A Man's Requirements by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Man's Requirements

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Poetry has always been a way to express an individual's feelings, when he or she cannot find the right words to say or if that individual has been going through a rough time; this was the case for poet Elizabeth Browning. Not only was she dealing with a disease, but also had to cope with the death of her mom and two brothers. However, I feel everything happens for a reason and this is why she has become such an influential poet, because she speaks straight from the heart. "A Man's Requirements" is the epitome of your classic love poem. She tries to portray the love she feels every man should be able to give to his significant other. You can say it exaggerates the imagination or hope of how a man should love a woman or what he hopes to love in a woman. The title can be interpreted in two different ways, both ways being correct. While it does mean what a man requires of a woman, it also means what is required of a man by a woman. This poem is in the point of view of a man, which is ironic, since Elizabeth Browning wrote it.

While reading this poem, I could grasp a sense of what the poet was feeling in her diction. The repetition of the phrase "Love me" exemplifies the love she wanted her husband, Robert Browning, to have for her. It makes the poem that much more powerful with the repetition of this phrase as if she is trying to engrave in his brain that he has to love her as much as she wants him to. In this first stanza (lines 1-4) Browning illustrates this by writing, "Love me Sweet, with all thou art / Feeling, thinking, seeing; / Love me in the lightest part, / Love me in full being." The poem is all in all a description of what a man loves in a woman, a love that is wished for- no ones can describe the feeling.

Anyone who has ever been in love can obviously tell you that you do not know what it feels like until you have felt that feeling before. With the way Elizabeth Browning writes, you can observe that she was strongly influenced by the feeling of love with her husband. The feeling she writes about is every woman's dreams- to be loved by a man unconditionally and for a man to accept all a woman's flaws. In Stanza XI (lines 41-44), she wants him to love her as much as he is capable of, "Thus, if thou wilt prove me, Dear, / Woman's love no fable. / I will love thee- half a year- / As a man is able." Elizabeth Browning movement from youth to death in this poem is also significant. She goes from "Love me with thine open youth" (Line 5) to "On though living-dying... Love me for the house and grave" (Lines 28 and 39). I feel this is line has a deeper meaning than most people might see. Children are depicted as guiltless so by loving someone with your open youth is saying love someone with the innocence of youth, meaning