Elizabeth Barrett Browning, author of Sonnet 43, loves her husband more than a mere “I love you” could ever capture. In fact, Browning’s Sonnet 43 revolves solely around her love for him. Browning has written a plethora of poems, including this sonnet, which consists of fourteen lines. In Sonnet 43, Browning uses metaphors, imagery, and symbolism to present the amount of love she has for her husband. A metaphor in Sonnet 43, “I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle-light,” (Browning) explains the fact that her love for her husband is a necessity. The sun allows all things to live, and “candle-light” represents a soothing comfort and pleasure presented by small things. Browning elaborating on the fact that her love is a necessity obviously presents the theme of love. Another metaphor, “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight,” (Browning) elaborates upon the depth of her needed love. Even when her love is not around, she stills loves him as much as her soul enables her to. Within these metaphors, Browning uses imagery. …show more content…
While it may be only one use, it is impactful. What requires the sun to live: Everything! For Browning to refer to her love for her husband the sun, is to say that it is her love for him that is keeping her alive. Then, calling her love a candle-light elaborates on the fact that her love is warm and comforting; furthermore, candle-lights are taken for granted. They seem like a regular commodity that all families have, but the point she is trying to get across is that she needs to be loving him. Browning’s use of imagery goes hand in hand with her use of symbolism throughout the
Hardy initially uses similes to illustrate the bleak landscape, referring to the “sun [as] white” and leaves as “grey”, to emphasise his sorrowful opinion of love. Specific diction of bleak words strongly communicates his message of love being hopeless and sorrowful. He also uses personification of “starving sod”, to allude that the earth is frozen and desiring nutrients which it lacks. This creates an undesirable setting and mood of despair and sorrow expressing how he perceives love. In contrast, Browning orientates an inviting, cheerful setting through the use of similes. The scene is vibrant with “little waves that leap” and “warm sea-scented beach[es]”, allowing the reader to perceive it as joyful. This illustrates how he regards love as an uplifting experience, which brings people together. He structures his poem with no stanzas, allowing for the reader to follow the radiant journey of love. In contrast, Hardy includes stanzas allowing him to express his message though new topics. They consist of the bleak setting, his former partners eyes, her bitter smile and his message of how all love disappoints. He includes an enclosed rhyme scheme, presenting the entrapment of love, expressing no freedom and joy in relationships. In opposition, Browning uses anaphora of “and” to express how the speaker’s mind is not in the moment, looking ahead to the future where they reunite with their lover. It is evident that Hardy conveys his message of love as sorrowful and full of despair, in contrast Browning message reveals love as gracious and
Although there are many different literary techniques used in these two pieces imagery is an element that is depicted in the both of them. Imagery is a literary technique that appeals to the senses of its readers. It gives the reader a visual of what the writer is feeling about what he or she is writing. In the poem, “What it’s Like to Be a Black Girl”, by Smith, (1991), imagery is used to display the writers feelings of being black and not necessary proud of being black, “it’s dropping food coloring in your eyes to make them blue and suffering their burn in silence”. The writer could be using the word blue as a way to depict the wanting to have beautiful blue eyes like many White women as opposed to the dark brown or black eyes that she probably possessed. Imagery is also seen in the way how the writer explains her encounter with the opposite sex. “It’s finally having a man reach out for you then caving in around his fingers”. It is having a man finally paying attention to you but not knowing that he only wants to control your body.
Love is not always an easy adventure to take part in. As a result, thousands of poems and sonnets have been written about love bonds that are either praised and happily blessed or love bonds that undergo struggle and pain to cling on to their forbidden love. Gwendolyn Brooks sonnet "A Lovely Love," explores the emotions and thoughts between two lovers who are striving for their natural human right to love while delicately revealing society 's crime in vilifying a couples right to love. Gwendolyn Brooks uses several examples of imagery and metaphors to convey a dark and hopeless mood that emphasizes the hardships that the two lovers must endure to prevail their love that society has condemned.
The Sonnet sequence also involves the idea of identity with Barrett Browning coming to terms with her emerging sexuality and realisation of love. The sequence was written by Barrett Browning thus providing a personal voice to the sonnets allowing a portrayal of the sequence of events of her personal identity and expression of love. Throughout the sonnet sequence Browning develops a stronger sense and realisation of her love for Robert, hence shaping her identity. By sonnet 43 a series of elements introduced by the simple phrase “I love thee” where the repetition intensifies the affirmation, she declares that her love is free and pure and possesses passion. Most importantly Browning now holds a sense of identity as she has achieved her idealized type of love.
In Sonnet 13 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the beloved wants the speaker to transcribe the feelings that she has for him in a sonnet. However, even though she knows that her feelings are real, she is not yet comfortable with declaring her love in such a way. In her sonnet, Browning compares what she is feeling to a lit torch in rough winds: “And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, / Between our faces, to cast light on each?— / I drop it at thy feet” (3-5). In this metaphor, the torch acts to enlighten what is between both Browning and her beloved. Except, with external forces (such as the rough winds) battling against her increasing emotions, she feels as though she must focus on protecting her feelings. By the end of this quote, Browning drops the torch, thus representing the fact that she can’t go through with describing what she feels for her beloved. Ultimately, she tells her love, “My hand to hold my spirit so far off / From myself—me—that I should bring thee proof / In words, of love hid in me out of reach” (6-8). Here, she states that she can’t go through with risking herself. For now, he will have to settle with silence as his only answer. Simply by evaluating Browning’s response, we can see how much she cares for her beloved. First off, she worries about the possibility of risking or changing the strong emotions she has. Additionally, she believes that, given her profoundly heartfelt emotions, she will not be able to accurately depict their significance.
