A Literary Comparison of Robert Browning’s Texts My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover

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Most people have fallen in love at least once in their lives. I too fall in this category. Just like any Disney movie that you watch, people fall in love with each other, and they get married and live happily ever after right? Wrong! In real life, there are some strange things that can happen, including death, divorce, or other weird things that you never see in Disney movies. Robert Browning’s literary works are great examples of “Non-Fairytale Endings.” Not only does Browning have endings in his stories that aren’t the norm in children movies, but he also has some twisted and interesting things happen in the story of lovers. In Robert Browning’s works, Porphyria’s Lover, and My Last Duchess, the speakers can be both compared and contrasted. Initially, both speakers in the literary texts are similar because they killed their lovers. In Duchess, the duke that is the speaker says blatantly that he killed his last wife. As the speaker says in lines 45-46, “I gave commands; then the smiling stopped all together.” These lines mean that he told her to stop smiling, but she didn’t listen to him, so therefore he killed her, thus the smiles stopped all together. He explained that he did this such action because she smiled too much. In the same way, the speaker of Lover explained that he killed his lover too. The speaker grabbed his woman’s hair, and wrapped it around her neck three times, and strangled her to death! “I found a thing to do, and all her hair in one long yellow string I wound three times her little throat around, and strangled her” (Lines 37-41). In addition, the speakers from Lover, and Duchess, both have mental disorders. Because both of the speakers killed their lovers, it is pretty obvious that they must have been me... ... middle of paper ... ... her! As for the other speaker, the speaker of Lover, he just randomly decides to kill his girl. This speaker was just sitting at home, and although he was upset, he wasn’t planning on killing his girl, until all of a sudden he decided that to make her happy he would kill her, so he did! Obviously, Robert Browning’s two texts, Duchess, and Porphyria’s Lover can be compared and contrasted. They can be similar because speakers in the texts killed their women, they both had mental issues, and they were both jealous for one reason or another. Also, the speakers in the texts were different because the speaker in Duchess wanted to replace his wife, while the speaker in Lover didn’t. The Speaker in Duchess was also very rich, and the speaker in Lover was not. Lastly, the speaker in Duchess committed premeditative murder, while the speaker in Lover just murdered his girl.

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