The sonnets from Portuguese are a series of poems that express the journey that Elizabeth Browning takes along the road to meeting love. This complete set of 44 sonnets was written in the 1800s during the Victorian age. Unlike other literary counterparts of this period, the woman plays a dominant role. This is surprising because the male typically has the dominant role and women are usually the hidden force of silence rather than voicing their opinions. The chronicle focuses on the love and devotion she has towards her future husband, Robert Browning. Browning encounters various emotions, including death, and at first struggles to understand what exactly happened to her. The speaker is a woman who is very passionate about her husband. Browning is so passionate about her future husband that the name Sonnets from Portuguese comes from the nickname he gave her, "My little Portuguese." The love she has for him is expressed in each sonnet but in a different form. The progression of the sonnets introduces the irreversible concept of adversity to achieve love, passion for one's partner and growth before the start of a marriage. Death seems to be his first companion first. The first sonnet talks about his first acquaintance with love. His unexpected presence overwhelms her and makes her believe that she is meeting death. The first stanza of sonnet I begins with a thought taken from a poem, I thought once as Theocritus had sung / Of the sweet years, the dear and desired years, / That each appears in a gentle hand. In this stanza, the Greek poet Theocritus is mentioned in reference to the feeling he has about his poem about shepherds wooing nymphs and shepherdesss, then singing with......the center of the card......you freely, like men they turn away from praise. Additionally, she recalls her love of Christianity as a child and compares that love to suffering. The likeness of Christ dying on the cross and the suffering he experiences in a certain sense symbolize strength. This strength is shown in the repetition of “I love you”, these words are very powerful and convey the message of how the speaker is really doing. The speaker concludes that their love will not die as they do but will ascend with them to heaven: "I love you with the breath, / the smile, the tears, of all my life! - and, if God chooses, / not I will do nothing but love you more after death." Works Cited "Theocritus". Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online academic edition. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc.,2013. Web.03 November 2013. tp://www.gutenberg.org/files/2002/2002-h/2002-h.htm