Another example of imagery in the story is when the author used it to describe Emily when she ask for poison to the druggist.“still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyes ockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keepers face ought to look”. The author makes emphasis in Emily’s face and eyes meaning that she is lost in her own world and foreshadows that Emily would use the poison for something wrong.
The acceptance of love has the power of transforming an individual to demand of that same love. The social context of the 1850’s was seen to be emphasised on individual’s emotions and rebellion against established social rules and convections which was evident in her open declarations of love and demanding’s of love which was a concept of idealised love. The notion of idealised love transforming an individual is presented in the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’. Sonnet 14 as Elizabeth Browning urges her lover to not love her for any particular reason other than “love’s sake only”. In the Octave, the first line is EBB talking directly to whom she loves and she uses high modality in the word ‘must’, making it seem like she
Robert Browning uses descriptive details to portray a theme of how darkness rises from warmth and happiness by showing us on how a man’s love for someone makes him turn to savagery. The narrator of the poem has very deep feelings for his lover, but he only thinks of himself and he never wants the girl to leave his side so he does the unthinkable. In the times that the girl was not home or was not with the narrator then there was coldness and darkness, but when she was with the man then the house would “blaze up, and all the cottage warm”. She created hope and the narrator needed that constantly, so he realized that his love was too strong to put on hold everyday when she would leave. The fact that the narrator had to watch his lover leave everyday
Usually authors express their imagery in a different way either with a phrase or with one word that gives us an image in our head. In the novel that Golding has written there was this one phrase that he uses that puts this weird image in my head. The hunters go out and they hunt a sow and while hunting that sow they stab the spear through the sow’s “anus” this leaves a weird image depicted into my head. In the book that Hawthorne has written there was a phrase that he written that I can only imagine. Towards the beginning of the book, Hawthorne has Mr. Dimmesdale go up on the platform open his shirt and show the Scarlet Letter that he had marked on himself. With him doing this I imagined it and I could see that the author had put so much time in order to put this image into the reader’s head. Both Golding and Hawthorne found a way to put imagery into the reader’s mind and also expressing their philosophies with it as
In literature, authors use a certain image or collection of images in order to produce a particular effect, eliciting a response from the reader’s senses. Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” utilizes the imagery of the train station in order to produce the effect of transition between the characters, both in terms of physical location and emotional mindset. Much like Hemingway, James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” takes a similar approach, using Sonny’s passion for music to expose his deepest insecurities. Though their approaches are different, both authors use imagery to create a pathway to the character’s internal thoughts.
Both poems, Sonnet 43 and Ghazal convey emotions and passionate feelings of love in different ways. Sonnets and Ghazals are poem that are meant to express strong feelings of love. Khalvati and Barrett Browning chose them to illustrate their loving feelings to their lovers. Barrett Browning does not correctly carry out all the rules of Sonnets in her poem which gives an effect that she would do anything for her lover and that there are no rules to their love, whereas Khalvati does not break any of rules in Ghazal, this might, perhaps mean that her love is unrequited and that she would follow all the rules to get the attention of the person she loves.
The finest woks of Browning endeavor to explain the mechanics of human psychology. The motions of love, hate, passion, instinct, violence, desire, poverty, violence, and sex and sensuousness are raised from the dead in his poetry with a striking virility and some are even introduced with a remarkable brilliance.
In the poem "Sonnet 43" Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses the theme of love to express her feelings for her husband Robert Browning. She also uses a loving tone to show that she is in love and she is happy. Another thing she uses to expresses the love she has for her husband is figurative language. First, in the poem "Sonnet 43" Elizabeth uses theme to express her feeling for her husband, she uses theme to show that she loves every single part of her husband.
Both of these works contain the unique ability, as portrayed by Browning, to create a deep fictional psyche that displays the strange relationship between man and woman. This relationship is displayed as one full of pain, jealousy, rejection and happiness, the majority of these emotion are contained in love and marriage. From this the reader can infer the nature of love being the conquering of class distinction and marriage involves sexist male inhibitions. Insecurities are seen in both poems and are evident in the perspective voices of the male protagonists, who are seen as incapable to handle their aggressive and possessive natures when it comes to love and marriage. Browning seems to be demonstrating the side of relationships avoided previously by Romantics and in doing so shows the negative implication on seemingly unruly
In addition, Browning blatantly uses imagery to convey the persona’s deliriousness, and obsessiveness towards his lover. In the poem, Browning noticeably visualizes the events that have just occurred in the monologue, while at the same time he effectively illustrates the underlying meaning behind its imagery to reveal the persona’s nature. It is visualized in the piece, “Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss;” (48). If