Readers are taught many different things regarding love in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese". As the introduction on Barrett Browning states, each sonnet represents a different stage in the author's growing love for her husband Robert.
In sonnet 21, the speaker encourages her lover to tell her over and over again that he loves her, even though in the beginning she recognizes that it seems very silly and girlish. However, the more she thinks about it, she realizes that no one ever complains about too much of anything in nature, ("Too many stars... Too many flowers"), and this justifies the repetition for her. This resembles the beginnings of a relationship, the need for fairly constant reminders of how much you care about someone, because you haven't quite made it to the point yet where "I love you" goes without saying.
In sonnet 22, the speaker tells of how content she and her lover are together, that nothing anyone can do can tear them apart ("what bitter wrong can the earth do to us, that we should not long be here contented?"). She has such a faith in their love that she would rather them stay on earth "where the unfit contrarious moods of men recoil away and isolate pure spirits" such as she and her lover than to move on to Heaven where she believes their relationship would thrive in perfection. This sonnet moves from the new, exciting beginning of the relationship to marriage; making the commitment with your love and being ready to face life's challenges together.
In sonnet 32, the speaker begins to have doubts, not about her feelings, but for her husband's. She worries that his love for her came too quickly, and "quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe". Then she turns on herself, putting herself down by stating that it is very hard for her to believe that someone like her husband could ever love someone like her, comparing herself to "an out-of-tune worn viol" and he to "a good singer". But she soon realizes that by doubting herself in this way, she is also doubting her husband, when she should be entrusting herself to his talent, "for perfect strains may float 'neath master-hands, from instruments defaced". This represents a stage of doubt or questioning that even the most perfect of relationships tend to go through. It would be hard to find anyone, even someone claiming to have a fairy-tale relationship, that would claim to never have had doubts in their relationship on some level.
In sonnet 43, the speaker tells her lover of all the ways she loves him. You can tell that their relationship has evolved in many ways, because she is doing more than just telling him she loves him. She is explaining how she feels the love she has for him. Even deeper than an emotional level, she loves him on a free, pure, and soulful level. She loves him as fervently as her childhood faith, and "with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!" Basically, she loves him with everything she has and has ever had. This is the deepest and most basic level of love anyone can experience, and I think few people every truly get to this point in their relationships.
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