Comparing Women in A Man's Requirements and A Letter to Her Husband

communicates two interpretations concerning Both poems describe the behavior of people who are in loving, romantic relationships. There are several aspects common in both poems. Using the literary technique of dramatic dialogue, the author reveals the plot and central idea of each poem. Robert Browning tells each poetic story through a single speaker. Both poems reveal an account in which the admirer kills the object of his love. This paper will compare and contrast the following characteristics: the setting, the speaker, the mood and tone, and theme found "My

Robert Browning provides a critical view of gender and power relations in his dramatic monologues “Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess.” The dramatic monologue, as S.S. Curry has written, "reveals the struggle in the depths of the soul” (11). Browning delves into the minds of characters to show their conceptions of women and ideas of power. He explores the mental processes of the characters, and invites readers to question societal ideas of power and gender. The mental pathologies of the speakers is emphasized, which forces readers to examine the sanity of their own notions of gender dynamics.

She seems to be saying that without the pain and the tribulations, a marriage wouldn’t be worth as much. It’s almost like she says that the sacrifices are what makes the marriage worth it. The pain of this marriage results in the ultimate achievement of the objective of marriage. The poem states that all the aches and pains of marriage are worth going through because the love of another is epic.  I found that the two of these poems together were a fascinating combination, because one speaks of the hypocrisy of not doing anything about the flaws in a person’s own characteristics, and the other seems to say to live with the pain that you have to live with the faults; through doing so one will find bliss; it is worth the sacrifice.

The male gaze is a penetrating force every woman has dealt with in her life. It is normalized in our society as a whole, despite the fact that it involuntarily violates women and leaves them vulnerable. Victorian society was no exception to this unfortunate constraint upon women. As such, Thomas Hardy deconstructs the destructive male gaze through the heroine of Far From the Madding Crowd, Bathsheba Everdene, and her unique command of her love life. Moreover, in doing so, he creates a self-directed woman who does not need a man’s aid to find happiness. She may not be the perfect female character, but she knows what she wants from life and she is ready to take it.

The life of a lady in the 19th century is painted in a romantic light. Pictured in her parlor, the lady sips tea from delicate china while writing letters with a white feathered quill. Her maid stands silently off in the background, waiting for orders to serve her mistress. What is not typically pictured, is the sadness or boredom echoed on the lady’s face. Perhaps the letter is to a dear friend, not seen in ages, pleading with the friend to visit, in hopes that the friend will fill the void in the lady’s life made from years spent in a loveless marriage; or possiblyk20 the lady isn’t writing a letter at all, but a novel or a poem, never to be read by anyone but her. Edith Warton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, are 19th Century ladies who dare to share their writing with the world. Through their works, the darker side of a woman’s life in the late 1800’s is exposed. Gender politics in the 19th dictates that a lady is dependent on her husband for her financial security and social standing; that is if she is fortunate enough to marry at all. In Edith Warton’s The House of Mirth, Lily Bart is a beautiful woman in her late 20’s, who fails to marry a wealthy man. The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper slowly goes insane under her physician husbands misguided attempts to cure her of depression. The downfall of Lily Bart and the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is

The acceptance of love has the power of transforming an individual to demand of that same love. The social context of the 1850’s was seen to be emphasised on individual’s emotions and rebellion against established social rules and convections which was evident in her open declarations of love and demanding’s of love which was a concept of idealised love. The notion of idealised love transforming an individual is presented in the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’. Sonnet 14 as Elizabeth Browning urges her lover to not love her for any particular reason other than “love’s sake only”. In the Octave, the first line is EBB talking directly to whom she loves and she uses high modality in the word ‘must’, making it seem like she

Her marriage also causes her to lose control. Even within the one thing that is supposed to hold strong, she is alone. Her husband, leaving her on a daily basis to work, insists that she cannot write nor visit friends and family. Thus, he leaves her alone during the day to sit

