Browning

Elizabeth Barret Browning

Sonnets from the Portuguese 1850

XIV IF THOU MUST LOVE ME

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for love's sake only. Do not say

'I love her for her smile--her look--her way

Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--

For these things in themselves, Beloved, may

Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--

A creature might forget to weep, who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby !

But love me for love's sake, that evermore

Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/ReadingRoom/Poetry/BarrettBrowning/SonnetsFromThePortuguese/if-thou-must-love-me

The authoress talks in the poem about love and what you should love in a person as we can see in the title. In the poem Barret says that you must love the love, not the aspect of the person, how the person speaks...you must love a person not remembering a happy memory, a happy moment with the person or the bad moments because they could disappear in the happiness of the love. She says that she wants the man who loves her for love of her love, to get together forever.

In the historical context, we locate the poem in the year 1850, in the Victorian era. In this period of time, women began to be something more in society than just a woman in the house. First, the Head of state, (the Queen) was a woman. But Queen Victoria didn’t do more things with her power. She was the “mother of the nation”, she became the ideal of the domestic space and her marriage with Albert was the representation of harmony, marital stability and domestic virtue. (www.bbc.com.uk )

If we speak about the authoress in relation with the context, we should say that, in a period of time when the women started to have rights and started to fight for these rights, she had an advanced mind. When she was a child, she was already interested in literature. Before she was ten years, she had read all homeric works in the greek language. (www.victorianweb.org)

I think, in the poem, the authoress wants to praise the interior of the persons and of women. The woman can feel, can think, can study...that is the cause why you must fall in love with the person, with love and respect. Elizabeth Browning, in my opinion, has written this poem with that intention. Men must not love a woman for her correct way of speaking in society or her physical appearance.

This last idea can be written in the poem for other causes, as her incapacity. This poem was for her future husband, Robert Browning, and maybe she wants that he gave not importance to her physique and to the fact that she had to be in a bed. She had an important spine’s injury which forced her to rest in bed and consume opium for her pains. According to her biography in the “victorian web” (www.victorianweb.org), she wrote the poem because, for her, it’s incredible that a good man such as Robert Browning wanted to marry her.

I think that, this period of time was specially difficult for women, because, although women had not a lot of rights before, in this moment they were fighting for them, as I said before. At the beginning, Elizabeth’s works weren’t popular, because women poets were not accepted. But they achieved to be writers.

The relationship with her husband looked like a fairy tale at that moment. In that time, a woman had not any value: she had to be with the father, her brother or her husband. She could not do anything alone. Until 1857, when the civil divorce was introduced, they could not have the control of their own money. The father, or the parents searched the husband for their daughter, and looked at her money and her social position, not caring for their daughter’s opinion. Elizabeth and Robert Browning got married secretly and they were really in love.

Today, fortunately, women can study, work, and have their own money. We can choose the person with which we want to spend the rest of our lives, including the Royal and upper class families, and we can get married only for love.

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