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Comparing My Last Duchess and Porphyria's Lover

Question: - My Last Duchess and Porphyria's Lover are both poems by Robert Browning. Write about the similarities and differences between the two texts by comparing the feelings and characters of the two lovers (the voice in each poem) and how the writer conveys these to the reader.

Porphyria's Lover and My Last Duchess are both possessive love poems written by Robert Browning. Both of the poems are written in the form of a dramatic monologue as there is one person speaking. The voice in both poems is the character (lover) and they are speaking to you (the reader). Both poems show a similarity because they are both narrated from the male lover's point of view. As a result, the reader becomes more closely involved in the poems and can feel very strong emotions for the individuals portrayed than if the poem was written from the eyes of an 'outsider'. This form of writing enables Browning to use irony, in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the literal meanings of the words. For example, in My Last Duchess the Duke orders the death of his wife, though hides the true meaning in his words: "Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together."
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Porphyria's Lover is about the lover of a woman called Porphyria, who realises how much she loves him because she left a "gay feast" and came through wind and rain, just to be with him, "she shut the cold out and the storm." He decided to immortalise the moment by taking some of her hair and strangle her. The story is told from the eyes of an abnormally possessive lover, who seems mentally unstable.

My Last Duchess is about a jealous nobleman (a duke) who has had his wife killed, but he has a portrait painted of ...

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