To What Extent Are the Women in Browning's Poems Shown as Powerless?

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Throughout Browning’s poems there is a reoccurring battle of power between men and women. The majority of Browning’s poems show women as inferior and naive beings who are owned by men, however Browning sometimes reverts the stereotypical Victorian women in a couple of his poems; making them the powerful figure. One poem which agrees with the statement is My Last Duchess. The Duke starts off by lacking the power to control his flirtatious Duchess but by murdering her and immortalising her into a painting the Duke gives himself ultimate power and control. “Since none puts by/The curtain drawn for you, but I”. The duke can now choose who the Duchess “smiles” at and who he is allowed to see, which he couldn’t do when she was alive. The Duchess was always powerless towards the Duke as he had the means to kill her which she couldn’t have stopped. The Duke now controls every aspect of her, making her completely powerless. She is now just an object that he owns; which many Victorian women were to their husbands. Porphyria’s Lover starts with Porphyria appearing to have the upper hand over her lover due to the possessive title of the poem and how she takes control as soon as she enters the house “she shut the cold out and the storm” and then when she appears to assert dominance in their relationships “and made her smooth white shoulder bare”. It is clear that her lover feels as if his power is being threatened so he kills her “Three times her little throat around and strangled her”. The man’s power is restored and Porphyria is dead and powerless. Because he strangles her with her own hair the speaker infers that Porphyria brought this on herself by trying to take his power, this was her fault and not his. Similarly to what happens in My Last Duchess the man gains his power back by killing the women however Porphyria had the power in the first half of the power which

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