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Compare And Contrast Mee And Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Dearest Mae, I have returned from Gatsby’s lavish party in West Egg, and am glad to be back where I belong, in the East. Over these sweltering hot summer days I have kept indoors and came across some beautiful sonnets titled, ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, and thought you might find them interesting. I did some research on the Victorian era and found that, surprisingly it is not so different to our own society, the themes Barrett-Browning writes about seem to mirror many of our current troubles, and the values encapsulate many of the ones we hold most sacred today, although some differ and it has given me a great insight into Victorian life, including, an idealism and realism of love, gender society and isolation, and death and religion. The sonnets trace Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s raw …show more content…

She openly confesses her love for Robert Browning in Sonnet XLIII pondering “How do I love thee?” Before continuing to launch into an overwhelming exegesis of the bounds of her love for him and finally concludes “If God choose, I shall but love thee better after death” demonstrating the strong belief in religion during the Victorian era as opposed to the worship of material possession we see in society today. She believes that God’s power over the body and soul of a person in death is the only thing that is stronger than the love she exudes for Robert, but she still hopes that her love will only grow in the afterlife as she believes true love lasts forever and never changes in sonnet XIV “Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity” the repetition of love highlights the significance of love to Barrett-Browning and refers the timelessness of love in which she believes, a life after death, she uses this to demonstrate her devotion to love and her belief in faith, which was key to the Victorian

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It has been said that “beauty is pain” and in the case of this poem, it is quite literal. “For That He Looked Not Upon Her” written by George Gascoigne, a sixteenth century poet, is a poem in which the speaker cannot look upon the one he loves so that he will not be trapped by her enhanced beauty and looks. In the form of an English sonnet, the speaker uses miserable diction and visual imagery to tell the readers and his love why he cannot look upon her face. Containing three quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end, this poem displays a perfect English sonnet using iambic pentameter to make it sound serious and conversational. This is significant because most sonnets are about love and each quatrain, in English sonnets, further the speaker’s

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Romanticism was a literary period which emphasized the significance of emotions and individualism over knowledge. Many works were published during this time, including “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant and “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. Each of these explore the topic of death. “The Raven” associates death with grief, while “Thanatopsis” aligns death with nature, which are both strong views towards polar opposites. This proves that “Thanatopsis” is a much more optimistic romantic piece.

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African Americans received freedom and citizenship with the ratifications of the 13th amendment and 14th amendment respectively. One of the heroic women of the 1800s was someone named Elizabeth Jennings Graham, from 1830-1901. Elizabeth Jennings was a New York schoolteacher whose 1854 defiance of a streetcar conductors orders to leave his car helped desecrates public transit in New York City. Another person was Fredrick Douglass. Fredrick Douglass was an African American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman.

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She wants the whole world to know of the love she has attained. Further engraved with the repetition of “love me”, mimicking a cuckoo song. In the final, sonnet XLIII Browning use of the anaphora "I love thee”, truly expresses the limits of her love. Ending with a hyperbolic statement “ I love thee better after death” referring to her pursue of eternal and idealised love. Therefore, even though set in the materialistic Victorian era context Browning defied her Era proving that eternal love could be found overlooking materialistic standers and focusing on the nobility of

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605 Words | 3 Pages

This may have been a key factor to her views on love. I think I should have loved you presently and I too beneath your moon, almighty sex both explore all the aspects of love but in much different ways. The first poem being analyzed, I think I should have loved you presently, was written in 1920 describing the first time having sex with a new man. “I think I should have loved you presently,/ And given in earnest words I flung in jest;” (1, 2), at first she just wanted to have fun, but once she began thinking she decided that she should’ve actually loved him before entering a sexual relationship with him.

