Written Commentary
Olivia Braley
October 2011
Commentary of Sonnet XLIII
During her lifetime, poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was widely known as one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her Sonnet XLIII, published in 1850, was written in the Italian format and set in iambic pentameter. Sonnet XLIII was one of a series of 44 sonnets entitled Sonnets From the Portuguese, which she composed in secret to express her extraordinary love for her fiance, Robert Browning. In Sonnet XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning professes her passion and devotion towards her beloved, emphasizing how the love that she feels is both intense and eternal.
In Sonnet XLIII, the first line of the octave is unique in that it begins the poem by posing a question. When she asks, "How do I love thee?" Browning intends for the question to be rhetorical; it is put into her sonnet to create a contemplative mood and give a preview of what was to be the focus of her sonnet. In doing this, Browning has, in the first 5 words of Sonnet XLIII, directly proposed the question or theme that is commonly addressed in the octave of an Italian sonnet. The second part of line 1, "Let me count the ways" implies that throughout the next 13 lines, she will list various ways in which she adores her beloved fiancé. Line 2 and the first part of line 3 act as one idea, and they read, "I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach." Through this line, Browning has begun to list the ways that she loves Robert Browning. She repeats the phrase "I love thee" to emphasize once again her deep passion for her beloved, as well as to answer the question "How do I love thee?" from line 1, directly, as if she is quite literally "counting the ways." She then states "I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach." This conveys the idea that she loves her husband-to-be as much as she possibly can, to the ends of her soul. In her next lines, "when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal Grace," Browning is elaborating upon the idea presented in the preceding lines, that she loves her beloved even when she feels he is unseen; she loves him to the end of her life. The last portion of line 4, "ideal Grace" refers to Grace in a spiritual sense and conveys the idea that through this love she believes she is living to the ends of ideal grace, in other words, that this love is helping her to live righteously. Browning uses biblical allusions throughout her sonnet