Perhaps neither speaker feels they have wronged their victims because they believe they have been betrayed by the victims. In "Porphyria's Lover" Porphyria only comes during the storm; it appears that for some reason their relationship must be kept secret. But as soon as Porphyria reveals that she worships the speaker and he feels that in "That moment she was [his], [his], fair,/Perfectly pure and good" (lines 36-37), he exercises his power over her in order to ensure that "all night long [they will] not [stir]" (line 59). The duchess, however, has given her husband reason to believe that "she ranked/[the speaker's] gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name/With anybody's gift" (lines 32-34), thus highly insulting him.
This common thread of love and cold-blooded murder in these Browning poems make them both extremely intriguing and has given them both a timeless quality which has allowed them to be read for hundreds of years so far and conceivably an even longer time on into the future.
1 comment:
Rachel,
You pick a great dramatic monologue by Browning to discuss here, although to some extent you dilute the effectiveness of your post by trying to talk about both "My Last Duchess" and "Porphyria's Lover." I think you would have been far better off picking one or the other, and going into more depth on it. As a general rule, it is better to "say more about less."
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