It becomes clear only in line 45 that the duke ‘gave commands’ and killed his first wife. The duke is speaking to the envoy of the count who has come to arrange the duke’s next marriage. The fact that the duke is ready to admit that he killed his first wife because she was too nice confirms that the duke is confident that he is above the law. It is chilling that the envoy is prepared to sell this young girl to a murderer. The duke says....’the counts munificence is ample warrant that no just pretence of mine for dowry will be disallowed’ this barely disguises his greed and mercenary reasons for marrying. He is unconvincing when he says that it is ‘his fair daughters self’ that is his ‘object’ worryingly this future wife sounds as if she will join the other objects in his art gallery as an ‘object’. The duke wishes for total control and is happier revealing a painting of his last wife than her reality. He makes the point that none puts by the curtain but him and so he has power over the image. The emotion he feels rarely breaks through. He appears totally cold. In contrast to Porphyria’s lover who is impulsive, the duke appears to act deliberately and carefully. His anger surfaces as he describes his last duchess’s reaction to an ‘officious fool’ who dared to offer her a bunch of cherries. The duke is outraged by his wife and expects his listener to agree. He is most offended that she smiled at servants ‘as if she ranked my gift of a nine-hundred year old name with anyone’s gift’. From this remark we see that he sees his status as most important. He has a very fixed idea of how he and his wife should behave; he will not ‘stoop’ and believes simply asking his wife not to ‘smile’ would be ‘stooping’. He would prefer her dead.
Both these poems manage to give a very strong sense of the characters of the women they have killed. Both women appear faultless. The trigger for Porphyria’s lover to ‘strangle’ Porphyria is when he realizes that she loves him. Porphyria enters her lover’s cottage and makes it warm, she attempts to make him comfortable. She acts more like the man in the relationship, her hair is damp and she has been outside suffering the cold and wet, whereas he has been inside waiting for her. The roles are reversed, it is she who ‘murmurs’ how she loves him. In contrast the duchess appears feminine. As the duke criticizes this woman, the reader is convinced of her loveliness. It is as if the duke is distorting language as good words ‘earnest’ ‘a heart too soon made glad’ are turned into bad. She is not a snob and does not value herself according to her name. Whilst Porphyria’s lover believes his murder to be Porphyria’s ‘dearest wish’, the duke has no interest in his duchess’s wish.
The thought processes of the duke and the lover are suggested in the poem through punctuation. Punctuation creates breaks and run on lines. In my last duchess the punctuation rarely agrees with the rhythm or rhyme. This makes the rhyme and rhythm less obvious. It sounds more like a speech than verse though in fact he speaks in rhyming couplets and using iambic pentameter. In line 25 for example
‘sir, twas all one! My favour at her breasts,
the dropping of the day light in the west,
the bow of cherries some officious fool
broke in the orchid for her.
Here the punctuation varies and the breaks are not predictable. So they interrupt the formal rhythm of the poem. This makes it clear the emotion he trying to disguise through his formal speech.
The rhythm and rhyme in Porphyria’s lover is much more apparent and the breaks less frequent. As we read we are lulled by the rhythm which is also iambic. It is as if we are experiencing the music build up in a horror movie and all of a sudden he says ‘and strangled her’ the bang of the horror hits you, the rhyme is broken and the break in the line interrupts the rhythm. This confirms the speakers agitated state. Having killed her, the rhythm returns to its hypnotic iambic beat, which contrasts with his horrific action.
The horror of the actions of both protagonists is made more convincing by the strong impressions given of the place. In Porphyria’s lover the outside tears the ‘elm tops down for spite’. The weather is cruelly destructive which reflects the lover’s own mood. The cottage that he sits in quickly warms up when Porphyria enters. Again the house reflects his own mood. The Duke and the envoy sit in the Duke’s gallery and look at the art. He points in the beginning to a painting of his wife and the end of the poem in the same tone points at a sculpture of Neptune, this shows that he looks at his wife as having the same importance as his art.
Though both the duke and the lover kill there lovers they do so for different reasons. The duke because he does not like his wife enough. And the lover because he loves her too much. However both the duke and the lover appear mad. He loved her so much that he become obsessed ‘she’s mine, mine mine’ which led him to become crazy and from becoming crazy he convinced himself that by killing her he was helping her. Whereas the duke had difficulty in coping with the attitude and personality of his wife. The duke is very cold he gave ‘commands’ he didn’t even care about killing her he does not see her as human. He says ‘then all smiles stopped together’ and then he was satisfied.
These poems are about love but pervert or corrupt the idea that love is good. Porphyria’s lover’s obsessive love where he wants to purify his love by taking her life gives a sense that love is a destructive rather than good. The duke does not appear capable of love and does not expect love but because his wife is capable of loving him and the rest of the world he feels resentment.
