As a poet, Louise Labe confines her writing to her personal life for the most part. She's young and in love, writing about the various trials which young lovers always encounter. Although she possesses the wherewithal to recognize her own position within a stereotype, she does not discount the emotions and experiences of love as childish or imaginary. She gives them full credit as part of the human experience, with a most profound hold on a person.
Labe's love life remains blurry but tumultuous. She continually writes about love lost in poems like Sonnets XXIII, XIV, and VIII. Her aim is to process and describe the agony which it is to be in love -- neither pure joy nor pure sorrow, but a caustic mixture of both. In her descriptions of the suffering which it is to lover another, Labe hones in on her personal struggle with desperation. When her love life turns sour, she often begins to mention death, like in Sonnet XIV, but she does so to argue with herself about the validity and merit of life. She is determined to do everything within her power to recover, so long as she is able.
