“MLD” & “PL”

[mirandaclue101]

Sept 23, 2022 23:45:42 GMT -8 notyounice said:

In both poems “My Last Duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover”, Robert Browning illustrates the men in this time period having/wanting dominance and power. They, therefore, use women to achieve their desires. Although both men tried to express their love for these women, they expressed it by objectifying them through violence and dominance. As both women fell victim to their lovers' leading to their death due to the men wanting to fix the image of women. In “My Last Duchess” it says, “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece of a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said...” from this you can still see the duke admiring his former Duchess although she was no longer alive although the duke was the one who ordered her to death. Even after her death the duke continues his duties and arranges another marriage and still considers these women as objects as they can be replaced as the text says, “Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go Together down, sir.” This shows that the duke’s new bride’s family was willing to sacrifice their daughter even after what happened to his last wife since this was a time where women no say, and where the family also couldn’t save their daughter because the duke was rich with more power, status. Whereas in “Porphyria’s Lover” His lover who loved him became a victim, because he realized that she worshipped him just as the text says, “at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me: surprise Made my hear swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good:” Proving that he likes being worshipped and having power so in order to preserve it, he decides to kill Porphyria. Even after Porphyria is killed by being strangled to death, he then plays around with her body and doesn’t feel the slightest bit of regret, sadness, or fear because God has not even punished him yet as he says, “And yet God has not said a word!” Religion being a be deal during this timeline shows that if even God hasn’t said anything or punished him yet he thinks that God is agreeing with his morals as women are just objects therefore he killed his own lover because he knows that he can replace her with another woman.

I agree that the men have a need for dominance in romantic relationships during this time period. They take advantage of women because men see them as weak and lower than them. The author creates this atmosphere perfectly in his poems and makes it blindly obvious to the readers that the mens' point of views are tainted. Their so called love is more a love for ownership rather than affection for the woman in their relationships. 

[mirandaclue101]

Sept 21, 2022 20:45:29 GMT -8 calinda sang said:

I see a lot of likeness in both poems that makes me think of the chapter, "Now Where Hav I Seen Her Before" from HTRLLAP in which both the duke from "My Last Duchess" and the narrator from "Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning exhibit a lot of similar character traits and actions such as possessiveness, the need for control, and the eventual murder of their spouses. The duke throughout the story of "MLD" tells the visitor about the beauty and grace of his late spouse but as the story goes on, he continues to talk about her "unfaithfulness". He relented about how she seemed to entertain other men and was jealous that the way she acted with others was the same as how she acted with him. His aristocratic ego also came through when talking about how she was almost looking down on his 900 year old name, treating this "gift" of a grand last name the same as any other. It was obvious she bruised his ego a lot and when he couldn't control her actions the way he wanted to, she was killed. He treated the late duchess a lot like a piece of property that was meant to be a thing that praised him and his prestige. The fact that she didn't do that sent him into a spiral, as if her only purpose was to be of service to him, so when she wasn't, she was useless. In "PL", the narrator exhibits a lot of the same needs for control and possession. When the narrator learns that his love interest is in love with him, he kills her and props her dead body up next to him. Her profession of love, to him, meant that she wanted to worship him forever and was his and all this stuff about how she was his "possession" now because she said she loved him. This is obviously a pretty twisted perspective on her confession, but in order to keep that control over her forever, the narrator strangled her to death just so he would never lose that control. She stopped being a person after what she said. Now, she was just his possession.

That's a great way to look at it. I didn't think of it that way. Both men are kind of a mirror to each other and share many similar personality traits. They are a similar archetype of an abusive husband that seeks ultimate power over their significant other. The men show a great jealousy and their emotions are easily changed. Both of the men's lovers end up dead over their husbands deeds showing the irony of their love. Neither man was regretful of his decisions and thought it was better for themselves that their lovers were dead. The poet shows by how the men write their dialogue that they show no sorrow or repentance for their actions. 

[erincaballero]

Even before we begin reading “Porphyria’s Lover” in its entirety, we are given a glimpse into the narrator’s true intentions. The title focuses not on Porphyria, but the narrator who killed her. The poem continues to develop his self-righteous attitude; it serves to affirm the title’s suggestion that the narrator is choosing to focus only on his perception (delusions included) of Porphyria rather than her own true motives and actions.
Similarly, the title of “My Last Duchess” implies the presence of the Duke’s feelings of ownership regarding the Duchess. The pronoun “my” conflicts rather strongly with the content of the poem itself, as a large portion of the Duke’s commentary details his disdain for the Duchess’s alleged tendency to entertain the compliments or advances of other men (thus his disdain for her actions not aligning with the power he felt he had over her). We may conclude from this that the Duke’s fixation on possession comes from a place of insecurity.
This extreme insecurity is almost exactly mirrored in the Lover’s actions in “Porphyria’s Lover.” Both the Duke and the Lover were so bothered by the possibility of their significant others never being fully devoted to them that they had them executed. In the Lover’s case, in a sense, it seems to have been a desire to immortalize the moment in which he finally felt loved — the moment in which he finally felt in control of the relationship, as well as Porphyria herself. The distorted ideal picture of love he has conjured as a result of his aggressively possessive demeanor led him to believe not only that killing Porphyria was the best course of action to do so, but also to believe that Porphyria was entirely glad and willing to surrender her life in order to achieve her supposed wish for the same devotion he expected from her.