Author Background

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) both epitomized the condition of women in the Victorian age and refuted it. Held under the “loving” hand of Edward Moulton Barrett, her Victorian patriarch of a father, Barrett Browning was confined to the private realm and the home to an extreme degree.

At the age of fifteen, she suffered a spinal injury while saddling a pony. Seven years later, a broken blood vessel in her chest left her weakened and suffering a chronic cough. An invalid, she was ultimately confined to her room. Despite these adversities, and with the encouragement and support of her father, Barrett Browning read widely, learned several languages, and published poetry and essays.

Writing Career

Her literary reputation grew to such an extent that she was suggested as a successor to Wordsworth as the Poet Laureate—a position that ultimately went to Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). She communicated with the literary giants of her day, including Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), and Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849).

Her relationship with Robert Browning (1812-1889) began through his writing to her, expressing admiration for her poetry and love for her. His social visits turned quickly to a courtship that, when discovered by Edward Moulton Barrett, was adamantly opposed. Barrett Browning recorded the stress, uncertainty, and joy of this courtship in her Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850).

Her Sonnets from the Portuguese take on the most male-dominated of poetic forms asserting her place in this important tradition. In the most famous sonnet from this sequence, Sonnet 43, her highly personal expressions of love and passion—and ostensibly feminine emotionalism—are framed by the repetition of “I,” the poet herself.  She and Browning ultimately married in secret and sailed to Italy.

Activism

In Italy, Barrett Browning became involved in Italian Independence. Much of her work reflects her interest in individual—particularly women’s—rights, child labor, prostitution, abolition, and the plight of the poor and downtrodden. These interests combine in many of her greatest works, including Aurora Leigh (1856), a hybrid novel poem that depicts the limitations placed upon women’s public and private ambitions.  She died after another bout of illness in Florence, Italy, in the arms of her husband.

from Sonnets from the Portuguese

III

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

Unlike our uses and our destinies.

Our ministering two angels look surprise

On one another, as they strike athwart

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art

A guest for queens to social pageantries,

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes

Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do

With looking from the lattice-lights at me,

A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?

The chrism is on thine head,—on mine, the dew,—

And Death must dig the level where these agree.

XIV

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, Belovèd, 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.

XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Lord Walter’s Wife

I

“But why do you go?” said the lady, while both sat under the yew,

And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.

II

“Because I fear you,” he answered;—”because you are far too fair,

And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your gold-coloured hair.”

III

“Oh, that,” she said, “is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,

And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.”

IV

“Yet farewell so,” he answered;—”the sun-stroke’s fatal at times.

I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.”

V

“Oh, that,” she said, “is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence:

If two should smell it, what matter? who grumbles, and where’s the pretence?”

VI

“But I,” he replied, “have promised another, when love was free,

To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves me.”

VII

“Why, that,” she said, “is no reason. Love’s always free, I am told.

Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?”

VIII

“But you,” he replied, “have a daughter, a young little child, who was laid

In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid.”

IX

“Oh, that,” she said, “is no reason. The angels keep out of the way;

And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.”

X

At which he rose up in his anger,—”Why, now, you no longer are fair!

Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear.”

XI

At which she laughed out in her scorn: “These men! Oh, these men overnice,

Who are shocked if a colour not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice.”

XII

Her eyes blazed upon him—”And you! You bring us your vices so near

That we smell them! You think in our presence a thought ‘t would defame us to hear!

XIII

“What reason had you, and what right,—I appeal to your soul from my life,—

To find me too fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, and a wife.

XIV

“Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you not. Dare you imply

I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high?

XV

“If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply adapted too much

To uses unlawful and fatal. The praise!—shall I thank you for such?

XVI

“Too fair?—not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while,

You attain to it, straightway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile.

XVII

“A moment,—I pray your attention!—I have a poor word in my head

I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.

XVIII

“You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.

You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter!—I’ve broken the thing.

XIX

“You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then

In the senses—a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men.

XX

“Love’s a virtue for heroes!—as white as the snow on high hills,

And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils.

XXI

“I love my Walter profoundly,—you, Maude, though you faltered a week,

For the sake of … what was it—an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on a cheek?

XXII

“And since, when all’s said, you’re too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant

About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant,

XXIII

“I determined to prove to yourself that, whate’er you might dream or avow

By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.

XXIV

“There! Look me full in the face!—in the face. Understand, if you can,

That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.

XXV

“Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar—

You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.

XXVI

“You wronged me: but then I considered … there’s Walter! And so at the end

I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend.

XXVII

“Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine!

Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine.”

Mother and Poet

I.
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!

II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said;
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
—The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead.

III.
What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed,
And I proud, by that test.

IV.
What art’s for a woman? To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat,
Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees
And ‘broider the long-clothes and neat little coat ;
To dream and to doat.

V.
To teach them . . . It stings there! I made them indeed
Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,
That a country’s a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.

VI.
And when their eyes flashed . . . O my beautiful eyes! . . .
I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels!
God, how the house feels!

VII.
At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses,—of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me; and, soon coming home to be spoiled
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel-bough.

VIII.
Then was triumph at Turin: Ancona was free!’
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
While they cheered in the street.

IX.
I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.

X.
And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand, I was not to faint, —
One loved me for two—would be with me ere long :
And Viva l’ Italia!—he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint.”

XI.
My Nanni would add, he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls,—was imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how ‘twas impossible, quite dispossessed,
To live on for the rest.”

XII.
On which, without pause, up the telegraph line
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta : — Shot.
Tell his mother. Ah, ah, his, ‘their ‘ mother,—not mine,’
No voice says “My mother” again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot

XIII.
Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth’s affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through THAT Love and Sorrow which reconciled so
The Above and Below.

XIV.
O Christ of the five wounds, who look’dst through the dark
To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray,
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,
And no last word to say!

XV.
Both boys dead? but that’s out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
‘Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
And, when Italy’s made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son?

XVI.
Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta’s taken, what then?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short?

XVII.
When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red,
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,
(And I have my Dead) —

XVIII.
What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low,
And burn your lights faintly! My country is there,
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
My Italy ‘s THERE, with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair!

XIX.
Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this—and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.

XX.
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me!

Sources

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.  “Lord Walter’s Wife.”  Public Domain.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.  “Mother and Poet.” Public Domain.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.  Sonnets from the Portuguese.  Public Domain.

Robinson, Bonnie J.  British Literature II: Romantic Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond.  University of North Georgia Press, 2018.  https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/16/, CCA-SA 4.0

Turlington, Anita et al.  Compact Anthology of World Literature II.  University of North Georgia Press, 2022, https://alg.manifoldapp.org/projects/compact-anthology-of-world-literature-ii, CCA-SA 4.0