Comparing My Last Duchess 'And Porphyria's Lover'

Poems depicting love and loss are extremely popular in the Victorian era, Robert Browning is a well renowned poet that has similarly written poetry featuring love and death. Browning’s poems My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover has multiple ways they can be individually interpreted. One may focus on the love or attraction presented in each text, or the focus could be the deceit and death within the poem. Both of the poems have rudimentary similarities; male narrators, a beautiful woman who passes, and an eerie uncertainty of why the woman was killed. On the other hand, differences do appear between the poems, for instance, in Porphyria’s Lover it explained exactly how the woman was killed, yet, My last Duchess does not say how she passed,

Porphyria is defined as “a rare disorder that affect mainly the skin or nervous system and may cause abdominal pain.” (L.Bonkovsky) This disturbing disease can have the individual appear to be grotesque with rashes, blisters, and a change of skin pigment, the additional side effects can be crippling. However, if an individual did not know that definition, Porphyria might have well sounded as if it was a name of a women. Browning’s poem is deceiving dark poem about love, or a twisted from of love depending on the interpretation. This whole poem is centered on a man and a woman, he describes of how the women has much love for the man, then he “wound three times her little throat and strangled her” (Browning, Porphyria 's Lover) This sudden change of events darkens the poem drastically, it then goes on saying that he had been sitting with his dead lover and no one has noticed. There is much mystery entangled in this poem; why did he kill her, how come no one has noticed, and did she want to die because she did not want the late stages of porphyria? An analysis of this poem can be very crucial to its true