Also with Frà Pandolf, on line 4 the Dukes says ‘worked busily a day’. This could be just an innocent saying of how the painter did a portrait of the Duchess in a day, but it could mean that whilst he was at the house doing so he was busy with the Duchess. With no proof of the accusation this is just the Dukes assumption which shows he was very jealous of other people being near his woman.
Being obsessed with monetary value of possessions ‘a rarity which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!’ the duke was not at all pleased that his Duchess did not share the same enthusiasm. She was a person who liked little things in life. ‘A heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad.’ She was just as pleased at being given a ‘bough of cherries some officious fool broke in the orchard for her’ than she was at being given any amount of money from her husband. This aggravated the Duke even more that she ‘ranked my gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name’ with ‘anybody’s gift.’ He was very jealous that he could not provide anything to make her happier than any other person could. He was also annoyed that she did not care about the monetary value of things, just how it pleased her. This is unlike the Duke who was the complete opposite. He could not find what he called happiness unless he was surrounded by items of great value.
The Duke did not like his Duchess being friendly with other people. He wanted her all to himself. ‘She looked on, and her looks went everywhere’ implies that she was looking at other men like the Duke wanted her to look at him. Going by the rest of the poem this is most likely the Dukes paranoia that she was “playing astray”. In all likelihood, she was just a friendly person who liked being happy and others to be happy with her.
To make his Duchess properly happy he would have to be like her and to enjoy the smaller things in life or he would have to tell her that he did not like her take pleasure in such things. This is shown on line 34 where he says ‘Who’d stoop to blame this sort of trifling?’ He would not be prepared to go to his wife and tell her this when (in his opinion) should be doing as he pleases anyway. Also on lines 42 and 43 ‘and I choose never to stoop’. This puts a solid lid on the fact that he would never go so low as to ask or tell her to behave as he sees fit.
This selfishness and jealousy of the Duke to his Duchess, results in her death near the end of the poem. From line 43 ‘Oh sir, she smiled’ to line 45 ‘Then all smiles stopped together’ there is a build up to her death. The tension build up, she smiles at the Duke, but also in the same way to other men. This got worse and worse as she continues to do to, the Duke couldn’t stand this so he ‘gave commands’ and she was executed.
To show the Dukes backhandedness of the situation, he continues the tour of the house with the messenger after telling him the story of ‘My Last Duchess’ This shows that he thinks he is the hierarchy, that he is the most important and that killing a wife who did not suit his picture of the obedient woman.
Both of the poems are based around a love triangle of the female, her lover and her partner/husband. Although this may be true, the poems are still quite different, because in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ there is a definite other partner for Porphyria, but ‘My Last Duchess is written entirely on the Duke speculations of the fraternisation between his Duchess and ‘other men’.
‘Porphyria’s Lover’ has a rhyme scheme that mimics the theme of the poem. It goes A B A B B. ‘Night, Awake, Spite, Lake, Break’ Taking A to be Porphyria’s partner that she left behind at the party and B to be her lover, she flits between to two, but in the end (B B) her lover (B) gets the last say.
The poem is written as a dramatic monologue, which only gives the perspective of the lover. When her strangles her you only read from his feelings of that ‘I am quite sure she felt no pain’. But if we were to read the same story from Porphyria’s angle it would be a lot different.
At the start of the poem there is quite a lot of pathetic fallacy directed towards the lover. Words such as ‘sullen wind’ ‘tore the elm-tops for spite’ and ‘vex the lake’ portray the mood of which Porphyria’s lover is feeling when she arrives. Sullen, tore and vex are also words which are onomatopoeic. Her lover is just sitting in the cold and dark ‘with heart fit to break’. This could mean he knows that the party Porphyria is sneaking out of is a wedding party and that after that he will not be able to see her any more.
When Porphyria enters the cottage it is made to seem as if some unearthly presence has been graced onto it. ‘When glided in Porphyria’ ‘shut out the cold and the storm’ makes Porphyria seem to a point angelic, in the sense that she is able to glide in and make things warm again. This also is true when ‘she kneeled down and made the cheerless grate blaze up, and all the cottage warm.’ Though all she is doing is lighting the fire (that the lover is too ‘sullen’ to bother to do) it could be seen through his eyes that she is performing some godly act.
In lines 20-30 it shows how we know it is an arranged marriage. ‘To weak… and give herself to me forever’ Shows she does not have the strength mentally to break free from the person she is arranged to who most likely is rich and wealthy, to live with a poor cottager whom has no money but for whom she loves. But she did manage to get to his house on the night of the party, which shows she loves him enough to get out of the party for a while, but not enough to stop the marriage. It would be most likely that her family would not help her out and would disown her if she were to leave the rich man for the lover.
On line 36, when the lover has realised that she would (In his eyes) die for him, that is exactly what chooses to do. He realises that she is ‘mine, mine, fair,’ Three one syllable, one single word sentences which seem to be like a child when they are possessive of an object. In the same way, he is possessive of her and does not want to let her go back to the partner of which she is certainly going to marry. He doesn’t want to share her. So instead he kills her, to preserve the moment of which ‘Porphyria worshiped me’
Again he seems like a child, but not this time in possessiveness but in naivety. ‘No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain’ It is obvious that if you kill someone by asphyxiation that they will feel pain, but he is either to naive or is just using euphemism.
And altoguh he has killed her he can’t see he has done anything wrong. As ‘God has not said a word’ He feels that everything is ok and that if he had done anything wrong then God would have punished him by now.
All in all, both poems are about a man and their jealousy of their lover and her partner, even if that person is just inside their head. The trouble with both of the men who killed their woman, is that they cannot see that what they did was wrong. This may have been normal for people in the 19th century as said before, but for people reading in modern times this is abnormal and the relationships seem weird.
All in all Browning portrays the relationships in similar ways. Both are connected with at least three people, even if the third or more (as is in the case of ‘My Last Duchess’) is just an imagination of paranoia. Both of the men after killing their woman do not realise what they have done is wrong and that they should feel guilty about it. None do so. As said before, this sort of act may have been normal for people in the 19th century as said before, but for people reading in modern times this not and it makes the men of the relationship seem very possessive and willing to kill at will.
