Comparing Porphyria's Lover And My Last Duchess

In both of Robert Browning's poems, Porphyria's Lover and My Last Duchess, we can see that they are both narrative poems, they tell a story of something that is happening or has happened. We can also see however, that Browning's poem, Porphyria's Lover is much more narrative than My Last Duchess.

Porphyria's Lover begins with a very unsympathetic atmosphere, with the "sullen wind soon to awake" , about tearing down the elm-tops "for spite" and doing it's best to "vex the lake" ,this does not present the happiest beginning to a poem.

The imagery in this poem is very descriptive, with "smooth white shoulder", her eyes "happy and proud", the narrator's "burning kiss".

There is not very much suspense, as

At first the active character is the woman, Porphyria, while the narrator is passive, until the narrator kills her, which is when he becomes the active character.

The author writes the poem so that the first line rhymes with the third line, and the second with the fourth, but the fifth line is always unexpected, disjointed, but still every fifth line is very important to the storyline of the poem.

In Porphyria's Lover, just before the narrator becomes active, there is a lot of repetition about Porphyria's hair : "and all her yellow hair displaced", "and spread, o'er all, her yellow hair".

The narrator becomes active at the same time that Porphyria becomes passive, goes into the background while the narrator takes the scene and turns it to his own advantage.

The narrator is deeply critical of Porphyria, we can see that he considers her to be a weak specimen when he puts "she too weak, for all her heart's endeavor to set its struggling passion free from pride, and vainer ties dissever."

The narrator, having become the active character, realizes