What message do you get from If Thou Must Love Me?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem ‘If Thou Must Love Me’ is a sonnet dealing with its typical subject of love. So, it’s all about the poet’s thoughts, feelings and expectations from her relationship with the lover. So, this does not really deliver a ‘message’ in the conventional sense.

But yes, it is always possible to draw out a learning or message from a poem. This poem teaches us that love should be genuine, sincere, unconditional and eternal. It also indicates to the theme of gender equality where a woman is demanding unconditional love from her lover in a patriarchal society.