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Alison Pearle Cable

Y. Garza
English II Honors 5th
February 27, 2015
Counting the Ways
Elizabeth Barret Browning knew that sometimes love can be more than a feeling which can
clearly be seen in her Sonnet 43 How Do I Love Thee. Love is energy of life. (Robert
Browning). Elizabeths husband, Robert Browning, was a romantic poet just like his wife. There
was so much passionate love for her husband that Elizabeth felt the energy of it would continue
on forever. The humanly struggle of grief, pain, and confusion may, on occasion, lead to an
eternity of passion and love. Through alliteration, metaphor, and pattern Elizabeth tells us about
her emotional journey of love. One of the most confusing and difficult decisions for her on that
journey was when she declined Roberts first marriage proposal. The mass confusion caused her
to write and finally publish her Sonnet 43 in 1850. Death may lead to a stronger sensation of love
and through it all Elizabeth prevails to a happier state of life.
Lives are made of moments, whether they are good or bad or just ordinary. Early in life
Elizabeth suffered many bad moments, one after another. It started with her lung ambient at age
fourteen which will stay with her till death. The following year it was a spinal injury that cursed
her. Soon after in 1828, she was forced to work on the family plantations in Jamaica, where later
that year she watched helplessly as her brother, Edward, drowned. Only eleven year later does
her mother die from illness. The trauma of all these events was the cause of Elizabeths choice to
lock herself up in her room for five years and turned to writing to help express her sense of pain.
The writings of young Elizabeth then caught the attention of the famous poet Robert Browning

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and began to fancy her along with her work. Through the course of their early acquaintance, they
exchanged over 574 letters with each other. Over time acquaintance turned to courtship which
became known as the most famous in the history of literature. Soon to follow were many more
moments full of love and joy. One of these was the marriage of the happy couple in St.
Marylebone Parish Church on September 12, 1846. Three years later came along another good
moment when her only child, known as Pen, was born on March 9, 1849. Elizabeth shows us that
there wont always just be bad moments rather we must look forward to the good that is to come.
A type of feeling we could never forget and that stays with us forever is that of grief.
Greif tends to soften our hearts, which Elizabeth Barret Browning shows through alliteration.
Using four soft L sounds and five S sounds in lines eleven to twelve, I love thee with a love
I seemed to lose with my lost saints.(Greif and Loss). Her feelings seem to tenderly flow and
gently she covers this short spell of grief trying to not stray from the course of love which she
has set this poem to. Very little alliteration is used but in what is there, we get a double taste of
emotions she is laying on us. Given to us on line twelve, with my lost saints (Elizabeth
Browning), referring to the tragic loss of her loved ones such as her mother and brother. The
obvious emotion here is love, but then there is a more hidden texture of grief, loss, and pain. In a
very subtle way Elizabeth is saying that her love for her husband is as ardent as the bereavement
she felt for her mother and brothers passing. Hinted details are placed so elegantly into
Elizabeths words, if we are not careful, some may slip right pass our minds.
It is hard for our human minds to believe in things we cant always see. Love is an
emotion therefore it is harder to describe what it looks like. In lines two to four Elizabeth uses a
metaphor to help give us an understanding of how love took shape in her life. I love thee to the
depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when falling out of sight for the ends of being an

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ideal grace.(Elizabeth Browning). We can truly picture this painting of love she is trying to
create for us because of her descriptive wording. She is comparing her soul to a threedimensional object in a physical form seen in the world (Greif and Loss). On line two and the
start of three, I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach (Elizabeth
Browning) you can get an even clearer image of the expansion of how far her soul reaches. A
soul travels on endlessly throughout all of space and time because it remains forever, meaning
her love reaches out as far as eternity can go just like her soul. The amount of love and the extent
of it which Elizabeth speaks of sound more like a fairytale with the ending of a happily ever
after. To contain this much power of feeling for another individual seems to be all anyone longs
for in this world.
This poem contains a lot of repetition in just one phrase but it never has the same ending.
The very first line of the poem asks, How do I love thee (Elizabeth Browning) might make
you assume it is only a rhetorical question but is actually answered by, Let me count the ways.
(Elizabeth Browning) and goes on to tell of Elizabeths ways of love. All the beginnings of lines
seven through nine tells us, in a pattern, three of the ways she loves Robert, 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 childhoods faith. (Elizabeth Browning). This is only three
of the total seven ways she mentions how she loves him. To recall from earlier, Elizabeth had a
hard past full of grief from the loss of her mother and brother. In line nine and ten she says, I
love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs. (Elizabeth Browning). Here she is
speaking of the passionate grief she felt when she experienced the deaths of her love ones. The
other part of Elizabeths pattern, lines seven and eight, say I love thee freely, as men strive for
right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. (Elizabeth Browning). In this she is saying her

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love is like a man who strives to do what is right but seeks no praise for what he is doing. If only
all people in this world would be that humble, we could have no problem in loving each other.
The irony of such pain from the loss of her family then turns into great works of
literature, which delivers to her complete and endless love. Love is more powerful than
death (Lilo and Stitch). This quote basically sums up the entire message of the poem. In
todays society it is hard to imagine such genuine and sincere love for another person. All you
see are divorces and small children having a new boyfriend or girlfriend every other week. Men
and women knew how to act proper and respect each other but mostly themselves. Elizabeth
shows us that it is possible to love to the extent past death. There is such thing as true love,
which is precisely what I would call her feelings for her husband. Could it be possible for our
future generations to respect the powerful and sensational elegance of true love?

Work Cited

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Elizabeth Barret Browning. The Browning Society. The Browning Society, N.D..Web. 11 Feb.
2015. <http://www.browningsociety.org/ebb.html>
Lorcher, Trent. Famous Love Poems: Analysis of How Do I Love Thee. Bright Hub
Education. S Forsyth, January 20, 2012. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.
<http://www.brighthubeducation.com/homework-help-literature/62766-how-do-i-lovethee-analysis/>
Elizabeth Barret Browning. Poets.org. Academy of American poets, N.D.. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.
<http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/elizabeth-barrett-browning>
McElroy, L., Shannon. Elizabeth Barret-Browning. Corses.wcupa.edu. Cedar Crest College,
2002. Web. 11 Feb. 2015. <http://courses.wcupa.edu/fletcher/britlitweb/smcelroyb.htm>
Greif and Loss/ Love. Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, 2015. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.
<http://www.shmoop.com/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43/symbolism-imagery.html>
Browning, Elizabeth Barret. How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43). Poets.org. N.S., N.D.. Web. 6
Feb. 2015. <http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43>