When we hear the name Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one line immediately comes to mind:
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
It is one of the most famous openings in English poetry. For generations, readers have associated Browning with love, romance and the celebrated relationship between two poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.
But to remember her only as the poet of love would be to overlook a remarkable woman who wrote about women's independence, child labour, poverty, political freedom and social injustice.
A poet who began young
Elizabeth Barrett was born in England in 1806. She showed an extraordinary interest in literature from childhood and began writing poetry at a young age.
Her health was fragile for much of her life, and she spent long periods confined indoors. Yet physical limitations did not prevent her from developing a powerful intellectual and literary life.
Books became companions, and poetry became her means of observing and questioning the world around her.
By the time she met Robert Browning, she was already an established poet.
A love story between two poets
Their relationship is one of the best-known literary romances.
Robert Browning admired Elizabeth's poetry and wrote to her. Their correspondence gradually developed into love. Elizabeth's father strongly opposed marriage for his children, and Elizabeth and Robert eventually married secretly in 1846.
They left England and settled in Italy.
Their love is immortalised particularly in Elizabeth's Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of 44 sonnets describing the emotional journey of their relationship.
And there is the famous Sonnet 43:
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
Yet there is something interesting about this collection. The title Sonnets from the Portuguese can make a reader imagine translations from a Portuguese poet. They are not. They were written by Elizabeth herself. Robert had affectionately called her his “Portuguese”, and the title helped disguise the personal nature of the poems.
The woman who wrote these love poems, however, was much more than a woman in love.
Her poetry had a social conscience
Elizabeth Barrett Browning looked beyond her own circumstances.
In “The Cry of the Children,” she responded to the suffering of children working in Britain's factories and mines. The poem gave poetic expression to the harsh reality of child labour.
She also wrote about slavery, political freedom and the struggles taking place in Italy, the country that became her adopted home.
Her poetry therefore combined personal emotion with public concern.
Love was important to her, but so was the world outside her window.
Aurora Leigh — a woman who wanted to be a writer
Perhaps one of the best ways to understand Browning's thinking about women is through Aurora Leigh, published in 1856.
The central character, Aurora, wants to become a poet.
That ambition matters.
A woman wanting education was one thing; a woman claiming a serious intellectual and creative identity was another.
Aurora Leigh explores questions that remain relevant even today:
Can a woman have ambition without apologising for it?
Can she choose art instead of simply fulfilling society's expectations?
Can love and independence exist together?
Through Aurora, Browning created a woman who wanted both a life of the mind and a life of her own choosing.
The woman behind the famous love poem
It is tempting to separate Elizabeth Barrett Browning into two images.
One is the romantic poet who wrote “How do I love thee?”
The other is the serious Victorian writer concerned with society and politics.
But they were the same woman.
Perhaps that is what makes her interesting.
A woman can write about the deepest personal emotions while also questioning the injustices around her. Love does not make a writer less intellectual. Sensitivity does not mean a lack of strength.
Browning's poetry demonstrates that the personal and the political can exist on the same page.
Why should we read her today?
More than 160 years after her death, Elizabeth Barrett Browning still gives us reasons to return to her work.
She reminds us that women writers have always had something to say about the world, not merely about their private lives.
She reminds us that poetry can be romantic and political, intimate and socially conscious.
And perhaps most importantly, she encourages us to look beyond the one famous quotation attached to a writer's name.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning deserves to be remembered not merely as the woman who asked how she loved.
She deserves to be remembered as a woman who found her voice — and used it to speak about love, freedom, women, children and society.
The next time we hear “How do I love thee?”, perhaps we can pause before stopping there. There is a whole Elizabeth Barrett Browning waiting to be read beyond those famous fourteen lines.
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