The critical tradition surrounding this sonnet has tended to read it biographically. That is, critics tend to associate the speaker with Browning herself. The reason for this association has to do with the context in which the poem first appeared. “How Do I Love Thee?” is the penultimate poem in Sonnets from the Portuguese, a cycle of forty-four sonnets that Browning penned to celebrate the growth of her love for her husband, Robert Browning. Having escaped a tyrannical father who had all but forbidden her from falling in love, such a thoroughgoing expression of affection must have been profoundly liberating for the poet. Given this broader framework, it makes sense to see Browning as the speaker of the poem, addressing her husband and enumerating the many forms her love for him has taken. However, there is nothing in the poem itself that affirms this association. We don’t know the gender identity of either the speaker or their beloved, nor do we know anything about their racial identity or class position. Aside from the passion they feel for their beloved, the only thing we know definitively about the speaker is that they experienced a period of doubt during which their faith in God wavered.

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