Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning both use dramatic monologues as a poetical device to capture a reader’s attention and subvert the status quo of political notions that they rail against in order to achieve their ideals of race/gender/class equality. However, their approach to utilizing dramatic monologue to achieve this goal is substantially different. The difference of tone, context, and form of the dramatic monologue are vividly showcased in the contrast of Barrett’s “The Cry of the Children” and Robert’s “My Last Duchess.”
Robert uses dramatic monologue in “My Last Duchess” to invoke self-reflection about notions of nobility,ownership and objectification of women. The reader experiences life through a “noble” man (hereafter …show more content…
She directly beckons her middle-class readers’ to stand up for their fellowmen by directly asking them questions as vividly showcased in the opening two lines “Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, / Ere the sorrow comes with years? The equality is created in the use of “brothers” and the repetition of the language of sympathy reinforces the children’s suffering in “weeping” and “sorrow” and through direct reasoning that the mind does not age only our bodies which is connoted through the use of “with years”. In stanza two not only is the language of sympathy repeated in abundance such as in the words “sorrow,” “tears,” “falling,” weep,” “lost,” etc., but Barrett also weaves equates youthful nature that is free from hard labor to real children. This is a clever tactic Barrett weaves into her poem because nature and art had constantly been used to define life in poetry and philosophy and here she that notion on its head insofar as she is able to impose the question of, well if this happens in nature then it must be so in human reality to the imposition of child labour and thus demanding the reader to also equate an if this, than that summation. Another device Barrett uses is the personal voices she creates for the children which induce another level of sympathy. Here Barrett has incorporated a similar device as Robert’s to use the mind of the monologue to induce sympathy and judgement. However, her inclusion of the children reaches to the sympathies of
Robert uses dramatic monologue in “My Last Duchess” to invoke self-reflection about notions of nobility,ownership and objectification of women. The reader experiences life through a “noble” man (hereafter …show more content…
She directly beckons her middle-class readers’ to stand up for their fellowmen by directly asking them questions as vividly showcased in the opening two lines “Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, / Ere the sorrow comes with years? The equality is created in the use of “brothers” and the repetition of the language of sympathy reinforces the children’s suffering in “weeping” and “sorrow” and through direct reasoning that the mind does not age only our bodies which is connoted through the use of “with years”. In stanza two not only is the language of sympathy repeated in abundance such as in the words “sorrow,” “tears,” “falling,” weep,” “lost,” etc., but Barrett also weaves equates youthful nature that is free from hard labor to real children. This is a clever tactic Barrett weaves into her poem because nature and art had constantly been used to define life in poetry and philosophy and here she that notion on its head insofar as she is able to impose the question of, well if this happens in nature then it must be so in human reality to the imposition of child labour and thus demanding the reader to also equate an if this, than that summation. Another device Barrett uses is the personal voices she creates for the children which induce another level of sympathy. Here Barrett has incorporated a similar device as Robert’s to use the mind of the monologue to induce sympathy and judgement. However, her inclusion of the children reaches to the sympathies of