f opium addiction, while other still aren't sure. Browning was convinced that she was of "natural ill health," and tried to deal with her problems quietly. For this, and many other reasons, Browning was determined to write. Furthermore, she did not appear to be attached to any particular religion. Later in life, Browning became interested in metaphysics, which is the study of the visible and invisible; this kind of study could have led her to develop curiosity about a supreme being and the after life.
             For at least three reasons, it is arguable that Browning was in fact referring not to her spouse, but to God. First, to Alethea Hayter, a British writer and critic, these sonnets show "...the psychological interest of tracing the evolution in love of a thirty-nine-year-old invalid, who at first cannot believe that a brilliant poet, six years younger than herself, can really love her and want to marry her..." (Hayter 6). There are many indications that support the idea that these sonnets could be speaking of her husband, Robert Browning. However, during this time Browning was also depressed about her growing illnesses around the same time that the poems were published in 1850. From the beginning of her Sonnets, in part I, she speaks of someone that appears to be in a metaphysical realm as when she says "And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, "Guess now who holds thee?"- 'Death,' I said. But, there, The silver answer rang,-- 'Not Death, but Love'" (Peters
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