Christopher Browning

In line 45-47 of My Last Duchess the author revealed to use that the Duke is crazy, jealous, and selfish. Firstly, the author shows us that the Duke is crazy because he said “Then all smiles stopped together.” The author could have been inferring to us that base on the words of the Duke that he could have possibly kill or send the Duchess to a mental facility because in this era it was common for this like that to happen and by doing that he won’t have to see her smile towards anyone else ever…

“My Last Duchess,” Browning’s dramatic monologue centers thematically on a Renaissance Duke’s obsession with overpowering his Duchess. His desire to dominate reached ta an extent where he reduced her to nothingness, captured in a painting. The poem, though about a Renaissance man, reflects completely a Victorian masculine attitude toward women. The main character of the poem that indulges into the monologue is a misogynist man who is unable to bear with any act of agency performed by women. In…

Gatsby is as a victim of the values of a pretentious, narcissistic society, however, at his core, he desires something richer and sincere. Similarly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is initially suppressed by the rigid ideals of the Victorian era, however, she undergoes a metamorphosis and gains the courage to defy the conservative values of the 19th century. Through reviewing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese” it is apparent that…

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley are two novels in which the themes of equality and inequality are explored extensively. The texts are both written by women in 1847 and 1818 respectively and both deal with gender inequality. Jane Eyre is also a social commentary on the injustices and inequalities of the classist Victorian hierarchy whereas Shelley’s novel focuses on the human rejection of unconventionality and the inequalities faced by societies ‘outcasts. The…

Strong, determined yet graceful and refined, the transcendent power of women is an attribute that has been misconstrued throughout centuries. Women have the ability to raise and educate generations all the while possessing a fierceness that allows them to accomplish anything they desire. In modern society, the power of women is limitless. They are free to follow their individual paths and choose their own fate. Although modern women have the opportunity to attain their goals, a woman…

Goblin Market and its readings Christina Rossetti was born in London, in a family with a long history of incredibly gifted artists. Nowadays she is considered to be one of the most important female poets of the Victorian Era as well as to be somehow a feminist. Rossetti was a brilliant and beautiful woman, and she never got married. However, apart from her work as a poet, she devoted her time to work as a volunteer with former prostitutes in a refuge. Actually her most famous poem ‘Goblin…

Elizabeth Barrett Browning praised his poetry in her work and on January 10th, 1845, Robert Browning wrote a letter to her. As a middle-aged woman, Browning didn’t believe she could be the object of a romantic love. In his book about the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, H.W. Preston states, “Her sickness caused her to to feel dead to hope of any kind” (18). Robert Browning was six years younger than Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and was filled with energy and good health…

The perspective of a work of literature changes from the first time you set your eyes on it. My point of view of the poem Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning changed drastically from the beginning of this research project till now. As I looked into information over this poem and different aspects about it, I began to have more of an open mind towards it and understand the true meaning behind it. I learned that poetry has more to it that just the words that were printed on the page. It allowed…

Context plays a significant role in portraying values of the composer triggered by time and place. ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ (1845) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a reflection of her personal experiences in the context of the Victorian era’s gender issues and female expectation in a Petrarchan form. Similarly F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ (1926) centres of the failure and tragedy of the American dream in the Roaring 20's. Both texts explore the positive and negative effects of…

Elizabeth Barret Browning was born on March 6, 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, being the first in her family to be born in England. She was one of the most famous poets of the Victorian period and of the Romantic Movement. Romanticism was the largest artistic movement of the late 1700s that originated in Europe. She had lived with her father Edward Moulton-Barrett, who owned sugar plantations in Jamaica, her mother Mary Graham Clarke Moulton-Barret and 11 younger siblings. Mr. Barrett had…