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The beginning of Barret-Browning’s love toward Robert Browning is not indicative of the corruption and values of revolutionary pre-world war one, where EBB takes advantage of the notion that women should be quiet: “and wilt thou have me fashion into speech the love I bear thee” (sonnet XIII), and then goes on to reject the stereotype all together, repeating the word “Too” in sonnet XXI, fashioning this poem to exclaim that her love is too much: “Too many stars… Too many flowers”. This is the sonnet where the audience first sees EBB’s acceptance of Robert Browning’s love, and the rejection of the Victorian Era’s

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1265 Words | 6 Pages

“Love Is Not All” by Edna St. Vincent Millay is a sonnet that follows the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, meaning the poem is broken up into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. This sonnet expresses the conflict of emotional versus physical need. Even though having a lover is not necessary to being happy, the narrative voice resolves this conflict by saying that she would not be able to give up love if she were in this particular scenario. The poetic devices within this sonnet help enhance certain aspects in a way that the audience can relate to the sonnet more and understand the complicated message that the speaker is trying to communicate.

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In Sonnet 16, written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the speaker is controlled by emotions and sees herself lowly, while her beloved is noble and is viewed as a worthier person. Through this sonnet, Browning shows that love has immense power. Throughout the poem, Elizabeth uses vivid images and detailed wording to show herself as a lowly, sad human and to show her lover like a higher being. From the first line to the seventh line of Sonnet 16, Elizabeth describes the lover like royalty, calling him “more noble and like a king” that “has” purple cloth (purple was commonly worn by the higher-ups); if he were to conquer her heart, it would make the lover “as lordly …/In lifting upward”.

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722 Words | 3 Pages

She uses different literary devices to emphasize her romantic love like hyperboles and metaphors. In her poem she states that she “prizes [his] love more than wholes mines of gold, Or all the riches that the East doth hold” (Bradstreet 5, 6), where she exaggerates the fact that she sees her husband’s love as the most valuable prize she has ever won. Not even the wealth that existed in Asia in that period could compare to it. This shows that her ultimate prize was her husband, rather than God’s gift of salvation. It is also evident that she has sexual desire for her husband when she says “[Her] love is such that rivers cannot quench” (Bradstreet 7), the usage of this hyperbolic metaphor emphasizes the fact that her desire for her husband is so big that not even all

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961 Words | 4 Pages

Her love consumes every ounce of her being. She loves him in her past iniquities and in the present. Finally, in the final stanza Browning declares that she wishes their love to be eternal (“Sonnet 43”). Sonnet 43 is also known as “How Do I Love Thee?” This coloquillial title is derived from the rhetorical question to prose the entirety of the poem.

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1960 Words | 8 Pages

One of the most significant poets of the Victorian era, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is notable for her extraordinary ability to use poetry to challenge the gender stereotypes that were prevalent in her day. Browning was raised in a home that valued education and intellectual pursuits. She was born in Coxhoe Hall, County Durham, England, in 1806 to a wealthy family. Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, her father, supported her academic endeavors, gave her access to a sizable library, and encouraged her writing aspirations. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a lifelong history of poor health, however her resilience and intellect drove her to become a celebrated writer, which will all be discussed below.

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1774 Words | 8 Pages

The attitudes to grief over the loss of a loved one are presented in two thoroughly different ways in the two poems of ‘Funeral Blues’ and ‘Remember’. Some differences include the tone towards death as ‘Funeral Blues’ was written with a more mocking, sarcastic tone towards death and grieving the loss of a loved one, (even though it was later interpreted as a genuine expression of grief after the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral” in 1994), whereas ‘Remember’ has a more sincere and heartfelt tone towards death. In addition, ‘Funeral Blues’ is entirely negative towards death not only forbidding themselves from moving on but also forbidding the world from moving on after the tragic passing of the loved one, whilst ‘Remember’ gives the griever

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1193 Words | 5 Pages

Love and mortality are both present in 'The Great Gatsby ' and 'The Sonnets of the Portuguese ', and

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“Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is bonded with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words,”(Paul Engle). Poetry covers all spectrums of life, whether it encompasses morality, love, death, or finding ones true self. When reading poetry one may stumble across pure brilliance, words so powerful they have the ability challenge the mind. Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman have that such gift, and are nothing short of illustrious.

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