Relationships in Elizabeth Barrett Brownings poem If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For Naught :: If Thou Must Love Me Let It Be For Naught

Relationships in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For Naught The relationships between men and women have always been a widely talked about subject. Each gender wonders what it would be like to be the other and experience things the way that the other would. Men and women most likely won't ever understand each other and sometimes won't be able to love the person that loves them. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For Naught" explains how women hurt men. Another poet, Maya Angelou, writes about how men hurt women. However, that doesn't mean that other couples can't get along. Gwendolyn Brooks wrote a poem, called "The Bean Eaters", about how men and women can live with each other for very long periods of time. The relations between men and women are often times very complex, but they can also be simple. Some women discover that finding the right man is rather difficult. In Browning's poem, she writes of a young women who is talking about a man that loves her. She finds that she doesn't really love him and when trying to explain it to him says this, "If thou must love me, let it be for naught/ Except for love's sake only" (260, lines 1-2). The woman in the poem knows that this man loves her and she believes that he loves her only for "her smile- her look- her way of speaking gently" (260, lines3-4) and that isn't good enough for her. The women tells the man good-bye and she gives her final words, "Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity" (260, line 14). The woman tells him he will find some one new, some one who will love him back. Even though physical pain can be hurtful, psychological pain is sometimes worse. In the poem "To a Husband" by Maya Angelou, a woman is being verbally abused by her husband. His "voice at times a fist" (254, line1), his words hurt her as would a punch in the stomach or a slap to the face. She does not understand why he is doing this to her. Men have their ways of talking to women to keep them submissive and under control. Men talk down to their wives and make them think that they are dumb and have no value except to tend to the children and the house.