Analysis Of If Thou Must Love Me By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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3) In the poem of If Thou Must Love Me by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she states in the first two lines of the poem that she wants unconditional and pure love. Secondly, she desires a love that is not based on external qualities because those qualities will change over time with aging. Browning also believes that the love that exists between the souls of the two individuals is deeper and more profound than the love based off of appearance. Lastly, the poet also states that love for the sake of sympathy and pity will also not be accepted by her because that is not pure love. Overall, I believe that Browning has a romanticized view of love. She believes that love should be pure and not based on any superficial qualities, like personal gain. If …show more content…
This is reflected in Sonnet XIV, where Browning discusses the characteristics of true love and how to achieve eternal romance. This is also shown in the poem of Meeting At Night where the poet describes his journey to his secret lover, including all of the areas he would travel through to reach her. He also describes the many areas as being beautiful and breathtaking, but overall indicates that the one thing that makes his journey worthwhile is who is waiting for him at the end. In Robert’s poem, he describes the events less like a poem and more like a story with the amount of detail that he puts into the poem, possibly trying to persuade the audience into seeking love and caring less about societal concerns which consist of money and material factors. Culturally, love is always phrased in poems as perfect and flawless and never looked at in the negative perspective. Historically, Robert Browning loved Elizabeth and wanted to get married, but Elizabeth’s parents were against the marriage. In the poem of Sonnet XIV, societal factors that possibly affected the poem is the fact that unfaithful marriage may have been common during the time and Elizabeth may have written this poem to express her desire for eternal love. Culturally, Elizabeth's family was very religious and disagreed with having …show more content…
The theme of love is expressed in all three of the pieces, for example, the theme of love is presented in Much Ado About Nothing, but it is in contrast of Sonnet XIV and Meeting At Night because in the film, none of the characters explicitly seek love. Moreover, in the poem Meeting At Night it describes the journey to seek love and to be with the loved one. Comparing Sonnet XIV and Much Ado About Nothing there may be some connections to make between Beatrice and Elizabeth as the both have criteria set for their perfect partners, but the difference between the two is that Beatrice does not care whether it is eternal love or love by appearance where on the other hand Elizabeth is demanding of eternal love and does not seek anything other than that. Despite this, the theme of choice in a relationship is expressed similarly in all of the pieces of literature as each individual has the freedom of setting the norm for his or her perfect partner. For example, Claudio and Hero choose each other freely with no restrictions and Elizabeth and Robert who are the writers of the two poems choose each other when Robert fulfilled all of Elizabeth’s eternal wishes. To conclude, Shakespeare and the poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning wrote their pieces of literature at different times in their lives expressing different types of

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