath…

Answer 19

‘Smiles, tears of all my life!’

Question 20

Analyse the quote
I love thee with the breath/ Smiles, tears of all my life!

Answer 20

→ sensory imagery emphasised by the tricolon
→ reflective of ‘for better or for worse’ in wedding vows, she’s confessing her everlasting love for him
→ she loves him with everything she has

Question 21

Complete the quote
‘I shall but love thee…’

Answer 21

‘…better after death’

Question 22

Analyse the quote
‘I shall but love thee better after death’

Answer 22

→ love is presented as eternal + will outlive their time on earth
→ speaker’s hope that god will also allow their love to continue suggests that she believes in purity
→ ‘I shall’ expresses a definite affirmation of love
→ speaker’s love overcomes physical boundaries
→ it is immortal