This ‘dominating’ type of affection leads to the next approach to love, which is selfishness and arrogance, which results in unreasonable expectations of one’s partner. This idea has been shown in Byron’s ‘When We Two Parted’, where, even after their relationship broke up, he expects her to be faithful. He accuses her of disloyalty and betrayal, “Thy vows are all broken/And light is they fame/I hear they name spoken/And share in its shame”, but what the poet is trying to bring out through these lines is the intensity of pain and hurt felt by him, which prove his love, but also show how he allows jealousy to affect his affections, with the repetition of the ‘sh’ sound in the last line emphasizing on the shame felt by the poet. The poet refuses to forget her, “They name thee before me/A knell to mine ear/A shudder comes o’er me/Why wert thou so dear?” and the use of images from death, apart from showing the intensity of the love he still has for her, could be implying the end of their relationship and how there is no future for it. The repetition of ‘long’ in the last two lines of this stanza, “Long, long shall I rue thee/Too deeply to tell,” conveys the fact that his love for her is still alive and the long vowels in these lines give the reader a feeling of continuity. A similar arrogance associated with love, though on a much larger scale is shown in ‘My Last Duchess’, where, “And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,” suggests the Duke’s arrogance and his desire for control. Later in the monologue, the Duke says, “and I choose/Never to stoop,” which again conveys his arrogance in the fact that for him, even to express his discomfort with his wife’s character would be bowing down to her. Furthermore, his desire for control is shown when he says, “Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed/At starting is my object.” Although in this context, the word ‘object’ means goal, because the poet has used this word of all others, we get the feeling that he treats his wife like a thing, which he can control. This poem has been written in the form of dramatic monologue where the Duke is speaking to an envoy of the father of a ‘potential bride’. This form of writing is very appropriate for this particular poem is it very evidently conveys the Duke’s self-centredness and arrogance through his speech.
One of the most evident themes, common in all four of these poems is obsessive love. We see three of the poets discuss obsessive love, if not directly, it is mentioned between the lines and is, in a way, linked to the earlier mentioned theme of selfishness and arrogance. But though it is talked about in all four of the poems, it is in different contexts and therefore has a slightly different meaning in each poem. In ‘My Last Duchess’, for example, the Duke sets certain strict conditions that any wife of his should follow, like being eternally grateful to him, being arrogant like him, and not letting merely worthless incidents please her too much, “A heart-how shall I say?-too soon made glad/Too easily impressed;she liked whate’er/She looked on,and her looks went everywhere…as if she ranked/My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name/With anybody’s gift.” Images of nature have been used in describing the Duchess, “The dropping of the daylight in the West/The bought of cherries some officious fool/Broke in the orchard for her,” and all these characteristics seem quite normal to the reader, while they were serious ‘misdemeanours’ in the eyes of the Duke. We see the same obsession around the end of the poem where the Duke says, “Notice Neptune though/Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity/Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!” The fact that particular attention has been paid to this sculpture itself signifies its importance in describing the nature of the Duke. It is symbolic of his obsessive personality regarding his treatment of his wife/wives, where he ‘tames’ them into being what he expects them to be, again showing his obsession with an ideal wife, who, if he does not find, he will mould. It is this attitude that Christina Walsh is rebelling against in ‘A Woman to Her Lover’, where she does not want him to shape her into his ideal, but to love and respect her as herself. Though both ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘A Woman to Her Lover’ have the person setting certain conditions, the latter has more reasonable conditions, compared to the former. In ‘Villegiature’ too, Edith Nesbit humorously explores how some people have unrealistic expectations of their lover, she, for example fantasizes her lover to be a Romeo whereas in reality, he has quite a different and unromantic personality, “Your solid self, long leagues away/Deep in dull books had hardly missed me/And yet you fould this Romeo’s way.” The poet uses a lot of alliteration in this couplet, perhaps to stress on the reality that her lover is boring. Though she is aware of the fact that she does not love him, the romantic atmosphere creates an impact on her thoughts and fantasies. This idea of unrealistic expectations is also present in ‘When We Two Parted’ as well since he expects her to be faithful to him even after their relationship is over which is an unreasonable thing to ask for and what does seem like a selfish approach (as mentioned earlier – see page 2) could also be an example of fanatic love.
Obsessive love is again brought out in ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ where the knight explains his feelings and reactions after meeting the ‘sorceress’, “I set her on my pacing steed/And nothing else saw all day long;” These lines show how the poet believes that love is blind and affects a person’s sense of perception, similar to John Clare’s description of love in ‘First love’. But later, when the knight discovers the reality of the so-called “faery’s child”, do we realise that the magic he was talking about earlier was just an illusion and reality was far from what he had imagined. This concept is also expressed in ‘Villegiature’, where, in the last stanza, there is a slightly mocking tone after the poet realises that she has gotten carried away by the beauty of her fantasy and reality has been blurred by the spell cast by the romantic atmosphere of the countryside. Moreover, the quatrains with regular rhymes in the poem emphasize on the fact that it is all a fantasy. Coming back to Keats, the extent of the knight’s infatuation with this sorceress is shown in the fourth stanza of the poem where he says, “I meat a lady in the meads/Full beautiful-a faery’s child/Her hair was long, her foot was light/And her eyes were wild.” There is a sort of hyperbole used to describe her beauty and we notice that Keats has used very simple diction, which contrasts with the mysterious atmosphere created. Images from nature regarding freshness and beauty have been used in the next stanza, “I made a garland for her head/And bracelets too, and fragrant zone/She look’d at me as she did love/And made sweet moan.” These flowery images are similar to the ones used in ‘Villegiature’ to convey the feeling that love is natural and beautiful. However, the use of flowers in this ballad could also imply that just like they eventually wither and die, this sort of obsession also does not last long and ultimately fades away, and the images of death used later in the poem seem to agree with this opinion, “I saw their starved lips in the gloam/With horrid warning gaped wide.” It is possible that the poet has used these images to convey how this type of obsession is destructive and they are a stark contrast to the earlier images from nature, which helps in creating a greater impact on the reader. In this poem, Keats creates a mysterious atmosphere by using archaic language, like “fragrant zone”, “elfin grot”, etc. The moral of this ballad is the effect of obsessive love on a person and how it can change one’s entire perceptions. It could be a warning against falling in love in such a manner. After a study of Keats’s personal life, we get a feeling that this poem could be about his love for Fanny Brawne and he could be giving warning from his own experience, where he would soon die (he was suffering from tuberculosis) and be forever parted from his beloved.
Through all these poems, we see the different types of approaches to love and how a certain flaw in one’s character can result in the ruin of the relationship. These poems show how though love should be felt from within, one should not get carried away by the intensity of the emotions and keep one’s feet planted on the ground at all times. While Byron shows us the result of illicit passion, Keats shows us the harmful effects of infatuation and when Nesbit is discussing unrealistic expectations of lovers, Browning displays the height of human emotion, jealousy and arrogance, so much so that it actually leads one to murder! In my opinion, the poem that best expresses the theme of ‘love and loss’ is Byron’s ‘When We Two Parted’ as it discusses with the greatest intensity, the emotions felt by the poet after parting from his beloved. It is also written with a tone of sincerity, which is conveyed by the exquisitely lyrical quality of the words. Even though the selfish nature of the poet has been conveyed, I cannot help but sympathise with him, unlike in ‘My Last Duchess’, where the reader automatically disagrees with the Duke. It is a sad, touching poem and the pain that goes alongside with the sense of elation in love has been expressed in such a way that it tugs on the reader’s heartstrings and leaves one thinking about the poem, even long after reading it.