Porphyrias Lover and My Last Duchess by Robert Browning Essay -- Rober

Compare the two poems Porphyrias Lover and My be Duchess by Robert toasting. What do they reveal about attitudes to women and relationships in the nineteenth coulomb?Robert Browning was one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century. In 1842, he promulgated Dramatic Lyrics which included the two poems Porphyrias Lover and My uttermost Duchess. In Porphyrias Lover Browning gives the lecturer a dramatic sagacity into the twisted mind of an abnormally possessive lover, who wishes the moment of love to come through forever. In this essay, Porphyrias Lover will be compared to Robert Brownings other dramatic monologue, My conk Duchess, where an Italian aristocrat reveals his cruelty to his slow wife whilst showing off a portrait of her to one of his guests.Robert Brownings poems Porphyrias Lover and My Last Duchess were both written in the form of a dramatic monologue. Both poems show a affinity because they are both narrated from the male lovers point of view. As a result, t he reader becomes more closely involved in the poems and arouse feel very strong emotions for the individuals portrayed than if the poem was written from the eye of an outsider. This form of writing enables Browning to use irony, in which the strong meaning is concealed or contradicted by the literal meanings of the words. For example, in My Last Duchess the Duke orders the death of his wife, though hides the true meaning in his words a great deal the same smile? This grew I gave commandsThen all smiles stopped together. My Last Duchess is also written in the form of a single stanza poem, which is the building block of a poem that consists of two or more lines of verse organize according to the content and form and usually repeated as a recurring pattern in the poem. By contrast, Porphyrias Lover does not follow this pattern, but has a different rhyming scheme. On the surface, the narrators in each poem show completely different characteristics. In Porphyrias Lover, the narrat or shows powerful emotions towards Porphyria, which demonstrate his strong romantic feelings. The reader acknowledges that the narrator is passionately in love, as the following extract demonstrates. similarly weak, for all her hearts endeavour,To set its struggling passion bleakFrom pride, and vainer ties disseverAnd give herself to me forever.By contrast, the Duke in My La... ...all night long we birth not stirredAnd yet God has not said a wordYou can compare this to My Last Duchess where again, the Duke shows no remorse for say the death of his wife.The modern reader is given an insight into the way relationships in the midst of men and women were viewed in the last century, and earlier, during the time of the Renaissance. Without doubt, men had the dominant role, and women had superficial personal freedom. Women were duty-bound to show unquestioning respect for the men in their lives, regardless of how they were treated. In Porphyrias lover, Browning shows us the vision of a woman who is not following this role model. In fact, she is completely the opposite, and as such, she is fulfilling the role of a male fantasy by taking a dominant role, with obvious sexual intentions. In the nineteenth century this would take a leak had the dual effect of being both sensational and revolutionary.In the eye of a modern reader, neither poem is particularly shocking, as batch are more accustomed to material of a revealing nature. This shows that when training and understanding texts, the reader has to bear in mind the times and condition in which they were written.