Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote Sonnets for the Portuguese to her husband Robert Brownie.
Sonnet 43 from The Sonnets from the Portuguese embodies what the Victorian audience liked about poetry in general, that is to say, its relationship with its author’s autobiography. Actually the sonnets started being well received when the connection between the poems and Elizabeth’s life was finally established. It is of common knowledge that, in general, readers like it all the better to take literature to a personal level for they can thus easily sympathize with the story or the poem.
Can we see parallel elements between the poem and Elizabeth’s life? The answer is yes. First of all, when Elizabeth writes:
“I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light”
It is quite obvious that Elizabeth is writing to a person with whom she shares her daily life. She is talking about a very close person to her. Knowing that Elizabeth left behind a comfortable life and her family in order to run away to Italy with her beloved one, the also British poet Robert Brownie, who became her husband afterwards, it is evident that Robert is the addressee.
Similarly, when Elizabeth Barrett says:
“I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith”
In this example the poet draws a parallel between her earlier life and her present with her husband. After reading her biography, we notice that Elizabeth Barrett suffered from a disease similar to tuberculosis and spent much of her youth shut away at home, which we can guess was not source of happiness. Elizabeth makes reference to her unhappy past when she says “my old griefs”. Besides, her biographers know that Elizabeth could not believe her eyes that her husband, who was six years her senior, could be in love with her while she consider herself as an almost disabled person.
Likewise, Elizabeth when talking about her present with Robert Brownie she uses the word “passion” which is an intensively positive poetic way to describe her love life.
Similarly, when the poet says:
“I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life”
Here we can also claim that Elizabeth was not indifferent to the literary tendencies of her time for as we already know Elizabeth lives through the Victorian era. The literary movement that proceeded the Victorian era was Romanticism, and, of course, Elizabeth Barrett shows here that literary tendencies do not die overnight.
Another interesting point that we can highlight here:
“when feeling out of sight”
This could refer to her exile to Italy in order to run away from her father who did not approve of her marrying Robert Brownie. Her moving from her country (England) to another nation because of love might have left a trace upon her and that is why she may have felt the need to write it down.
Not only is this poem interesting to be looked up on its referential meanings referring to Elizabeth’s personal life but also its shape has a special quality too. Actually, sonnet 43 from The Sonnets of the Portuguese follows this pattern:
Verse 1-8: ABBA, ABBA
Verse 9-14: CD, CD, CD.
Actually, Elizabeth Berrett choose Petrarch’s pattern as a model as a way to praise his poetry.
In this section I would like to draw a parallel between sonnet 43 and Anne Bradstreet poem To my dear and loving husband for even if it was written two centuries ago, these two sonnets (sonnet 43 and To my dear and loving husband) seem very similar to me in terms of meaning, style and autobiographical presence of the poet. Notice that Anne Bradstreet writes verses such as:
“My love is such that Rivers canneot quench” and “If ever two were one, then surely we”
Here there is another verse that, like Elizabeth on sonnet 43, refers to the idea of eternal love:
“That when we live no more, we may live ever”
