How does Browning show the balance of power between men and women in
My Last Duchess and Porphryria's Lover?
In these two poems Robert Browning shows the balance of power in
male-female relationships. Both are very similar in the way that they
portray the women having more power than they should have, and the men
not having the power they think they should have.
In the first poem, 'My Last Duchess', Browning shows the Duke not
having full control over his wife, the Duchess. In the second poem,
'Porphyria's Lover', the narrator does not have control because she is
in a higher class and cannot be with him and she would lower her class
and she is not ready to give it up.
In 'My Last Duchess', the Duke is talking to someone about the dead
Duchess. He first refers to power over the Duchess in the poem when he
says about the painting of her behind the curtain, and if anybody
wants to see it they would have to ask him first,
'Since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I'
This shows that he still has control over her even though she has
passed on. After that he writes about how every little detail seemed
to please her,
'She had
A heart how shall I say... too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.'
The Duke gets quite angry at this point,
'The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her,'
This is about how a man broke into the orchard, took a bunch of cherry
blossom and gave it to the duchess, and made her very pleased, which
as you can understand he can give her far better things than a common
man can give,
'As if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift.'
He gave her his old and important family name which most women would
give their happiness to have, when she married him, which in the
Duke's eyes is better than anything else in the world.
He says that to comment on this behaviour is stooping down to a lower
level,
'And I choose
Never to stoop'
The Duchess's behaviour becomes beyond tolerable next,
'Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
When'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.'
This greatly suggests that the Duke thought he had the power over the
Duchess, and used it to order someone to kill her, although he doesn't
directly say but he strongly hints it. But Browning cleverly wrote the
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.
French writer Victor Hugo, was banished by Napoleon III, emperor of France, for writings that were critical to the government. In April of 1857, English Poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a letter to Napoleon, which she never mailed. Imploring Napoleon to excuse Hugo for writing a furious letter to the government.
Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland was a book that took us back to the horror of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a mass killing of Jews in Germany that was led by Adolf Hitler. Hitler wanted to get rid of all of the Jews in Europe because he thought they were an inferior race. So Hitler would gather the men who were going to have the job of killing the Jews and they were called the “Ordinary Men”. In this book Browning does a great job showing who the ordinary men were and how the ordinary men turned into killers. The Ordinary men were men in the german army who had the job of killing innocent Jews daily. The men didn’t have a choice in this decision of killing the jews.
Gender Criticism and The Turn of the Screw The Turn of the Screw by Henry James continues to stir up an immense amount of controversy for such a short novel. Making a definite, educated decision on the actual truth considering the countless inquiries that develop while reading this story proves more difficult than winning a presidential election. That being said, taking one particular side on any argument from a close reading of the story seems impossible, because the counter argument appears just as conceivable. Any side of the controversy remains equally disputable, considerably supported by textual evidence from the novel.
In the ordered English town of Highbury in Jane Austen’s Emma, people live a well constructed life, which shapes the views of social classes in their world. Despite the fact that Emma is a nineteenth-century novel, it represents a time when women depended on economic support from men. This method is observed through the main character Emma, who spends a great deal of her time agonizing about wealth and potential power. In the novel, readers are introduced to Emma as a young prosperous woman who manages her father’s house. Since she is younger than her two sisters, she is introduced to various female characters, which influence her social development and exemplify a range of gender roles available to her. In Emma’s household women are superior to men, as her father demonstrates feminine tendencies and the women are portrayed as masculine. This could be the reason Emma prides herself in being an advocate of structuring prosperous relationships within her community. When Emma considers prosperous relationship, she begins by categories people by their power and beauty. In Emma’s mind, power and beauty is the ideal combination to developing a perfect society. In Jane Austen‘s Emma, the main character Emma uses her obsession with beauty and power to create her own utopia. Emma’s utopia reconfigures the social system so that hierarchy is defined by looks and character instead of birthrights. However, when Emma’s attempt to create her own utopia fails, Austen challenges readers to accept the existing order and structure of the early nineteenth century English society.