Robert Browning uses descriptive details to portray a theme of how darkness rises from warmth and happiness by showing us on how a man’s love for someone makes him turn to savagery. The narrator of the poem has very deep feelings for his lover, but he only thinks of himself and he never wants the girl to leave his side so he does the unthinkable. In the times that the girl was not home or was not with the narrator then there was coldness and darkness, but when she was with the man then the house would “blaze up, and all the cottage warm”. She created hope and the narrator needed that constantly, so he realized that his love was too strong to put on hold everyday when she would leave. The fact that the narrator had to watch his lover leave everyday

Initially, Barrett Browning’s misunderstanding of love implies her innocence, apparent in the utilisation of direct speech in Sonnet I, “Not Death, but Love,”, emphasising her surprise. However, as the sonnets progress her views are altered and Sonnet XIV accentuates Barrett Browning’s yearning to be loved and urges Browning to reemphasise his love, “But love me for love’s sake, that evermore thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity,”. Imperative voice and diction indicates Barrett Browning’s preoccupation for an everlasting love that is not influenced by superficial circumstances. This notion is reiterated in Sonnet XXI, “Say thou dost love me, love me, love me,”. Imperative tone is utilised, urging Browning to repeatedly express his love for her. The idealised love that EBB envisions can surpass even Death, reflected in her Victorian

The woman in the poem shows us the anger she is feeling is directed at her husband. The

Love can be quite a difficult topic to write about, expressing one’s intimate and innermost emotions requires a great level of dedication and honesty. If done correctly, the outcome is truly stunning. John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and Katherine Philips’s “To Mrs. M.A. at Parting” are two masterpieces of this genre. These poems depict the concept of true love so meticulously that the reader cannot help but envy the relationships presented. Perhaps the reason that these works are so effective is due to the fact that they are incredibly similar to each other. Although some differences are present when it comes to structure and gender concerns, the poems share the same theme of love on a spiritual level and show many parallels in meaning.

Love has a voice that speaks to everyone differently. For some people it is a gentle whisper, but for others it is a scream, yearning to be noticed. Love is a common theme in literature, discussed in many works. Love is a very broad term, that can be defined in many different ways. Love has many characteristics, with many individual interpretations. In this essay, I will be talking about three poems: Robert Graves’ Symptoms of Love, Bob McKenty’s Adam’s Song, and Muriel Stuart’s In the Orchard. Each of these poems demonstrates their own meaning of love, and each author interprets love in their own different ways.

In Robert Browning's dramatic monologue, "Porphyria's Lover," the love-stricken frustrations of a nameless speaker end in a passionate, annihilating response to society's scrutiny towards human sensuality. Cleverly juxtaposing Porphyria's innocent femininity and her sexual transgression, Browning succeeds in displaying society's contradictory embrace of morality next to its rejection of sensual pleasure. In an ironically tranquil domestic setting, warm comfort and affection come to reveal burning emotional perversions within confining social structures. The speaker's violent display of passion ends not with external condemnation, but with the matter-of-fact sense of

Both of these works contain the unique ability, as portrayed by Browning, to create a deep fictional psyche that displays the strange relationship between man and woman. This relationship is displayed as one full of pain, jealousy, rejection and happiness, the majority of these emotion are contained in love and marriage. From this the reader can infer the nature of love being the conquering of class distinction and marriage involves sexist male inhibitions. Insecurities are seen in both poems and are evident in the perspective voices of the male protagonists, who are seen as incapable to handle their aggressive and possessive natures when it comes to love and marriage. Browning seems to be demonstrating the side of relationships avoided previously by Romantics and in doing so shows the negative implication on seemingly unruly

Veering from the egocentric poems of the Romantic era, Victorian poets began to write poetry not only to express the feelings of an “I,” but also to inspire change in the collective “we.” Being from a historical period with a dramatic class divide, Victorian poets wrote with the intention of crafting beautiful lasting poetry as well as articulating a need for cultural reform in their now. One of the most renowned Victorian poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning possessed the expert skill of integrating not only imagery and precise rhyme scheme into her poetry, but afflicting her readers with a sense of pity so paramount they had no choice but to make a change.