How does Robert Browning use language and structure to create effect in ‘The Laboratory’ ?
Firstly, a little insight into ‘the laboratory’ is that it is set in the ancien regime of pre-revolutionary france. It imagines an incident in the life of Marie Madelin Marguenie. She poisoned her father and two brothers and planned on killing her husband, with, you guessed it: poison. The laboratory cleverly uses language and structure to show her feelings and perhaps show her state of mind too.
Starting, Robert Browning emits a paranoid persona in the lady using repetition. He uses ‘they’ abundantly in the second stanza to show she is obsessed with what others [they] think of her. She can’t think about anything else and is in rapt with other people’s perceptions of her life. She then says they ‘laugh laugh’ at her, again suggesting a paranoid persona who will interpret anything around her as negative attitudes towards her. She believes she is being mocked by ‘they’ and everyone else around her. She has no trust whatsoever and utter embarrassment is forced upon her and consequently she is forced to act. And in this case, obviously the act is the poison – so some kind of sympathy is brought upon the persona however we do feel dubious as she is planning to poison somebody.