With detailed reference to three poems, compare and contrast how effectively the poets have presented different relationships between and women.

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Jack Stanford                                                                             Friday 7th February

With detailed reference to three poems, compare and contrast how effectively the poets have presented different relationships between

and women.

        Robert Browning calls the first poem that I shall talk about Porphyria’s Lover. It is about a man who is so in love with a fine lady called Porphyria that he strangles her with her own hair, just because he wants her and wants to control her for the rest of her life. It says in the poem, “And give herself to me for ever”. She walks into the house one night and she murmurs to the man, “how she loved me”.

        The content of the poem is very much to do with power and love. Just the fact that he strangled her because he loved her so much gives a feeling of power and insanity. The poem says, “no pain felt she”. This is another example of physical power but loving her at the same time.

        I believe that he killed her because he could not trust her. He maybe thought that she was being unfaithful to him and committing adultery, and that he wanted her all to himself.

        The ‘ABABB’ rhyme seems to split up the poem into five line verses, but is written as one long poem. The last line in the verses adds quite an abrupt finish to each verse. This odd ending of the five-line verse is rather strange and you can hear it quite distinctively when somebody else is reading the poem. This may symbolize the unstableness of Porphyria’s lover. It could also mean the sudden end to Porphyria’s life. This is the technique that Browning used to write his poems.

        The language is very calm and rather ‘alarming’. This is maybe to show how unstable and insane this man actually is. It is maybe to show a sort of fantasy effect. The poet’s choice of vocabulary is very normal and has a sort of calming effect. This adds to the tone of the story very well.

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        Power is the main tone in the poem. It focuses it in on how Porphyria’s lover had power over Porphyria. The tone is set on every fifth line in the poem. It rather brings the previous lines to an abrupt halt. This makes the poem to be mentally divided up into six sections. The previous lines have rhythm and momentum and are brought to an abrupt halt by the rhyme, which ends the fourth line. I believe this symbolizes Porphyria’s sudden bereavement.

        There are sorter sections than others. On section is when the writer is describing the surroundings. He says ...

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