1 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for
something. The point is to establish a connection between a person's emotions. One
can very quickly capture the emotions at the time of the man/woman to speak or
perform his/her passion. This is because the brain captures energy that radiates
enthusiasm.
Passion emitted naturally by itself by the time you interact with someone.
When people know his/her passion, they feel motivated, and inspired. Passion is very
powerful feeling for examples for love, hate, anger, or other emotion or in another
definition passion is an extreme interest in or wish for doing something, such as
hobby, activity, etc. In this thesis the writer will discuss about passion of love.
There are many ways to express love, maybe through a song or a poem. Love
has a close relation with poem. As Natsir (2007:1) said that poem is a universal as
language and almost as ancient as history. The most primitive people have used it,
and the most civilized and cultivated it.
Many people including some poets express their love through a poem, and it
based on their experiences too, like what Elizabeth Barrett Browning has done. Poem
(ancient Greek “poieo” that means “I create”) is an art form in which human
language is used for its aesthetic qualities instead of its notional and semantic content
in poem, language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ
2 Poem means a lot to many people. To the poets, poem is a media to express
their feeling, imagination, and their observation about social phenomenon in society.
In studying poem, one thing the writer should do is recognizing the meaning of the
poem, relationship of the poem with the poet’s life, historical period and particular
culture in which that poem was written and also the social background of the poem.
Elizabeth Barret Browning has written many love poems to express her love
to someone she loved, Robert Browning her husband. They were most popular
romantic couple from the Victorian period, their love story as sweet as Romeo and
Juliet story’s even more. They were strive for their love and How Do I Love Thee is
probably Elizabeth’s most popular love poem for her husband. Their sweet true love
story have perpetualed in a film. A true story between Elizabeth Barrett Browning
and Robert Browning entitled The Barrett of The Wimpole Street by a production
house named Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s-Production.
It is a commonthing that every woman wants to be loved by a man. Every
woman wants a man who faithfully supports and is willing to fight for her. But
sometimes behind it all would be a perception that makes women themselves have
any doubts about the purity of the love and even turning away from the man. This is
where the patience of man will be tested to prove his love and that if he can convince
her then she will also turn to love him. Many ways to show how woman loves a man
and one of them is to give more attention to the man and even to depend on the man,
it is because of the love of a woman to the man.
In this thesis the writer wants to make a research on her poems entitled The
Lady’s ‘Yes’ and How Do I Love Thee?. In The Lady’s ‘Yes’ , Elizabeth talks about
3 must trustworthy and faithful for a woman. Poem entitled How Do I Love Thee is one
of Sonnet from Portuguese. It talks about how Elizabeth expressing her deep love to
the Robert Browning. It expressed that nothing can compare with true love. It says
that love is pure and true. This poem is heartfelt, romantic, loving, elegant, and
simple. Both of the poems explained that how a woman wants to be loved truly by a
man that should fight for win a woman’s heart, and how a woman clarified her true
love to a man.
Based on the description above the writer decided to take the poems to be
analyzed, as they are very famous poems. Both of the poem are some ways for
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to express her love to Robert Browning started from the
first she met until she fell in love with him. It is interested to analyze how a poem fall
to another, it means that one poem has a connection to another. Here, the writer tries
to find the passions between the meaning of the poems. The poems explores much
about woman’s emotions and how love influences their life. The poet gives any
messages which reflected in her attitude and also struggle to get her hope. So people
can learn more about human problems and difficulties, especially problems that are
faced by women in the world.
1.2 Problem of the Study
From the preceding background, there are some problems which interest to
discuss in this study.
1. How is woman’s passion to be loved truly pictured in The Lady’s ‘Yes’ ?
4 1.3 Object of the Study
Based on the formulated problems, the writer would like to achieve the
following objectives:
1. To describe how is the woman’s passion to be loved truly pictured in The Lady’s
‘Yes’.
2. To describe how is the woman’s passion to love pictured in How Do I Love Thee?
1.4 Scope of the Study
To avoid overlapping explanation, the writer makes a clear scope and
delimitation, so that the analysis will be focusable. There are many aspects which can
be analyzed in these poems, but the writer deliberated discuss into more detail about
a woman’s passion to be loved and how to love in Elizabeth Barrett Browning
selected poems. Therefore, beyond the scope of this, the writer would not describe it
extensively.
1.5 Significance of the Study
The finding of this study can be very useful in the area of literary values. By
studying the woman’s passions in the poems, we could explore significance of the
study as follows:
Theoretically, this study is aimed for further literature study and also the
passions through the poems. Practically, to give input for the readers who are
interested in poem, in order to understand the poem better and to add our knowledge
