In the Victorian age Robert Browning had a talent for creating poems. He writes a number of poems but two in particular 'My Last Duchess' and 'Porphyria's Lover' these are the two poems I will be comparing in my essay.

Pre Twentieth Century Poster Essay

In the Victorian age Robert Browning had a talent for creating poems. He writes a number of poems but two in particular ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ these are the two poems I will be comparing in my essay.

In the two poems there is a lot of ‘dramatic monologue’ where the writer is showing his personal his personal feelings in the poem. It is also classified when a single person is talking and asking questions with no reply like in ‘The Last Duchess’ the Duke is talking to the servant about his past wife but all the servant is interested in is whether the Duke will marry the Count’s daughter.

My Last Duchess is about a duke who wants to marry the Count’s daughter. The Count does not know the duke very much this is why he sends his servant round to visit the Duke and his property. When the poem starts the servant is already at the Duke’s house.

The Duke very kindly welcomes the servant into his house. He starts off by showing the servant a picture of his previous wife. The Duke then asked ‘Will’t please you sit and look at her?’ as if he was very proud of her.

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Fra Pandolf was the painter of his late wife and in the painting the duke realised she was blushing. The Duke had now gone from being proud and protective of her to being nasty and abusive towards her because he found out that Fra Pandolf, the painter, was flirting to make her blush. The Duke obviously got mad by this because he goes on to say ‘I gave one command and then all smiles stopped together’ which states he killed her.

Porphyria’s Lover is about an anonymous guy who is having an affair with Porphyria.

Porphyria’s anonymous lover is very annoyed that Porphyria does not declare her love for him and leave her partner for him, but as the stormy night grew Porphyria started to admit her love for him.

Porphyria’s lover said ‘Happy and proud, at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me, at this moment she is mine no one can stop that now’ Porphyria’s lover is debating what to do to keep this moment special. Porphyria’s lover now knows what to do he says ‘Perfectly pure and good, I found a thing to do, and all her hair in one long yellow string wound three times her little throat around, and strangled her’ he is saying that he killed her. Porphyria’s lover ends the poem by saying ‘And yet God has not said a word’ he thinks he’s done no wrong at all.

Porphyria’s lover thinks he has done no wrong because God has said nothing and he wanted to sabre the moment, but he has just strangled his true love. He is obviously a possessive pig who just thinks about himself all the time.

Life in the nineteenth century for women was dreadful, as Robert Browning has shown us in his two magnificent poems. Women were the property of men and did not have a say in anything, their fathers decided who they marry so it’s totally unfair for them. The Duke and Porphyria’s lover were both exactly the same the slightest thing good or bad and they decide to kill them because that’s what they think is right nut its not.

When these two poems were written the people, mainly men were shocked with Robert Browning because it expressed the truth, which they didn’t like. I’m sure Porphyria’s lover would have shocked them more because he killed her to sabre a moment which is very pathetic.

I don’t really like any of the poems because they are severely harsh to women and I would like to think that women are better treated now than then.