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Women + Victorian era
Gender roles in british victorian literature essay
Women + Victorian era
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The murder was a method to attain love in both monologues. 'My Last Duchess' and 'Porphyria's Lover' are famous dramatic monologues by Robert Browning who wrote forms of dramatic monologue in the Victorian era. Both the poems sketch the man’s obsession with a woman that concludes in her murder. His way of showing love is that it eventually turns into death or a murder. Together the monologues include the issues of jealousy, obsession, love, and hatred. Individually the speakers were exceptionally possessive, the murders were deliberate; the monologues had different setting, tone, and approach to make it sound more dramatic.
Both speakers in each monologue were selfish men who love their victims. They loved their women for their beauty but did not care for the love that was unseen in their beauty. In 'Porphyria's lover', Browning writes about an abnormally possessive lover waiting for his woman to return. The lover is obsessed with Porphyria, and wants this moment of love to last forever. He feels that Porphyria loves him the same way. He is always happy when she is around him. The speaker had said, "Happy and proud; at last I knew/ Porphyria worshiped me: surprise/ Made my heart swell, and still it grew" (32-34). The speaker is also egocentric and jealous but while the speaker was killing the woman. The speaker had said,
"In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain." (39-43).
The speaker killed his victim by tying her hair around her neck. The women did not stop him. By killing, he knew she could not leave him anymore. She would be his and only his until the end. Similarly, the Duke is a proud, possessive, and a lover of ...
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...so he thinks it was okay. The speaker had said, " And all night long we have not stirred,/ And yet God has not said a word!" (59-60). In 'My Last Duchess' the Duke has all rights to do what ever he wants because he is dominant of his rank. If his love does not suite the Duchess's he can move on and forget about her. The monologues are similar because both women in the monologues are killed over control. The speakers were possessive, jealous, and full of love and hatred and they talk to the silent listeners about a dramatic events or experience. His murder of Porphyria was his only thought for them to be together and the Duke did not kill the Duchess out of love, but because he was self-doubting. Both women are very flirtatious. Each man wants to own their woman and treat them like an object. This is the only solution why ultimately they take the lives of the women.
Initially, both speakers in the literary texts are similar because they killed their lovers. In Duchess, the duke that is the speaker says blatantly that he killed his last wife. As the speaker says in lines 45-46, “I gave commands; then the smiling stopped all together.” These lines mean that he told her to stop smiling, but she didn’t listen to him, so therefore he killed her, thus the smiles stopped all together. He explained that he did this such action because she smiled too much. In the same way, the speaker of Lover explained that he killed his lover too. The speaker grabbed his woman’s hair, and wrapped it around her neck three times, and strangled her to death! “I found a thing to do, and all her hair in one long yellow string I wound three times her little throat around, and strangled her” (Lines 37-41).
In contrast to Macbeth’s love for his wife, in Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ there is an absence of the romanticised emotion of love. The Duke refers to his wife as ‘My Last Duchess. Here the use of the possessive pronoun ‘my’ gives us the idea from the outset that the Duke saw his wife as merely a possession. The iambic pentameter of ten syllables per line used in the poem also emphasises possession by stressing ‘my’ further in the pattern. Browning’s portrayal of love is one that is absent of emotional attachment, but instead something by which he could possess and have power over her. It could be argued that there are similarities in the way that Lady Macbeth also uses the emotion of love. Being in the form of a dramatic monologue, use
The oxymoron, 'beloved sweetheart bastard' shows the mixed and miscellaneous views of 'wishing him dead' but also crying at the wall for him to return. The line 'some nights better, the lost body over me, my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear then down till I suddenly bite awake.' This shows she sometimes dreams of her lost lover, but when she awakes the bitterness and hatred returns. My Last Duchess is about the Duke of Ferrara, talking to the go - between arranging his next marriage.
As the reader examines "Prophyria's Lover" by Robert Browning, one recognizes the complete effort of the speaker to disguise his feelings toward the murder of his wife. The speaker goes through different thoughts in relation to the life he has with his wife. Many thoughts include the positive and negative parts about her and their relationship. Throughout the monologue, the speaker tells the readers of his struggles of coming to the conclusion of murdering his wife and the reasons to do so. In “Prophyria’s Lover”, the speaker is faced with many types of insanity before, during, and after the murder of his wife, Prophyria because of the love he has for her.
