At first glance of the poems, the narrators come across very different to each other. In Porphyria’s Lover the narrator seems to really feel for Porphyria and he is so in love with her which can be proven from line 34-35 ‘Made my heart swell, and still it grew while I debated what to do.’ However the narrator in My Last Duchess appears to be harsher and unsympathetic, and also a little bit jealous of other men because of the way his late wife supposedly acted towards them. This point is backed up by line 22-23 ‘too soon made glad. Too easily impressed’ however both the narrators have similar attitudes towards women; they both of them are quite possessive towards them. This in the end leads to both of the male narrators killing their wives; in Porphyria’s lover he kills her himself ‘In one yellow string I wound three times her little throat around, and strangled her’ and in My Last Duchess her orders for her death ‘I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together.’ Although both character in one way or another cause the death of their lovers, their reasoning for it is quite different. In Porphyria’s Lover the reason for killing Porphyria is because he wanted to preserve that perfect moment forever ‘At last I knew Porphyria worshipped me.’, at that moment everything was perfect and he didn’t want to lose it so he killed her to preserve that. But in My Last Duchess he had his wife killed in order to stop his jealousy and his worries that she’d go with another man, this way he can keep her behind the curtains, which only he can open, meaning that she’ll only be able to smile at him and no other man.
The ways the main female characters are displayed in both poems is very different also. Porphyria is portrayed as being very graceful and sort of elegant, as it describes how she ‘glided’ into the room. Her ‘smooth white shoulder’ etc. and the basic language that Browning uses just makes her come across beautiful and elegant. But she also comes across quite seductive ‘She put my arm around her waist,’ etc. Whereas the Duchess comes across more passionate, but for all the wrong reason from the way Browning presents the narrators attitudes towards her. She sounds as if she is too flirtatious with anyone ‘too soon made glad. Too easily impressed’, and from the colours used ‘spot of joy into the Duchess’ cheek.’ Hints of pinks and reds for blushing, meaning passion.
The way the poets present the stories is quite different as well. For example in My Last Duchess Browning uses lots of imagery when portraying the Duchess’ personality. He uses lots of reds, pinks and other passionate colours to show how passionate and flirtatious the Duchess is ‘The dropping of daylight in the west’ pink and reddy colours in the sky, also using nature to help to portray the Duchess. Whereas in Porphyria’s Lover, when talking about Porphyria, Browning never really uses much imagery in describing her, instead he just uses lots of describing words.
Also in My Last Duchess Browning used the structure of the sentences to help to show us what kind of emotions were going through the narrators head, for example when it gets to around line 21-22 when he starts talking about the Duchess and how she finds joy in everything, and the sentence structure here just starts really going all over the place ‘She had a heart---how shall I say?---too soon made glad.’ Which just lets at now that he find it hard discussing her, and in a way hard to understand her. This sentence goes like this again later on in the poem lines 31-32, 35-36 and 39. However in Porphyria’s Lover Browning displays the narrators feelings in a different way be using pathetic fallacy. Pathetic fallacy is when nature is used in help with portraying feelings or emotions e.g. Sunshine-happiness, dark clouds-anger. In Porphyria’s Lover Browning uses this a number of times, for example at the beginning of the poem before Porphyria had entered the house, it was raining outside.