At the start of ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ the setting is very gloomy and disturbed, “The rain set early in tonight, the sullen wind was soon awake.” This shows the weather but also how the Lover is feeling at the moment. This sets the scene and contrasts the events where Porphyria enters the room. She “glided in”, which gives her a graceful image, which suggests the relationship has been formed on how she looks on the outside (it is not to say that he does not love what is on the inside). She “shut out the cold”, both metaphorically speaking and literally. It shows that when she enters the room, it makes him feel better and gets rid of all the cold and emptiness inside.
‘My Last Duchess’ is a one sided conversation, and starts with the Duke telling us of a painting on the wall of his wife, who we can assume he had been murdered because of her lack of respect for him. He says “Strangers like you that pictured countenance, the depth and passion of its earnest glance.” This implies that his last duchess was a pretty and passionate woman, which did not please him as it should have. It shows that he did not want her for anything other than her looks, as it was how she acted that got him annoyed.
As ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ continues, we notice that the lover seems to be completely oblivious to how she is acting towards him, “murmuring how she loved me- -“ with a pause for the reader to think. The effect of this is to allow the reader time to notice that she definitely loves him, and has travelled through the harsh weather to meet him, it shows that Browning has ideas that love and relationships can be very long, and that love will prevail if it is strong enough.
Continuing with ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, after he has “strangled her” he says “I am quite sure she felt no pain.” This is quite obviously wrong, she must have felt pain. I think that this shows that he is slightly insane, which is also shown by his actions at the start, and I think that it is the seperation that has caused him to become like this. This is another technique where Browning shows that it is them being together that allows him to think straight, which I believe is from personal experience, as his wife died and he was different after this had happened.
“My Last Duchess” ends going onto the subject of another of the Duke’s art works, Neptune taming a sea horse. Again, this idea of control is shown. I think Browning has decided to end on this to remind us that the men are in control of the beautiful creatures, and also a reminder to his future wife’s father that if she acts how his ‘Last Duchess’ acted, then he will happily have her suffer the same ending.
‘Porphyria’s Lover’ goes for a completely different ending. The rhyming couplet emphasises the ending of “and yet God has not said a word”. I think that he has chosen to end on this because his conscience tells him that he has done nothing wrong, and that his superiority as a man allows him to do as he wishes to preserve the love at that time.
I personally do not think that Browning wrote these poems to express his opinions, but to show us what some relationships were like in his time. Although some of his past experiences may have influenced his work, such as the death of his wife being reflected in the death of women in the poems, I don’t think either of the male characters are meant to be any kind of a comparison of himself.
