Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 22

As a new generation kid, I was lucky to be born into a era that didn't have to start the fight for civil rights. Yes, protests and rallies are still being held but those protests and rallies are the same ones that have been held for years on end now. They aren't the first. My generation isn't the first. However, living in this "new generation" means that a good majority of past traditional social oddities are more normalized to us than ever. These oddities encompass everything from interracial relationships, interfaith relationships, homosexuality, all the way to those who don't associate with common gender norms. So, being raised as a child with an open mind, I like to challenge what may have been overlooked in the past and see how our past thinkers may have been more socially advanced than what we think of them to be.
Now, these sonnets are not modern. In fact they are very old with the dating of the sonnets going back to the mid 1800's, a time where those social oddities were not acceptable at all. Within one of her sonnets, Sonnet 22, I felt an interesting glow to the poem. A glow that suggests the sonnet was written through the influences of one of the traditional social oddities. It made me question myself, "Is this sonnet actually suggesting a love that wasn't "acceptable" in it's time or is this just the mind of a new generation student in the works?"

The basis of this sonnet suggests the speaker is the dominant in their relationship. At one point the speaker demands their lover to "Think." They do this after they question what matters as long as they are happy and content. This all seems harmonious until the speaker later says "Let us stay rather on earth, Beloved, .... A place to stand and love in for a day" This line changes the entire sonnet. It's where the nontraditional glow begins and the questions stir in the mind of this new generation