Mariana and Loneliness

In “The Lady of Shalott” , the web and mirror are representative of the arts, with the Lady as the artist. She is constantly identified and surrounded by images of nature: the bower, the agrarian fields, the willows, the flowers, etc. The "willowy hills and fields" are the sole listeners of her last mournful song. In fact, in the fourth stanza of the poem, she becomes a personification of the season itself. The Lady is not "known in all the land"; the only people who hear her are the reapers working in the fields: men who are close to nature and representative of the feudal society. By and large, the people of Camelot ("market girls"), the "burghers" who wander along the "highway" do not notice her at all. When they finally see her, they are frightened and as if she were some alien creature. He deliberately uses anachronistic details such as "barges" that slide down the river, products of the industrial era that did not exist during medieval times.

We see that there is enjambment at the end of the eighth stanza into the ninth stanza. “In one long yellow string I wound, Three times her little throat around, And strangled her”. This does detract from the couplet though it emphasizes the tone, making the understated nature even more sociopath associated. This is one example of how this simple tool in itself masterfully accentuates the overall tone of understatement and the impression of lackadaisical unaffected speech. The majority of the words in this poem are monosyllabic which adds to the mood. This shows that it wasn’t an impulsive action.

We see that there is enjambment used in all 4 poems, especially in  “Porphyria’s Lover”, at the end of the eighth stanza into the ninth stanza. “In one long yellow string I wound, Three times her little throat around, And strangled her”. This does detract from the couplet though it emphasizes the tone, making the understated nature even more sociopath associated. This is one example of how this simple tool in itself masterfully accentuates the overall tone of understatement and the impression of lackadaisical unaffected speech. The majority of the words in this poem are monosyllabic which adds to the mood. This shows that it wasn’t an impulsive action.

Both “My last duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover” trace the history of a jaded man’s obsession with a woman that did not meet his expectations culminating in her murder. From this point the poems start diverging. In “Porphyria’s Lover” the Lover is not speaking to anyone specifically, and it is quite feasible that he is speaking to himself after he has committed the act, perhaps, for the purpose of self-justification. The Duke is speaking to the representative of the Count whose ward he is trying to marry. There are, of course, the obvious differences in the class situation of each of these men. The Lover is of lower social position than Porphyria, and because of this she is unwilling to marry him. The Duke is nobility and one gets the impression the Duchess might not have been. She is not grateful for his “gift of a nine-hundred-year-old name.” The use of the word gift implies that she has just recently become aristocracy. These class differences are easily seen in the diction and the attitude that is characteristic of each of these men. The intent of the Lover, though brought to action in an insane way, is much more noble than that of the Duke. She, “too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour, to set its struggling passion free, from pride, and vainer ties dissever, and give herself to me forever”. His murder of her is the only way that he can think of for them to be together. This is what Porphyria yearns for though she is to weak to break social taboo and marry him. The Duke does not kill the Duchess out of love, but because he is insecure. His ego cannot take a woman that is so visibly strong and democratic in nature. The murder is the Duke’s way of removing and affront to his perception of aristocracy, and also of eliminating his feelings of jealousy and insufficiency. The women in both of these poems are definitely secondary though Browning lets the Duchess become a freer entity than Porphyria. The Duchess manages to escape the Duke’s. While Porphyria is never really able to escape the Lover’s, “she was mine, mine.” The Lover’s murder results from the fact that he is unable to be with his female ideal due to her weakness while the Duke was oblivious to the fact that he already had this female ideal as his wife. The idealness of the Duchess is evident through the description of her personality. She is always smiling, gracious, and kind to all without distinguishing based on class.