Thomas Blackburn describes the two Victorian poets, Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson as being great contemporaries (47). As such it is apt that their works should muse upon and explore similar topics and themes. Their connection is especially evident in Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”. The themes of entrapment and incarceration feature heavily in both of these works. Specifically, it is the entrapment and incarceration of women which pervade their respective compositions. When taking into consideration the way in which women were viewed at this juncture in history- being nothing more than “beautiful objects” (Gilbert and Gubar 54), it is quite easy to see how the literary representations of the nineteenth century woman would be responses to such confines. While “My Last Duchess” can be looked upon as an investigation of the captor, represented by the Duke; “The Lady of Shalott” can be considered an exploration into the captive, represented by the Lady that gives the poem its title. Both poems are an analysis into the Victorian woman as an incarcerated and entrapped sub-culture of a predominately patriarchal society. It is no surprise then that the methods of which these fictional women take to escape comes at the cost of their lives. The doomed Duchess of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue, “My Last Duchess” is the embodiment of the incarcerated woman taken to the eternal extreme. The setting for this poem is the Italy of the Middle Ages, a time when women had still less freedom than in the Victorian era. Women were regarded as possessions, a form of imprisonment within itself. As Johnson states the theme of “marriage as bondage” is consistently explored throughout Browning’s early wor... ... middle of paper ... ...y 16.1 (1978): 70-87. Jospeh, Gerhard. "Tennyson's Optics: The Eagle's Gaze." PMLA 92.3 (1977): 420-428. Langbaum, Robert. The Poetry of Experience: The Dramatic Monologue in Modern Literary Tradition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1957. McGhee, Richard. Marriage, Duty, & Desire in Victorian Poetry and Drama. Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1980. Orr, Mrs. Sutherland. Handbook to Robert Browning's Works. 6th Edition. London: George Bell and Sons, 1899. Plasa, Carl. ""Cracked from Side to Side": Sexual Politics in "The Lady of Shalott"." Victorian Poetry 30.3 (1992): 247-263. Ricks, Christopher. Tennyson. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1972. Showalter, Elaine and English Showalter. "Victorian Women and Menstruation." Victorian Studies 14.1 (1970): 83-89. Showalter, Elaine. "Victorian Women and Insanity." Victorian Studies 23.2 (1980): 157-181.
In the eighteenth century, the process of choosing a husband and marrying was not always beneficial to the woman. A myriad of factors prevented women from marrying a man that she herself loved. Additionally, the men that women in the eighteenth century did end up with certainly had the potential to be abusive. The attitudes of Charlotte Lennox and Anna Williams toward women’s desire for male companionship, as well as the politics of sexuality, are very different. Although both Charlotte Lennox and Anna Williams express a desire for men in their poetry, Charlotte Lennox views the implications of this desire differently than Anna Williams.
As the world progresses, attitudes and values constantly change, like the wind. Flowing through the depths of our inner morality and beliefs. Welcome back to another episode of Poetry Aloud, where I talk about poetry… aloud. Today I will be discussing how Victorian poets are able to illustrate this changeable nature of attitudes and values within their world through highlighting our most prevalent desires that unlock the true beast of humanity, thus exploring humanity’s transforming perspectives as society progresses. Letitia (La tee sha) Elizabeth Landon’s The Marriage Vow highlights
A Room of One’s Own and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh (Book I)”, the women’s voices are muted. Female characters are confined to the domestic spheres of their homes, and they are excluded from the elite literary world. They are expected to function as foils to the male figures in their lives. These women are “trained” to remain silent and passive, not only by the males around them, but also by their parents, their relatives, and their peers.
...J. and Vivienne J. Rundle, ed. The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory. Orchard Park: Broadview Press,1999.
Wolfson, Susan & Peter Manning. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. V. 2A. New York: Longman, 1999.
Calder, Jenni. Women and Marriage in Victorian Fiction. New York : Oxford University Press, 1976.
Wolfson, Susan and Peter Manning (eds.). The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Volume 2A. New York: Longman, 1999.
Lipking, Lawrence I, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 1c. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is a haunting poem that tells the story of a seemingly perfect wife who dies, and then is immortalized in a picture by her kind and loving husband. This seems to be the perfect family that a tragic accident has destroyed. Upon further investigation and dissection of the poem, we discover the imperfections and this perfect “dream family” is shown for what it really was, a relationship without trust.
Roberts, Helene E. "Marriage, Redundancy or Sin: The Painter's View of Women in the First Twenty-Five Years of Victoria's Reign." Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Ed. Martha Vicinus. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973.
In essence, Elizabeth Barrett Browning dramatic monologue proved a powerful medium for Barrett Browning. Taking her need to produce a public poem about slavery to her own developing poetics, Barrett Browning include rape and infanticide into the slave’s denunciation of patriarchy. She felt bound by women’s silence concerning their bodies and the belief that “ a man’s private life was beyond the pale of political scrutiny” (Cooper, 46).
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. "The Lady of Shalott." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993. 1059-1063.
‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ are both poems by the Victorian poet Robert Browning. In this essay I will compare these two poems to find similarities and differences.
During the Seventeenth Century, eroticism in literature was deemed outrageous and was rarely published or performed. However, a group of male poets often gathered to share their writings between one another. This group comprised of a number of renowned poets that we celebrate today including Jon Donne, Ben Jonson and Thomas Carew. Carew’s poetry is notoriously erotic, far beyond the norm of his era. Carew’s most noted erotic poem A Rapture deals with the courtship of his desire, Celia. Embedded in A Rapture are underlying meanings, mainly dealing with obsessive desire and power. Thomas Carew’s poetry encompasses both Petrarchan and Ovidian discourses of desire, more specifically the obsessive male desire and the attainment of power.
Victorian women lived according to strict social conventions, which dictated their actions, emotions, and beliefs. These conventions were often presented in antithetical pairs: private versus public spheres, the angel in the house versus the fallen woman. One of the most complex paradoxes for women to master was that of beauty versus vanity. Society’s rules required a young lady to be attractive, but not provocative; diligent about her appearance, but not overly so; aware of her beauty, and simultaneously unconscious of it. Balancing these meticulous distinctions, then, became an almost unattainable feat, but a crucial one, as success or failure directly translated into a woman’s moral status. In Adam Bede, George Eliot contrasts the idealized preacher Dinah with the fallible dairymaid Hetty by illustrating two very different examples of feminine beauty. Eliot directly addresses the complicated understanding of “moral” Victorian beauty through her physical presentation of these women and their actions throughout the story.