“I found a thing to do,”
He sees murder as just a “thing”. This shows that he thinks differently to most people. Some may say that he is not deranged but “mad with love” or “lovesick”.
Another difference is their status. The Duke is aristocratic and the Lover is not. The Duke is proud, vain and jealous whilst the Lover doesn’t care about his backgrounds or his appearance to other people; he just wants to be with Porphyria. However he may be seen as jealous as well because he kills Porphyria.
An additional variation between the Duke and the Lover is they way they treat romance. The Duke is very unromantic and prefers to be surrounded by his art. He is often watching his Duchess flirt with other people and he never says anything. He loves her but he would rather not show it (this may be because he thinks it would make him appear weak). The Lover however, is much more romantic. He meets Porphyria in a house in the woods, alone with a fire and he holds her all night and he is very secretive. He shows his love. The Duke chose “never to stoop” to the Duchess’ level like Porphyria stoops to the Lover’s level.
The Duke and the Lover are both very possessive, but they love different possessions. The Duke loves money and art (objects). The Lover loves Porphyria. They both love their partners but they differ in the way they show it. They are both possessive of them. They are so possessive of their partners that they kill them so that no one else may ever have them. There is another difference here: the Duke “gave commands” to have the Duchess killed (he has her assassinated), but the Lover does it himself. Does this mean anything? Or was it just the situations they were in? The Duke kills his partner to prevent anyone else from having her, but the Lover kills his partner to preserve them in that precious moment forever.
The title “My Last Duchess” suggests that was his most recent Duchess and that he has had more before, and maybe killed them too. The Lover thinks that it’s fine that he has killed Porphyria because:
“God has not said a word!”
It’s almost as if he thinks it’s righteous.
The Duchess and Porphyria are both victims of strange and/or mad men. They are both killed because their partners don’t want anyone else to ever have them. They are both attractive women. They are both romantic women, but they are romantic in different ways. The Duchess is flirtatious and smiles and blushes at everyone:
“…spot of joy.”
She is easily pleased and naïve. Porphyria is not like this, she is romantic in the same way that the Lover is romantic. She meets him in his house in the woods, she ‘relights his fire’ when she gets in. She is motherly, she looks after him. She is also sexy:
“…made her smooth white shoulder bare, and all her yellow hair displaced,”
Both women will attract other men. The Duchess flirts with “some officious fool” and Fra Pandolf flirts with her when he paints her portrait, and she would always blush. She is “too easily impressed; she liked whate’er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.” She does not apparently worship the Duke. Porphyria does worship the Lover. This difference would have been the reason for both their deaths, the Duchess because she didn’t worship her partner and Porphyria because she did worship her partner.
The Duchess doesn’t act aristocratic like the Duke does. She is more like the Lover. Porphyria does act aristocratic because she is from a wealthy aristocratic family. We can see this because she was at a feast and her family do not want her to have anything to do with the Lover. She is also weak, she is too weak to tell her family that she does love him (and worships him) and she is perhaps vain/proud (like the Duke) and she doesn’t think it is right that she should love him or go against her family’s wishes. This is why the Lover kills her.
…she guessed not how her darling one wish would be heard.”
He is saying that her one wish was to be with him, and because she is too weak he makes the wish heard by killing her. If she had been stronger she would not have been killed. Perhaps Porphyria is more suited to the Duke as she is not apparently a flirt, she is vain/proud and is concerned about who she is seen with and would worship him and perhaps the Duchess would be more suited to the Lover as she is not so aristocratic and vain/proud as to neglect him by obeying her family’s wishes.
The relationships the couples embrace are similar in some places and dissimilar in others. The similarities are: the man killing the woman, one member of each relationship is aristocratic and one isn’t and neither relationship is very successful. The dissimilarities are: Porphyria and the Lover express their love to each other and the Duke and Duchess don’t, Porphyria and the Lover are romantic and the Duke and Duchess aren’t, Porphyria and the Lover have a relationship and the Duke and Duchess don’t and Porphyria and the Lover do not live together (married) the Duke and Duchess do.
So neither partnership is a very good one. Both relationships end up in the death of the woman involved. Both men are unstable and both women are too interested in other people (Porphyria in her family and the Duchess in everyone.) I conclude that none of them should have become involved with the other ones as they all have strong personalities that don’t correspond with that of the partners they choose and if any partnerships should have been made between these people it should have been: The Duke with Porphyria and The Lover with The Duchess.
