Comparisons of poems
(By Robert Browning)
Both poems involve a possessed man with a craze for having absolute power over a woman. His madness in both poems drive him to insanity in which the only way he can see out of it is to kill his lover. Browning tried to break down the boundaries of social class in the Victorian times by integrating the breakdown into his poems. Both these poems involve social hostility, especially in "Porphyria's Lover." In "My Last Duchess," the boundaries of class between men and women are tested as the Duke drives for total control over his Duchess and eventually gets it when she's killed. "Porphyria's Lover," is a description of the inconvenience of the Victorian rules and regulations about class mixing. The comparison is that Porphyria wouldn't allow herself to be with the man she loved and the Duke thought that because of his class, he was better than his wife and should control her. The boundaries of social class drove both men in the poems to insanity and hysteria as each man was either, as he thought, more important or less important than the woman he loved.
(By Robert Browning)
Both poems involve a possessed man with a craze for having absolute power over a woman. His madness in both poems drive him to insanity in which the only way he can see out of it is to kill his lover. Browning tried to break down the boundaries of social class in the Victorian times by integrating the breakdown into his poems. Both these poems involve social hostility, especially in "Porphyria's Lover." In "My Last Duchess," the boundaries of class between men and women are tested as the Duke drives for total control over his Duchess and eventually gets it when she's killed. "Porphyria's Lover," is a description of the inconvenience of the Victorian rules and regulations about class mixing. The comparison is that Porphyria wouldn't allow herself to be with the man she loved and the Duke thought that because of his class, he was better than his wife and should control her. The boundaries of social class drove both men in the poems to insanity and hysteria as each man was either, as he thought, more important or less important than the woman he loved.