Poems happen to be words that mean more than they look. May they express a message, describe someone’s point of view of his/her life or anything, poems are able to do so much with so little. Such is how famous poet of the 19th century Robert Browning managed to do with his writings. Through his writings of My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover, we will look upon the way that he believes men would become alongside women. Replaced for stronger than interesting
To start it off, let’s discuss about how Browning’s men view their woman as an object. In My Last Duchess, the duke decided to have a painting of his late wife at her best. The painting, hidden behind curtains, is only shown to selected few by the duke himself. We can read in the poems …show more content…
Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?[…]”
The duke’s tone seemed to be rather tense, as if he was frustrated over the fact that she acted human towards everyone. Due to this, her life ended in the hands of her husband [technically, the killers that her husband called]. And what about Porphyria’s Lover? The madman killed his lover because he believed she chose him over her noble life. And to ensure that she doesn’t change her mind, he made sure to keep her always in his control. Thus, both poems show men’s morality and physically shutting off by a woman’s action force them to only fulfill their own desires.
And to top it off, let’s approach Browning’s poem’s originality: dramatic monologue. Not only does both speakers seems to also be a man that killed their wife for their own sake, they also seem pleased to the fact that they died by their hands. Along with that, both speaker speak rather negatively of their subjects whence they were living ‘objects’. That is, until these living ‘objects’ die: they become what the men desired the most after the ‘objects’ reached the end of their life. And here’s a little more: what the dead lovers had become seemed to be art related. One of them became a painting, a visual representation of herself hidden behind curtains, while the second one became something like a puppet, a toy controlled by the puppeteer. Thus, what Browning’s men want is women’s perfection at their peak: their
To start it off, let’s discuss about how Browning’s men view their woman as an object. In My Last Duchess, the duke decided to have a painting of his late wife at her best. The painting, hidden behind curtains, is only shown to selected few by the duke himself. We can read in the poems …show more content…
Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?[…]”
The duke’s tone seemed to be rather tense, as if he was frustrated over the fact that she acted human towards everyone. Due to this, her life ended in the hands of her husband [technically, the killers that her husband called]. And what about Porphyria’s Lover? The madman killed his lover because he believed she chose him over her noble life. And to ensure that she doesn’t change her mind, he made sure to keep her always in his control. Thus, both poems show men’s morality and physically shutting off by a woman’s action force them to only fulfill their own desires.
And to top it off, let’s approach Browning’s poem’s originality: dramatic monologue. Not only does both speakers seems to also be a man that killed their wife for their own sake, they also seem pleased to the fact that they died by their hands. Along with that, both speaker speak rather negatively of their subjects whence they were living ‘objects’. That is, until these living ‘objects’ die: they become what the men desired the most after the ‘objects’ reached the end of their life. And here’s a little more: what the dead lovers had become seemed to be art related. One of them became a painting, a visual representation of herself hidden behind curtains, while the second one became something like a puppet, a toy controlled by the puppeteer. Thus, what Browning’s men want is women’s perfection at their peak: their