Compare & Contrast 'Porphyria's Lover' and 'My Last Duchess'. Which Poem do you Find More Effective and Why?

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08/05/07                

Compare & Contrast ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’. Which Poem do you Find More Effective and Why?

        Robert Browning was writing his poems at the time Queen Victoria was on the throne. He was born in 1812 and died in Venice in 1889. During his life he wrote many poems, two of which were ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’. These are the poems we are going to be studying. During Browning’s lifetime England was very clearly divided into class systems. If you were born into the working class that is where you would stay all your life, you would only associate with people from your class and you would work for people of the higher classes. If you were born into the higher classes you would not contemplate even talking to someone of a lower class than yourself. Also at this time women had no rights, they had no say in anything to do with politics, and they didn’t even have the vote. Women were told who to marry in this time period, usually for money rather than love. This is all very ironic as the monarch at the time was a woman.

        The two poems we are studying – ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ – reflect the unfairness I have pointed out very effectively and for this reason some of Robert Browning’s poetry was frowned upon. An example of this is in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. The relationship in it is between a man of a low class and a woman of a higher class which creates massive problems in the relationship and ultimately causes the relationship to break down. The other poem, ‘My Last Duchess’, again points out the unfairness of how high class men ruled everything and treated women as disposable possessions.

        The first poem I am going to analyse is ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. This is a story of a woman of a high class who is meeting with a man of a much lower class. The whole meeting is told from the man’s point of view making the poem a dramatic monologue.

The poem starts by describing the mood of the weather outside. It is described as ‘sullen’ and that it is trying to ‘vex’ the world outside. This personification is used effectively to reinforce how wild the weather is that night; it also sets a mood of storminess which can refer to the atmosphere inside the cottage. The description of the weather also goes towards making the cottage seem totally isolated. We then see the thoughts of the man for the first time where he says, ‘I listened with heart fit to break’ which suggests that he has been waiting a long time for something or someone and that is all he has been concentrating on,


 this also shows that he is worried about what is coming. As soon as this is said the thing he has been waiting for, Porphyria, ‘glides’ into the cottage. The word glide implies that she is full of grace which is in total contrast to the storm going on outside. He then talks of how she kneels at the fire grate and makes the whole cottage warm. This could mean that she simply lights a fire or it may be that metaphorically just her presence lights up and adds warmth to the whole cottage. Next she proceeds to take off her wet clothes which is described in detail using such words as ‘soiled’ and ‘dripping’ to emphasise what she has come through to be at the cottage that night. When she has finished she sits next to the man but it is she that calls to him, it is almost as if the man is nervous and uneasy in her presence. It is even her that must take the man’s arm and put it about her waist; she has to make all the moves which must show that there is something troubling the man. Next he lists all the things that she does but the manner in which this is done makes the man seem detached as if his mind is troubled greatly by something. Whatever it is that is troubling the man does not seem to bother the woman because she murmurs to the man that she loves him. The word murmur, with its gentleness suggests that the woman really does love the man. Here the man reveals what it is that is troubling him, he says that though he knows she loves him she will never be able to give herself to him fully as she will never be able to totally break the ties with her class but he goes on to say that even with his fears that ‘passion sometimes would prevail’ over them. He then goes on to say, ‘For love of her, and all in vain’. Here he is saying that although he loves her too he thinks that their relationship could never last but in that moment he also looks into her eyes and realises that she loves him. This makes the man proud, we can see this where it says,

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‘Porphyria worshipped me; surprise

 Made my heart swell, and still it grew’

The word ‘worshipped implies that he thinks she is madly in love with him and the way that he Browning emphasises the way his heart swells reinforces how proud he feels to be loved by this woman. This feeling seems to take the man back as he doesn’t know what to do. He feels that for that moment he owns her, we can see this where it says, ‘That moment she was mine, mine’. In this perfect moment he must realise that it cannot stay this way forever ...

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