Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem, How Do I Love Thee? begins with a rhetorical question that is the same as the title of the poem. This accentuates the theme of the poem and gets the reader more involved with the poem as the reader might imagine possible phrases that the poet may use in the poem. The poem Woman to Her Lover uses a different technique to highlight the points that the poet makes. Walsh frequently uses exclamation marks to emphasise her arguments, “O Lover I refuse you!” The poem is a sonnet and this is a very popular way of writing about love. The sonnet gives the poem a concentrated structure that reflects on how concentrated the poet must feel about her lover. The sonnet also has a regular rhyming scheme that is a necessary element of a sonnet. Woman to Her Lover has a different structure. It is not a sonnet and each line does not have the same number of syllables, there is not a regular rhyming scheme, there are four stanzas and this contrasts with How Do I Love Thee? The sonnet uses lots of capital letters for example, “for the ends of Being the ideal Grace.” The capital letters make the sonnet abstract, symbolic and it also emphasises the point that the poet is trying to make. The poet needs her lover all the time even for really menial things, “every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.” This shows that although she loves him “to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.” The poet needs her lover every hour of every day. The poem frequently uses religious language. This would be very common for poems of this time as almost everyone went to church. The use of religion implies that the poet loves him beyond human understanding and that the love is more god like. “If God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” This implies that her love will go on for eternity and nothing can get in the way, even something as finale as death. In the poem A Woman To Her Lover the poet also ends with a statement that their love shall go on in the afterlife, “hand holding hand until we reach the very heart of God.”
Christina Rossetti’s poem, A Birthday is one stanza, this is similar How Do I Love Thee?, but the content is divided in two halves. The first half is about nature and the tone is bright and blissful. The second half has more of a ceremonious theme and has a glamorous tone. In comparison the poem A Woman To Her Lover is trying to show how the work that women have to do in the home is unglamorous and women have no choice but to obey their husbands every command. The first half uses lots of similes, “My heart is like a singing bird,” this is the opening line and the “singing bird” makes the reader think of spring which implies and suggests new life and new love. The singing bird also makes the reader consider whether Rossetti’s heart is beating fast with excitement as a singing bird gives the image of a bird flapping its wings. The first half repeats, “My heart” at the beginning of alternate lines. This repetition emphasises the fact that the poet is in love and so reminds us of the theme of the poem. Repetition is also used in A Woman To Her Lover to constantly remind her lover that she shall not be ordered about by another human being. The poet repeats the phrase, “I refuse you!” “My heart is like an apple-tree whose boughs are bent with thickest fruit.” This implies that the poet is fulfilled and overladen with the happiness that being in love brings. The second half uses phrases like, “hang it with vair and purple dyes.” This gives the poem a feel of luxury and delicacy. “Carve it in doves and pomegranates, and peacocks with a hundred eyes.” The use of the fruit pomegranates represents fertility and the peacocks with a hundred eyes gives a sense of all knowing. The poem has short lines and this means that the poem moves along quite quickly and means that the statements are short and punchy. In comparison A Woman To Her Lover has longer lines and this allows the poet to put across more information to the reader.
Woman to Her Lover, How Do I Love Thee? and A Birthday all have a religious element to them. Woman to Her Lover ends with the line, “Until we reach the very heart of God.” This shows that the poet still believes in something big and that her and her lover will still love each other when they die. How Do I Love Thee? uses lots of religious language such as, “my childhood faith.” This poem also ends with another statement that she shall be in love even when she dies, “If God choose, I shall love thee better after death.” A Birthday could be interpreted as a poem about when the poet found God and how joyous the poet felt at the prospect of sharing her life with God. Another poem Wild Nights by Emily Dickinson could also be interpreted about her love for God. This because Dickinson says in the last stanza, “Rowing in Eden!” This gives an idealic tone and a sense of being free and innocent.
