Elizabeth Barret Browning, the life partner of Robert Browning, deserves her place in the history of English poetry not by being the wife of the celebrated poet, but in her own independent right, for she was left behind quite valuable poetry. Even Robert Browning loves Elizabeth after being impressed by her poems. How much can one love another? In how many manners can one love another? E. B. Browning writes Sonnet-43 answering above two questions. Perhaps, this poem is written to express her deep love towards her husband. So this is not only a love poem but also a guide line for a wife to make herself love her husband. Now, it is time to know why a husband should make his wife read this poem.
How Do I Love Thee? belongs to E. B. Browning’s best work Sonnets from the Portuguese collection of love sonnets just before she married Robert Browning. Here the poetess enumerates the different ways of her loving Robert Browning. In order to explain the nature of her love or to make her love understand the depth and intensity of her love she has recourse to different dimension.
Firstly, she loves Browning to the depth and breadth and height that her soul can reach. These dimensions are not physical ones; they are spiritual. This expression emphasizes the sincerity, depth, and intensity of her love and the absence of artificiality, insincerity, and pretence.
The next way of her loving is secular, worldly and very usual. For our physical existence and growth, everyday, we need many things most. If they are denied to us, we cannot live. She loves Browning to the level of everyday’s essentials. She loves him all the while by sun and candlelight. Light or darkness, day or night nothing can influence her love; it lasts with all its full intensity and force by day or night.
Thirdly, her love is free from all kinds of compulsion, obligations, impurities, and imperfections. She loves him with all the force and energy of heart as one strives with one’s all energy and strength-physical and spiritual- for right.
The fourth way of her love is the pure one. Many men strive for right with no intension to win praise or appreciation or recognition from people. But no earthly or proposal interest guides her. She expects no praise or returns for her love.
The fifth way of her love is free from sensuality, physical passion and demands. In the case of removing one’s grief there is no room for physical interest. She loves him with the passion that Browning put to use in nursing her in her with his tender cared old grieves. She also loves him with her childhood’s faith.
Sixthly, her love is connected with religion. She loves him with a love that she apprehended to lose with her lost saints. Here her love is raised to religious status. She, perhaps, thinks he is her God and she, his devotee.
Seventhly, she loves him thinking him to be as essential as breath to her life. Browning is all to her. She cannot think of her own being without him. She loves him in weal and woe, in smiles, and tears.
At last, she declares that if God allows her, she will love her better after death. Thus she thinks her love for him will not end with the end of her life.
The emphasis on summation throughout, in a sense, paradoxical. The “how” of love escapes quantification, yet Browning’s breathless catalogue conveys something of its variousness and richness. In the last line, the poet stresses the ultimate mysteriousness of a passion which extends beyond the grave-
“I shall but love thee better after death”.
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