Comparing My Last Duchess And Goblin Market

In comparison to Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”, Christina Rosetti’s narrative poem “Goblin Market” is a good poem to contrast against the dramatic monologue of “My Last Duchess”. The reason so is that the speaker in not in first person like that of the narrator in Robert Browning’s “Last Duchess”. We also explore a darker, more cynical, and perhaps more neurotic tone from such a personal account in “The Last Duchess”. For instance, the speaker in the “My Last Duchess” departures from a clear narrative story presented in Christina Rosetti’s “Goblin Market” where Rossetti illustrate clearly—as long as you have a suspense of disbelief—of an unfortunate event that occurs where two sisters are lured and tempted into a forbidden market with goblin men selling exotic fruits. Instead of a clear and precise narrative novel where readers must give their suspense of disbelief, the narrator in the “My Last Duchess” is a

I call / That piece a wonder, now. Fry Pandolf’s hands” (lines 1-3). For a sane man, especially any normal man who must have lost a wife, it is such an unusual statement—almost too objectifying and detached from human emotions—for a husband to not reference his wife, the supposedly last duchess, as the caricature or art work instead of the human. This is where the audience can see the exploriation of psychological development of the speaker, and especially see the unnamed duke in the poem as losing his sanity or even becoming fragmented. Browning especially reveal more of the duke’s neuroses and sociopathic penchant throughout the poem when the duke describes more of the Duchess personality and habits when he describes her having “A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad, / Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er” (lines