Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Among all women poets of the English speaking world in the 19th Century, none was held in higher critical esteem or was more admired for the independence and courage of our views than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Both in England and in the United States she had a wide following among cultured readers.
She was the first woman to write sonnets in English literature. She is well known for her remarkable sequence of forty-four love poems written to the very famous poet Robert Browning; "Sonnets from the Portuguese".

   " How do I love thee'
      let me count the ways. "
                               -Sonnet 34

 In this Sonnet the poet expresses the eternal nature of love and its power to overcome everything, including death. The poet says that there are many ways to love that she is counting. This Sonnet is the celebration of the love. In her sonnets she followed the petrarchan style. The rhyme scheme of a poem is abba abba cdc cdc. She follows iambic pentameters in her sonnet sequence.
In 1957, she published her verse novel "Aurora Leigh" which portrays male domination of women. In this novel she opines through the mouth of the one character Marian Earl that "What I am today is not because of man's seduction, but because of man's violence". It is the strongest predicament. In this novel she explores one of betterself.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a 'great admirer' of proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose monumental work "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792) influence her views on the position of women in society. She was very much concerned about Women's Right and Women's Question. 





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