My Last Duchess and Porphyria's Lover' - Discuss the male speakers attitudes to the women that they are remembering and how Browning uses language to convey these attitudes'.

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Robert Browning Poetry

My Last Duchess and Porphyria's Lover

'Discuss the male speakers attitudes to the women that they are remembering and how Browning uses language to convey these attitudes'

Robert Browning was a poet who wrote poems

between the Victorian period concerned with attitudes towards

men and women and the way they were treated. Robert was an

English poet born in London in 1882-1889 noted for his mastery

of dramatic monologue. In his best works people from the past

reveal their thoughts and lives as if speaking or thinking aloud.

Robert Browning wrote about things the people in them days

thought to be morally wrong like sex and violence. Robert

aimed to question his readers emotionally and also question the

readers morality.

The poem 'My Last Duchess' was Published

842 and the poem is based on the life of Alfonso II, Duke of

Ferrara in the sixteenth century. The Duke's first wife died

after three years of marriage. The poem is written in the form

of the Duke addressing another Count to negotiate marriage

terms and he tells the Count how he wants her to behave. The poem is about a painting of the Dukes previous wife and how she behaves. Both of these poems where written in 1942 and they were about death. The poem 'Porphyria's Lover' is about a man who lives in the countryside and is visited by his lover. 'Porphyria's Lover' is about a man in love with a woman and because the women doesn't want to commit to their relationship he kills her, as he doesn't want anybody else to have her.
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In 'My last Duchess' the speaker's relationship to his 'last duchess' is that she is his previous wife as the word 'last' implies that she is dead. The speaker is looking at discussing the portrait of his wife and the way she behaves. The duke accuses his wife of flirting 'her mantle laps over my lady's wrist to much' saying that she is flirting with Fra Pandolf. The Dukes main complaint about his wife is that he feels she is showing inappropriate behaviour and that she lake pride in herself lowering herself talking to people in the lower ...

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