Both poems are written in blank verse which is the closest type of poetry to the spoken word. "My Last Duchess" is written in iambic pentameter which has five stressed beats per line and "Porphyria's Lover" is written in iambic tetrameter which has four.
The poems are similar in the way that both men in both of the poems get so jealous of the thought of their lover being with another man that they cause the end of their lover's lives. The Duke implies that he had the Duchess killed: "I gave commands / Then all smiles stopped", while Porphyria's Lover killed Porphyria himself: "I wound / Three times her throat around / And strangled her". Both poems are similar in the way in which Browning makes the two women's deaths seem beautiful. Porphyria's Lover uses gentle imagery to describe how Porphyria will always be his: "As a shut bud that holds a bee", and in "My Last Duchess", Fra Pandolf, the artist who painted the picture to which the Duke refers to said "Paint / May never hope to reproduce the faint / Half-flush that dies along her throat". Browning also uses imagery in “Porphyria’s Lover” when he uses the “sullen wind” and the violent weather as a forshadowing device for Porphyria’s death.
Both men seem to be arrogant and sexist. In "My Last Duchess" the Duke gives his reason for having the Duchess killed as "T'was not / Her husband's presence only, called that spot / Of joy into the Duchesses cheek". This implies that the Duchess flirted with other men (or so the Duke thought) and is hardly a good reason to have her killed at all. In those days women were expected not to show any affections to anybody in public and if the Duke tells the truth, the Duchess would have seemed overly flirtatious.
Porphyria's Lover is also arrogant and speaks of possessing Porphyria: "Happy and proud; at last I knew / Porphyria worshipped me". This is similar to how the Duke acted towards the Duchess, in that he had a painting done of her as he says that "None puts by / The curtain I have drawn for you, but I", implying that she belongs to him. One of the most sombre aspects of “My Last Duchess” is that the Duke seems to take his collection of beautiful objects and fine art so seriously that he regards the Duchess as just another addition to it. At the end of the poem the Duke refers to one of his other possessions, namely a statue of the Roman god Neptune “taming a sea-horse”. This reveals a lot about the character of the Duke as the taming of the sea-horse is used as a metaphor for his desire to possess beautiful objects and fine art.
Similarly to the Duchess, Porphyria is also portrayed as overtly sexual: "She put her arm about my waist / And made her smooth white shoulder bare". Acts like this during the Victorian period would have seemed shocking and immoral for a woman to do. On the other hand maybe the men are portraying their lover's to have been like this as an excuse for their unstable nature. Both men put their happiness before their lover's and kill them because they can't bear the thought of them being with someone else. This is ironic as you would think that you would want the best for the person you loved, but both men are blinded by love and cannot see that killing their lover is wrong because it is a crime of passion.
The poems are written from different perspectives. The Duke is of the upper classes and Porphyria's Lover is from the lower classes. I know this because Porphyria says she cannot be with her lover as she can't "Set it's struggling passion free / From pride, and vainer ties dissever". This means that she doesn't want to give her current life up to be with her lover. In a way I feel that Porphyria's Lover's actions were more justified because he cannot be with the woman he loves because of his social status, whereas the Duke killed the Duchess because he was paranoid about her flirting with other men which damages his pride. Porphyria's Lover kills Porphyria because he knows he will never be with her any other way.
Another similarity between the two poems is the way the Duke and Porphyria's Lover act as if the women they have killed are still alive. The Duke has the painting done of the Duchess and comments that she is "Looking as if she were alive" in it. The Duke has the painting done because he wants to admire his possession, the Duchess, forever. After Porphyria's Lover kills Porphyria he opens her eyes and props her up beside him to give himself the impression that she is still alive: "I propped her head up as before". Both do this for different reasons, however, as the Duke wants to admire his Duchess forever while Porphyria's Lover wants to be with her forever. This is shown when the Duke tells the audience of his affections for the Count's daughter. The Duke seems able to move on, but I don't think Porphyria's Lover will ever find love elsewhere.
I think the two poems give a good comparison of how much of an advantage in love it was to be in the upper classes than in the lower classes. These two poems highlight the huge divide between classes in the Victorian era.
Whilst Browning deals with obsessive love other poets from the Victorian era wrote different, more romantic ideas. I am going to compare three romantic poems from the period, written by different poets, to try and explain how they convey their individual ideas of love to the reader. The poems are: “How Do I Love Thee?” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “A Birthday” by Christina Rossetti and “Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare.
