2. Literacy Objective: Lesson Objectives: UNDERSTAND the ideas
Literacy Objective: Lesson Objectives: UNDERSTAND the ideas. EXPLORE the context of Browning and see how this creates meaning IDENTIFY and ANALYSE key language and structure that creates meaning.

3. What is the difference?
AO1 Read, understand and respond to texts. Students should be able to:
maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response
use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate
interpretations.

4. HOW DO PEOPLE FALL IN LOVE? Desperation/past hurt
PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE
Beyond your control
(God? Fate?)
The life they can
offer you
Arranged ‘love’
Always support
you/trust them
MAKE YOU LAUGH
Desperation/past hurt
Childhood dream
to be in love
Known them
for a long time

5. Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written.
AO3

6. ……But Browning was different.
Barrett Browning was always interested in the position of women in society, and throughout her career she wrote challengingly and combatively about the need for gender equality.
By the late 1830s, Barrett Browning was starting to explore her concern with the social roles prescribed for women much more critically through her poetry. In particular, she was increasingly interested in the power dynamics that lie at the heart of heterosexual relationships. Barrett Browning repeatedly criticises women’s secondary role in society, the ways in which the institution of marriage oppresses them, and the idea that love and sexual relations are often grounded in problematic and often brutal power games.
AO3
Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written.

7. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Look at the control here-
she asks a question then
answers it.
The female is in control.

8. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Sonnet 43
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 every day’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.

9. Elizabeth Barret Browning was a prominent Victorian poet
Elizabeth Barret Browning was a prominent Victorian poet. She suffered from lifelong illness, despite which she married the poet and playwright Robert Browning, who was a major influence on her work, and to whom Sonnet 43 is addressed.

10. There isn’t the traditional PROBLEM AND SOLUTION structure.
AO2
Analyse form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects.
A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. An iamb is a poetic foot with a count of two syllables, where the second one is stressed. Pentameter is a poetic line with five feet
Browning follows the convention here-
what is expected from a poet writing about love. BUT….
There isn’t the traditional PROBLEM AND SOLUTION structure.
The rhyme scheme is loose, and Browning often makes use of assonance (for example “"Praise"” and “"Faith"”), which is striking because the poem is about defining the perfect love, and yet the poem avoids perfection.

11. There are devices here- but it is not enough to spot them.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
The rhetorical question opening this sonnet has an almost teasing tone.
Whilst Browning could be showing how love is indefinable, she does go on the try to quantify her love with the triplet “depth and breadth and height”. She
Therefore shows her control and certainty of her love.
There are devices here-
but it is not enough to spot them.
You must show me WHY
they create meaning.

12. My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
Look at the use of “soul” “Being” and “grace”- what might Browning be saying about love?
Why Grace and Being capitalised?
For extension:
Is Browning exaggerating her love by comparing it to the ideal form?

13. What is personified here and why? Why have we IMAGERY of light?
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
What is personified here and why?
Why have we IMAGERY of light?
And why two different kinds of light?

14. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
Go back to our CONTEXT:
What might Browning be saying
about women and love?
Why might “purely” and “Praise”
be a juxtaposition?

15. I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
What effect does the alliteration of “p” have here?
When would passion be useless?
Browning writes autobiographically- she hints at past
“griefs”, past relationships that went wrong OR
her tense relations with her family and eventual
disinheritance from the family (AO3)

16. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
Why seemed?
The Victorians were traditionally very religious,
so what is Browning hinting at here?
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints – I love thee with the breath,
What Browning has lost, she gained again through her love.
The hyphen allows a pause here, possibly indicating her blasphemy.
Breath is the substance of life- given to her not by God, but by her love.

17. Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
Why the exclamation?
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
What is the effect of the imperative?
Why the conditional “if”?