Comparing Poems 'Porphirias Lover And My Last Duchess'

Browning presents the relationship between men and women in the two poems in a number of ways. Such as mans power over women, women as possessions/belongings/treated like children, women in their traditional role, the death of the women, men as inhuman/ uncaring and how the male character feels about the death of his wife/lover. All of these points are shown and used by Robert Browning in the two poems, Porphirias Lover and My Last Duchess.

In the poem Porphirias Lover presents the relationship between men and women as showing the men being in control. From lines thirty one to thirty three Browning wrote Be sure I looked up at her eyes happy and proud; at least I knew Porphyria worshipped me; The word worshipped means to treat somebody or something as divine and show respect by engaging in acts of prayer and devotion, also meaning great excessive love, admiration, and respect felt for somebody or something. So in that line Browning shows us that the male is in control by writing the fact that Porphyria worships the man, as Porphyria gives herself to the man during her acts of seduction. (Murmuring how she loved me). The murmuring is a quite sexy thing to do, so this justifies the fact that she is seducing him.
On the first two lines Browning wrote Thats my last Duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive. Here this could be that the painting is so realistic that it looks as if the Duchess were alive or that it is a painting of the deceased Duchess. This sets the reader thinking at the start of the poem and makes the reader want to read on. Also on line forty five Browning writes I gave commands; Here the reader can guess what he has just done. (Meaning that he has given commands to kill his Duchess.) But until you read on, the reader cannot fully identify what is going on. This makes the poem more appealing to the reader as there are lots of cliff hangers in the