Almost anyone who studies poetry will encounter the sonnet that basically defines romantic love in a timeless and remarkable manner. Sonnet number 43, of Sonnets from the Portuguese, relates a love pure and strong, yet described in understated tones, as evidenced by these lines:
I love thee to the level of every day's
most quiet need, by sun and by candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
What must that be like, to love someone on the level of an insignificant, "quiet need?" Whatever the bond, Elizabeth and Robert Browning remained married, and by all accounts, in love, for fifteen years. It is widely reported that Elizabeth was devoted to her only child, a son.
Despite domestic bliss and popular and critical success with her poetry, Elizabeth Barrett Browning championed a number of social causes. She found slavery abhorrent, as did her husband. She was openly critical of child labor, and said so in her poem, "The Cry of the Children." This long poem explores the physical and mental suffering of children forced to work in dismal factories, a setting that oppressed the most vulnerable in society. Ms. Browning also championed women's rights.
Browning championed his wife's literary endeavors. It was her poetry that caused him to fall in love with the invalid he would woo and one day call his "Ba." He declared his fervor in the very first letter he wrote to her, and she, in turn, sharply rebuked him for his outpouring of feeling. The two, however, continued to correspond, and the ensuing romance formed the basis for her sonnets. It was with her future husband that she first shared ideas for Aurora Leigh, a novel in verse. The novel deals with the conflicts of an intelligent woman in a male dominated world, and that motif has sparked a resurgence of interest in a work praised by Virginia Woolf who called Browning the "true daughter of her age."
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was self-educated in the Greek and Latin classics, and she even learned Hebrew so that she could read the Old Testament in that language. She was sick for most of her young adult life, but she still found the courage to go against her father's wishes and marry Robert Browning. Her father, for some strange reason, did not want any of his children to marry. After Elizabeth and Robert eloped, her father disowned her, and refused to read her letters. She never saw him again after she left for Italy with Browning, and all her letters were returned to her sealed.
Go To Page: 1 2
