Comparing The Last Duchess 'And Porphyria's Lover'

There are always other fish in the sea, just ask Robert Browning. He writes two poems, where the men in the stories, the last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover, kill their wives. They both do it for different reasons though, and that’s the interesting part. One kills for jealousy and selfishness while the other for love and selfishness. Plus, the women are both passionate people. In both these poems the men either have a wife or lover whom they kill, but for different reasons of their own. In the poem Last Duchess the man kills his wife out of jealously among other things. He was upset that his wife was giving other men the same attention that he was given. He believed that he should get more attention he aggressively says “as if she ranked my gift of a nine hundred year old name with anybody’s gift. (Line 34, 35) he is very upset that what is his is not fully his, this makes him particularly jealous. In the other poem there is a man and his lover. His lover has come to see him and he is thinking to himself and he thinks of how his love for her has made his heart swell, which tells us he had profound feelings for this girl. The difference between the two was

The man from The Last Duchess was selfish to kill his wife because; He killed her because he wanted her to pay more attention to him. He also didn’t want to stoop, or in other words he didn’t want to have to tell her it wasn’t appropriate that she liked other people. As a result of this selfishness he had his wife killed. The man in Porphyria’s Lover had the same reason. She has professed her love for him and he is thinking about what to do with this power and he voices “That moment she was mine, mine, fair, perfectly pure, and good.” (Line 36, 37) This sounds creepily greedy. He loves this girl and at that moment she would do anything for him so he selfishly kills her so that he can have her forever. These acts are equally selfish, just from different