Elizabeth Barrett BrowningWhat makes her interesting/inspiring/admirable? Several things.
Her drive for education. She was the eldest of 12 children. Born in 1806, girls were educated at home.
During the Hope End period, she was an intensely studious, precocious child. She writes that at age six she was reading novels, at eight she was entranced by Pope's translations of Homer, studying Greek at ten and writing her own Homeric epic The Battle of Marathon. Her mother compiled early efforts of the child's poetry into collections of "Poems by Elizabeth B. Barrett". Her father called her the 'Poet Laureate of Hope End� and encouraged her work. The result is one of the largest collections of juvenilia of any English writer. On her 14th birthday her father gave the gift of 50 printed copies of her epic. She went on to delight in reading Virgil in the original Latin, Shakespeare and Milton.
Elizabeth watched her brothers go off to school knowing that there was no chance of that education for herself.
She had her physical battles as well.
At about age 15 Barrett Browning began to battle with a lifelong illness, which the medical science of the time was unable to diagnose
Elizabeth was courageous and took a strong (unpopular) stand, based on her religious beliefs.
Elizabeth opposed slavery and published two poems highlighting the barbarity of slavers and her support for the abolitionist cause: "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"; and "A Curse for a Nation". In "Runaway" she describes a slave woman who is whipped, raped, and made pregnant as she curses the slavers. Elizabeth declared herself glad that the slaves were "virtually free" when the Emancipation Act abolishing slavery in British colonies was passed in 1833, despite the fact that her father believed that Abolitionism would ruin his business.
Elizabeth was an avid seeker ....
She was interested in theological debate, had learned Hebrew and read the Hebrew Bible.
Elizabeth was very spiritual.
She says in her writing, "We want the sense of the saturation of Christ's blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the Sphinx of our humanity, expounding agony into renovation. Something of this has been perceived in art when its glory was at the fullest. Something of a yearning after this may be seen among the Greek Christian poets, something which would have been much with a stronger faculty".
She recognized the God inherent in artists.
She believed that "Christ's religion is essentially poetry�poetry glorified".
How Do I Love Thee?
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 candle-light.
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.
This poem is a love sonnet to The Christ.