How does Browning present the idea of love in 'The Laboratory' and 'My Last Duchess'?

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How does Browning present the idea of love in ‘The Laboratory’ and ‘My Last Duchess’?

        

        Robert Browning was born into a wealthy family in 1812 in the suburbs of London. His education was a mixture of private instruction and informal schooling. Browning’s father had a library of thousands of books, this helped Browning develop an immense literary knowledge. As a boy he was intelligent and he cultivated a taste for books and learned many languages. Browning had a cultured and intellectual outlook on life, that is reflected in the dramatic monologues we studied.

        Browning wrote two of his most famous poems, ‘The Laboratory’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ at the start of the Victorian era, a time when Britain was experiencing immense change. The contrast between the rich and the poor was remarkable. A large percentage of the society was poverty stricken. Not everything was negative though, the industrialisation of Britain was a very exciting time; art, technology and science were major areas of interest for the Victorians. As familiarity of these topics developed, the topics excited, gained curiosity, became fashions and energised the country. Browning’s poems are infused with the important subjects of the time, ‘The Laboratory’ features the idea of medicine and chemistry and ‘My Last Duchess’ art. They also include of timeless themes such as love, hatred and jealousy which are always relevant, even today.

        ‘The Laboratory’ has a subtitle of ‘Ancien Regime’, this give us the suggestion that the poem was based in the time just before the French revolution, this occurred in the eighteenth century. ‘My Last Duchess’ is set upon a sixteenth century Duke from Italy. We learn about the Duke in the poem by what he says and how he says it. Through him, we gain knowledge of his wife, ‘My Last Duchess’. Both poem were published at a similar time but are set in very different periods and cultures. This shows Browning’s intelligence but also strengthens the idea that these themes of love, hate and jealousy are timeless. Browning’s different choice of periods may give us an indication of how different the changes were in Victorian Britain and how even the well educated such as Browning found it tough to cope and were hesitant of the changes and developments around them or that they didn’t find the changes in their society entirely pleasing.

        

        ‘The Laboratory’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ both feature people who are killing to suit their own needs. They don’t care about the people that they are meant to care for and love. Browning portrays love as something that can lead to very diverse routes and sometimes the complete opposite, hate.

        Browning creates characters we can believe in by using dramatic monologue. Both poems use dramatic monologue to reveal an effect on the audience about the narrator to show their personality. In ‘My Last Duchess’, the dramatic monologue allows us to see the mind of the narrator and the language with his commands give us the indication that this man is talking as if he is a better person because of who he is, effectively he is talking to a servant. A similar impact is displayed with the effect of the dramatic monologue in ‘The Laboratory’. Browning uses dramatic monologue to display character in ‘The Laboratory’. Her madness becomes more prominent through the dramatic monologue. Her accusations and evilness are obviously not features of typical conversations but while she speaks alone, she high lights her unbelievable and confusing story and we see the prominence in her madness.

        We discover a great deal about the dukes character and his wife because the use of dramatic monologue allows the voice of the narrator to be separated from that of the poet. By using dramatic monologue, we get the impression of the Dukes status. In the poem he is effectively talking to a servant. We automatically receive the feeling that this man is calculating, filled with pride and has a strong feeling of ownership even over the memory of his dead wife. The audience automatically dislike the duke because the dramatic monologue feels personal to the reader and makes them feel like the reader is talking to them in a disrespectful manner.  

        In the first stanza of, ‘My Last Duchess’, you automatically get the feeling that the poem is being spoken, from the language. ‘That’s’, makes the poem seem informal and like everyday speech. Even though there is old-fashioned speech in the poem, ‘twas’, the style of speaking in ‘My Last Duchess’ is informal to make it more natural and convincing.

        The first stanza also has the repetition of ‘My Last Duchess’. When the poem is read aloud, the title would be read first and then in the first line of the poem, ‘My Last Duchess’ would be repeated. This emphasises the point the narrator is making and this is the first taste of this mans power and domination. This point, ‘My Last Duchess’ gives an indication that this man may have been married before and might have the intentions of marrying again. ‘My Last Duchess’ is not a comment that you would expect someone to make about someone that they ‘should’ care about. We may start to think that this man is caring about his dead wife when he starts showing off a painting of her, ‘painted on the wall’, his thoughts are on something that is not meant to be more powerful than love, money. Like ‘The Laboratory’, the duke has a disrespectful and uncaring attitude towards love. This is where we realise that while he observes the painting his thoughts are focused more on the skill of painter rather than the beauty of his wife or his love for her.

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         At the start of ‘My Last Duchess’ it is difficult to decide this mans intentions or thoughts. The man describes the woman in the painting as ‘Looking as if she were alive’, this could show to us that the painting was life like but having discovered this mans greed and jealousy, I believe this means something much more significant. I think that, ‘Looking as if she was alive’ could mean that the painting makes her look perfect or possibly even because he would prefer to see her. I sense that this may possibly reflect that this man thinks that his ...

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