War Changes People is an age old saying, but what makes an ordinary man go from average Joe to blood thirsty Nazis? As Browning, explains in her book “Ordinary Men”, the loss of humanity does not happen over night. The combination of War, racism, and “constant propaganda and indoctrination”, were key factors in understanding the assimilation of these men into the Nazi ideology (Browning, 186). Browning does a great job of contrasting the Reserve Police Battalion 101’s Massaacre at Józeów to later experiences which allows the audience can see these factors slowly coming into effect when reading the transition from reluctant compliance to enthusiastic killer.
In the second and last stanza of the poem we are reminded that he was but a child. The thought of losing the berries “always made him feel like crying” the thought of all that beauty gone so sour in the aftermath of lust. The lack of wisdom in younger years is emphasized by the common childish retort of “It wasn’t fair.” He kept up the childish hope that this time would be different, that this time the berries would keep and that the lust, work, and pain might not have been in vain, that others would not “glut” upon what he desired.
Women, in the past decades, have undergone a revolution. They have earned the right to vote and the right to be a man’s equal under the law. They have confronted the obsolete values of male superiority. They have even manage to destabilize the firm belief that only men could be in power. Despite these accomplishments, women have also made a point that we are not equal, simply, men aren’t superior to any women.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a novel filled with many symbolic references that reflect not only the issues/concerns of the Puritan era but also of similar issues of his own time period, which Hawthorne reveals his personal opinions on. One example of said issues evident in his work is the Puritan society’s view/treatment of women, which he appears to express contempt for through the use of his character Hester Prynne. However, even though Hawthorne appears to not be in favor of how the Puritan government perceives/deals with women, he also doesn’t seem to be willing to allow the equally involved patriarchal system to be challenged or abolished since it works in a man’s favor and at times he even concurs with society in terms
Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is an interesting piece of literature that has been analyzed and reviewed by many scholars throughout the years. Something that is often brought to attention are the gender roles. In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway makes a stronger woman and a more feminine man, this is something that had not yet been seen in literature. A few authors had made female and male characters in their novels that were different than the norm, but none to the extreme of Hemmingway. In Hemingway’s novel, his female character, Brett, does not care about obeying the societal gender role set forth for her during the time period she lives.
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Do you believe that women of this present generation have always received the same level of respect as they receive now? Today, women are treated exceptionally well as compared to their counterparts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and treated even better than those in the very early years of America. Women in the past were restricted from freedoms and rights; their individuality was stripped and they were constantly forced to meet the constraining view of a “traditional” America. In contrast, women of modern America are granted a level of recognition and respect unexplored by American women of previous generations.
In "My Last Duchess", by Robert Browning, the character of Duke is portrayed as having controlling, jealous, and arrogant traits. These traits are not all mentioned verbally, but mainly through his actions. In the beginning of the poem the painting of the Dukes wife is introduced to us: "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,/ looking as of she were still alive" (1-2). These lines leave us with the suspicion that the Duchess is no longer alive, but at this point were are not totally sure. In this essay I will discuss the Dukes controlling, jealous and arrogant traits he possesses through out the poem.
Over the centuries, women’s duties or roles in the home and in the work force have arguably changed for the better. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen teaches the reader about reputation and loves in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries by showing how Elizabeth shows up in a muddy dress, declines a marriage proposal and how women have changed over time. Anything a woman does is reflected on her future and how other people look at her. When Elizabeth shows up to the Bingley’s in a muddy dress they categorize her as being low class and unfashionable. Charles Bingley, a rich attractive man, and his sister had a reputation to protect by not letting their brother marry a ‘low class girl’. Reputation even today and back in the nineteenth century is still very important aspect in culture. In the twenty-first century, women have attempted to make their lives easier by wanting to be more equal with the men in their society. Women are wanting to be the apart of the ‘bread winnings’ efforts within a family. Since evolving from the culture of the nineteenth century, women have lost a lot of family and home making traditions but women have gained equality with more rights such as voting, working, and overall equal rights. In the twenty-first century world, most women are seen for losing their morals for and manners for others. As for example in the novel when Mr. Darcy is talking badly about Elizabeth she over hears what he and his friend, Mr. Bingley, are saying about her but she does not stand up for herself.
The feeling of not being heard or not being allowed to do what you want is placed upon women in the 1930s. Harper Lee’s depiction of women, in her novel To Kill A Mockingbird, is they should be able to have an important voice in society, make changes they feel are important, and do certain actions without conforming to gender normalities.