The period in which the poem was written has a great affect on the content and style. In the metaphysical/ Jacobean period most poems were written in an amusing way. An example of this is To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell. In this poem he talks of his mistress’s “long preserved virginity”. In this poem Marvell is giving reasons why they do not have time to wait for the relationship to develop slowly but they should make their relationship a physical one even though they are not married. This is in complete contrast to the previous period, which was Shakespeare’s time. In his time it would be expected that a couple were both virgins when they got married. Another contrast to the content of To His Coy Mistress is in the Victorian period. In the Victorian period sex was a taboo and poets only vaguely implied sex in their poems, as this was an extremely controversial topic. An example of this is Wild Nights by Emily Dickinson where talks about, “Wild nights should be our luxury.” This definitely implies a passionate moment but Dickinson does not actually come out and say sex. Victorians had no problem with death and this is frequently mentioned in many of the Victorian poems. An example of this is in How Do I Love Thee? where Barrett Browning ends the poem, “if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”
Sonnets were a very popular technique to write a poem about love, Pre-1914. Shakespeare wrote many sonnets to his mistresses and the last two lines of his sonnets usually contrasted with the rest of the sonnet. An example of this is Sonnet cxxx where Shakespeare ends the sonnet, “And yet, by heaven, I think my love my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.” This is in major contrast to the rest of the sonnet where he says that she is not perfect. How Do I Love Thee? is also a sonnet. This makes poem very structured as a sonnet has fourteen lines, ten syllables per line and has a regular rhyming scheme. Before 1914 poets tended to write poems in structured stanzas.
A Woman To Her Lover contrasts quite a lot to the rest of the poems written by women Pre-1914. Walsh has a modern style and content and is not prepared to be made a, “bondslave” by any man and would refuse any that would treat her as a servant. We know this by the way Walsh says, “No servant will I be.” In contrast with Walsh’s no nonsense attitude towards marriage How Do I Love Thee? and A Birthday have written poems with a traditional approach to expressing their love. Both of these poems try to show how big their love is. In A Birthday the poet is saying that her love is as if all of her birthdays have come at once, “Because the birthday of my life is come, my love is come to me.”
Many of the poems that I have studied are either realistic or are fantasy based. For example Villegiature by Edith Nesbit is about how she remembered that she did not love a man who was far away. Nesbit talks about how, “Your ghost last night climbed uninvited.” The use of ghost is very effective as it makes the reader wonder what the ghost represents as it is very strange terminology. In contrast A Woman To Her Lover tackles the very serious matter of women’s rights because at the time when the poem was written women were owned by their husband and any children that they had. Walsh wants to be her husbands, “co-equal”. This word is like the language that they use in the law courts and so the poet is trying to put across how women are being unfairly treated.
Many of the poems use imagery frequently; this allows the reader to grasp a full understanding of what the poem is about. In A Woman To Her Lover Walsh talks of, “A wingless angel who can do no wrong.” This image is mocking and ironic because the Victorian view of women was at the heart of the home. Another poem that uses imagery is Villegiature. An example of this is, “My window, framed in pear-tree bloom, white-curtained shone, and softly lighted.” The pear-tree bloom and the white-curtain are both white and so the image the reader gets here is of virginity and purity as this is often represented as white.
I conclude that all of the poems describe love and loss in different ways and they tackle different issues. The language used in How Do I Love Thee? and in A Birthday creates images of joy and new life. Many of the poems could be interpreted as conversions to God and many of them mention the fact that their love will go on beyond death whenever God decides to takes them away. Many love poems are sonnets or have a regular rhyming scheme. This is for several reasons; firstly because Pre-1914 poets hardly ever wrote in free verse as that was not the fashion, secondly because sonnets are heavily structured and this helps the poet write a concentrated poem. The style and content of the poem often depends of the period in which is was written because in certain times there was a particular taboo subject that poets only ever vaguely implied in their poems as it was far to controversial to write about openly.
