My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover

(A discussion of the treatment of women in the Victorian era as critiqued by Robert Browning in his poems, My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover)

People like to believe that by watching the news, or talking to their friends and family, they know exactly what it means to be psychotic or psychopathic. This is why individuals are so quick to mislabel mass murderers who are simply disturbed and influenced by external forces. However, they cannot be farther from the truth, as only about 1% of males over the age of 18 can be classified as psychopathic. (Tracy, 2015). This source clarifies the meaning behind psychotic, explaining, “The term ‘psychotic,’ in a general sense, refers to being “out of touch with reality.” A person, however, can be in touch with reality in most areas but out of touch in particular ways. The two primary ways that people can be psychotic are hallucinations and delusions.”, (Langman, 2009) as described, to be psychotic means to be seeing and hear things that do not exist and believing in the impossible. On another note,

Robert Browning is an amazing poet. He wrote many poems in the late 1800’s that are connected with storylines, characters and plot. “My Last Duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover” are examples of Browning’s connected poems. Both are considered to be dramatic monologues in which the character narrates his story of love. The Duke from “My Last Duchess” and the speaker from “Porphyria’s Lover” are known as “brothers in character and action”. They share many similar personality traits and the make many of the same actions. Both the Duke and speaker manipulate other characters from the poem. They are both possessive over women and objects, love the feeling of power are both over confident. Manipulation is a very important action of both the

Many people in the world have mental illnesses, but one person’s mental illness drove him to kill. In the short story “Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe an old man has a butler that helped him with his daily tasks. One day this butler murdered his employer because the old man’s eye is evil. The butler was perfectly sane at one point, and little by little schizofrenia withered the butler away until the butler was insane. Schizophrenia is a mental illness that affects the person’s judgement of what is reality and what is imagination.

involving him with her life and would only use him as an escape from "vainer

Love is the most dominant theme in Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. It is presented as infatuation which is proven to be a force so strong that it literally consumes the two lovers. Although it is only alluded in Browning’s dramatic monologues The Laboratory, the speaker arguably loves her husband as she seeks to rid herself of his lover thereby reclaiming him as her own. Narcissism is seen in both Porphyria’s Lover and My Last Duchess as both characters empower themselves by making them the central focus of the monologue. The Duke is the least emotional of all the characters depicted, yet his actions show a determination and strength of purpose which is evident in the poems.

“Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess” are both very dramatic poems. The author for both poems are written by Robert Browning. The speaker for both poems were very dramatic, insane, crazy, and controlling over their particular lover. Both poems has similarities in killings in their lovers over jealously. Jealously also plays a huge, important role in both poems.

Love can lead people to do crazy things. Love can especially lead those who are insecure to become things they may have never thought they would be. Love, for those who are insecure, can bring out both their controlling and psychotic nature. This is seen in the poems “My Last Duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning. In these poems the Duke and the Lover are both controlling, insecure, and psychotic.

Browning had a place with the Victorian Age, an age where adore coincided with disarray, religion, and distress. Taking care of business, Browning is a writer of affection. His works delineate the different shades of feeling, regardless of whether it is the smooth stream of perfect otherworldly love in The Last Ride Together or the complexities of brain and nature of affection in Porphyrias Lover and My Last Duchess.

Psychopathology is the scientific study of mental disorders. A psychopath is a person suffering from a chronic mental disorder with violent social behavior. Psychopaths lack conscience and feelings for others. They are aware of what they are doing, however they continue take and do what they want, with no trace of guilt. They demonstrate power over others to cover for their feeling of inadequacy. Psychopaths are selfish, impulsive, aggressive, loveless, and remorseless. They can appear charming, but are deceitful and manipulative. The word psychopath is broad and covers a range of behaviors, so it is further broken down into subcategories throughout this paper. The subcategories are; malignant narcissism, sadism, sexual sadism, and serial murderers.

‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ are both poems by the Victorian poet Robert Browning. In this essay I will compare these two poems to find similarities and differences.

It was the spring of 1812 when Robert Browning was brought into the world. He was born in the small town of Camberwell, London, England. His father, a highly educated man, had a very distinguished library which Browning was influenced greatly by, especially by his father’s collection of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s works (Horneker). Browning is accredited with being the mastermind behind the sect of poetry known as dramatic monologue. Dramatic monologues can be defined as, “a poem written in the form of a speech of an individual character, it compresses into a single vivid scene a narrative sense of the speaker’s history and psychological insight into his character” (Dramatic Monologue). Browning’s two most famous of these poems are “Porphyria’s Lover” and “My last Duchess”.

The Victorian era was characterized by a strict patriarchal society that imposed oppressive ways of life and moral codes on its women. Because women were considered to have belonged primarily in the domestic realm, the traditional and ideal Victorian woman was the passive, pure, and virtuous “angel in the house.” Women were expected to maintain their virginity until marriage, and expressions of female sexuality or promiscuity were of moral outrage and came with serious consequences. Accordingly, Robert Browning uses this idea of female sexuality and its costs in several of his dramatic monologues. Close readings of Browning’s poems “Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess” reveal how female subjects are victimized by their male counterparts

Throughout history gender roles and identification of both females and males have constantly been changing. Even today this topic is still an issue in consideration of societal concerns. Even in the early 1800’s this was something of somewhat a concern. We can see this when we observe great writers and poets at this time. Two of the most influential writers that focused on the identification of women was Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. In my opinion, Robert Browning seems to be the most interesting of the two when it comes to the explanation of women and the roles that he perceived that they should have. Browning does

Throughout each poem “The Last Duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover” there are many similarities in which can show that the author definitely feel some type of way when writing these two poems Jealousy along with no guilt are one of the main similarities and differences. As Seth Meyers stated “A little jealousy in a romantic relationship is undoubtedly natural” (Myers). Although the way the jealousy is perceived in the story is slight different that what myers was concluding. Along with similarities there are also differences between each of the poems which distinguish one from the other. Many ways of thinking are expressed through each poem and each poem most definitely make one think and wonder what is going to happen or why things played out the way that they did. Overall it begs the question; why were each of these two poem so similar and also so different at the same time.