Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Void in Law” is a very powerful and emotional love sonnet, about a lady who had been deceived by the court and a man who she thought was her husband. Another powerful sonnet, is Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover” which is about a man who kills his lover to keep her from leaving him. This is a chilling and haunting sonnet which leaves the reader with an eerie feeling. These two poem’s have many similarities such as their main theme, and the fact that they are both dramatic monologues. While they share these common factors, they also oppose one another as one is in a male’s perspective and the other is in the perspective of a female, one ends with life while the other ends in death, and one uses dialogue and the other has a sparing amount. Despite these differences both writers use many poetic devices to present the speaker’s thoughts and feelings in a strategic manner to make for two great poems. Elizabeth Barret Browning was an amazing poet in the Victorian era, and she started …show more content…
One of the main differences is that “Porphyria’s Lover” is written by, and is in the point of view of a man, while “Void in Law” is written by and is in the point of view of a woman. When the poem is in the point of view of the man, the poem is more about how the woman is at fault for being unfaithful and she receives consequences for doing so. When the poem is in the point of view of the woman the poem is about how depressed a woman feels after he left her to be with another woman. This shows how in this time period there was a double standard for genders, and it wasn’t as much of a big deal when the man was unfaithful than when the woman was unfaithful. In addition, the poems differ in the amount of dialogue present in the poem. “Porphyria’s Lover” has little to no dialogue which is unlike this type of poem. “Void in Law” has a fair amount of dialogue which is expected in a dramatic