Analyzing How Robert Browning Uses Dramatic Monologue to Portray Madness in His Poems My Last Duchess and Porphyria's Lover

Analyzing How Robert Browning Uses Dramatic Monologue to Portray Madness in His Poems My Last Duchess and Porphyria's Lover

A dramatic monologue is when a character in a piece of writing speaks

their thoughts and feelings out loud. It is used because it gives an

insight into the persons mind. Browning chose this form for the two

poems because it makes the poem feel more realistic and you know

everything the character is feeling it also subconsciously makes the

reader feel certain emotions towards particular characters.

The poems reflect the Victorian mind by talking about madness. During

the Victorian era madness was considered taboo- respectable people did

not speak of it whether in public or in private, but thought about

them all the same. Victorians had to repress sexual emotions as it was

considered to be highly disrespectful to yourself.

Victorians loved to read and as it was wrong for them to talk about

madness, sex and violence, they would read about it instead, this was

a way of liberating the repressed emotions. Victorians were allowed to

read about the subjects because it is not them who is in the wrong it

is the characters in the story. The same applies to writing about

taboo subjects - if you made out that it is somebody else doing it

then it is acceptable. Browning's readers would have been most

interested in the violence and madness in these poems, as there is no

reference to sex in them. I think this is why Browning chose to write

about this subject; because the poems gave the readers to feel the

feeling they had repressed. In both of the poems there are shows of

madness and violence.

The poem "My Last Duchess" wa...

... middle of paper ...

...rent because

Porphyria's lover murdered her himself and felt a twang of guilt which

quickly passed as he convinced himself she was peaceful. Both are

affected by attitudes to women as Porphyria could not leave her

husband for her lover because she would be disrespected, and the Duke

was affected because he only saw his wife a possession not a real

person.

In these two poems I think Browning was trying to show his readers how

badly women were treated and looked upon. I think he was trying to

help women get more respect and display all the things that they

couldn't do because they were the property of the men. I also think he

was trying to show that looks can be deceiving; never judge a book by

its cover, the duke and lover seemed to be sane but when you study

them a bit closer you see the pages of the book inside.