The death of the female beloved is the only way deemed possible by the insecure, possessive male to seize her undivided attention. This beloved woman represents the "reflector and guarantor of male identity. Hence, the male anxiety about the woman's independence for her liberty puts his masculine self-estimation at risk" (Maxwell 29). The jealous and controlling males in Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" and "My Last Duchess" possess a fervent desire to fix and monopolize their unconstrained female beloveds. Due to a fear of death, both speakers attempt to achieve control and deny object loss; by turning their lovers (once subjects) into objects, they ultimately attain the role of masterful subject.
I was gratified to see that this critic agreed with my interpretation of the Duchess’s demise, viz., the Duke had her murdered. The theory advanced by my brilliant and magnificent Professor had been that the Duke gave her so many orders and restrictions that she pined away. I had been looking at his famous line “And I choose/never to stoop.” He married her for her beauty but would never lower himself to tell her when she angered him.
"Porphyria's Lover" is an exhilarating love story given from a lunatic's point of view. It is the story of a man who is so obsessed with Porphyria that he decides to keep her for himself. The only way he feels he can keep her, though, is by killing her. Robert Browning's poem depicts the separation of social classes and describes the "triumph" of one man over an unjust society. As is often the case in fiction, the speaker of "Porphyria's Lover" does not give accurate information in the story.
Browning’s works were the primary model for the basic form of the standard Victorian dramatic monologue which was based around a speaker, listener, and a reader. Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” became a model for the dramatic monologue form primarily because of the strict approach he took while developing the poem. One of the aspects characteristic of this work is the authors level of consciousness. Each element in “My Last Duchess” is thoughtfully constructed with form and structure in mind. This poem is filled with dramatic principle that satisfied the Victorian period’s demand for an action and drama that were not overtly apparent in the work. In the case of “My Last Duchess” the drama of the poem is how his character, the Duke, is introduced. In dramatic monologues the character’s self is revealed through thoug...
the Duchess's kindness toward others. Her benevolence "disgusts" the Duke, and causes him to "stoop" down to spouting off "commands" in her direction.
In ‘Porphyria’s Lover,’ the speaker appears to be honestly and simply recounting the events of his final encounter with Porphyria. However, Robert Browning’s careful use of meter (Iambic Tetrameter), rhyme and repetition betrays his true state of mind. He uses phrases like “Mine, Mine!” to help enforce this.
The Theme of Love in the Poems First Love, To His Coy Mistress, Porphyria's Lover, My Last Duchess and Shall I Compare Thee?
A dramatic monologue is defined as a poem in which a single character is speaking to a person or persons- usually about an important topic. The purpose of most dramatic monologues is to provide the reader with an overall or intimate view of the character’s personality. A great poet can use punctuation and rhythm to make the poem appear as if it were an actual conversation. Robert Browning, known as the father of the dramatic monologue, does this in his poem, “My Last Duchess.'; The Duke of Ferrara, the speaker in “My Last Duchess,'; is portrayed as a jealous, arrogant man who is very controlling over his wife.
...ll “And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred”. This allows the reader entry into the lover’s state of mind - he is clearly insane. Consequently, some critics believe that "Porphyria's Lover" was inspired by a murder that was described in gory detail when published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1818 by John Wilson, which was eighteen years before Browning wrote this poem. The story, "Extracts from Gosschen's Diary," is about a murderer who stabs his lover to death and describes her blonde hair and blue eyes in doting detail. This not only outlines that women are only considered convenient if docile and attractive but also that writers, including female writers, “were regularly found to have succumbed to the lure of stereotypical representations”. For those reasons, the private and the public are intimately interlinked and not wholly separate.
A resemble example for ludic and possessive love reveals in the poem "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning. Just from the word "Last" could infer that the main character Duke of Ferara had more than one wife. However, his last duchess is the subject of the painting that he show to the visitors. In the poem, the Duke welcome a stranger to look at his painting of the last duchess, but every stranger when they saw the paint would be inspired by the passionate look on her cheek. The Duke then speaks: "Strangers like you that pictured countenance,/ The depth and passion of its earnest glance,/ But to myself they turned (since none puts by/ The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)/ And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,/ How such a glance came there; so, not the first/ Are you turn and ask thus" (7-13). The curtain symbolize Duke 's possessive love, which nothing but he is the only one who could pull off the curtain from her portrait in order to show others. This demonstrate a complete control over his wife by the Duke, and he believes that himself should be the only that that pleased by the "spot of joy into the Duchess ' cheek
The poem “Porphyria's Lover” is a dramatic monologue spoken in first person from the perspective of the narrator. By choosing this style of narration Browning can portray how human psychology, specifically the consciousness...