‘It is the societies in which the murders take place which are condemned in these poems, rather than the murderers.’ To what extent do you agree with this view? Remember to include in your answer relevant detailed exploration of the poets’ authorial methods. You should refer to the work of at least two authors in your answer. [25 marks].
In My Last Duchess the Duke is able to murder his last wife with complete impunity because the privileged position that he held within the semi-feudal Renaissance Italian society enabled him to act immorally and empower others to commit crimes. A similar lust to control others is exhibited by the psychopathic narrator in Porphyria’s Lover. However, because the crime in this poem is removed from the heart of human society, there is more emphasis on the disturbed psychological state which consumes the murderer. The murderer is implicitly condemned by Browning, but the reprehensible gender imbalance in early nineteenth century England – a period in which women’s sexuality was severely controlled, is also castigated. In contrast to the two murderers in the Browning poems – the Duke insidious, cruel and unrepentant; Porphyria’s lover vicious, calculating and mentally deranged – the murderer in The Ballad of Reading Gaol is not mad, monstrous or evil. There is little outright condemnation of the murderer in the poem. Rather it is the iniquitous penal system, which is condemned and, by extension, the late Victorian society – a society which permits inhumane punishment and brutal conditions and is blind to any form of rehabilitation. Therefore, I would agree that it is the society in which the murder takes place in The Ballad rather than the murderer, which is condemned, whereas it the murderers as well as the society in the two Browning poems which are equally denounced.
Browning uses the historical character of the Duke of Ferarra to explore the idea that there is a strong impulse in human nature to control and dominate. It does not follow, however, that all Renaissance dukes were as scheming and Machiavellian as Alphonso II. What we can take from the poem is that the worst traits in mankind can reside just as surely within a representative of the higher echelons of society as among the deprived and dispossessed. However, in Renaissance Italy, what is almost certain is, unlike the Duke, anyone of a low status would be unable to escape punishment for any crime. It is therefore the individual as well as the society which are condemned.
It would appear that Browning is also censoring the system of arranged marriages in both Renaissance Italy and Victorian England that allows (usually) an older man to take complete control over a young girl and for her to become his chattel. The Duke’s controlling nature is implicit when he says, “Then all smiles stopped altogether”. His use of litotes here allows him to hint to his guest that his last wife met an unpleasant end, without admitting to anything specifically. The Duke knows that the guest will report back to his master and the new bride-to-be so as to ensure that his prospective wife will be more subservient than his last Duchess. It also suggests that he has no fear of repercussions. His obsession with his “nine-hundred-years-old name” also attests to his desire for power, and his insufferable pride is wounded by his last wife’s equating of it to “anybody’s gift”.
The Duke shows control and undisguised arrogance in the pattern of his speech. His speech is rigorous in its use of iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets, so there is never an opportunity for his guest to interject. Also, towards the end, when showing the guest the sculpture of Neptune Taming the Seahorse after showing him his wife’s portrait, there is an inference that he has tamed his Duchess in the same way as Neptune has tamed a wild creature. There is also the suggestion that when the Duke gives permission to Fra Pandolf to paint his wife’s portrait, he is doing it so that he will have her forever within his control – in the same way that Porphyria’s lover murders Porphyria so that he can possess her as an everlasting trophy.
Possessiveness is a dominant trait in both Browning poems, and, to a lesser extent, in the guardsman’s murderous action in The Ballad. What differentiates the guardsman from both the Duke and Porphyria’s lover, however, is that his act of violence was impulsive and deserves pity, not condemnation. The act of violence of the state, the society and the penal system, however, is, in contrast, barbaric, unremitting and hypocritical. Those in power in the prison and other officials of the state offer no sympathy or hope and are totally unfeeling. The prison Governor appears “With a yellow face of Doom”, while “…twice a day the Chaplain called,/And left a little tract” – implying that it was a mechanical gesture and there was no common humanity or charity shown. Later in the poem it is stated that “The Chaplain would not kneel to pray/By his dishonoured grave”, which shows that the holder of this office is completely unchristian and morally flawed. The warders are also uncaring and depraved. After they stripped the executed man of his clothes, they “gave him to the flies” and “mocked the swollen purple throat”, which gives the impression that the man’s death is an excuse for levity.
In the plodding iambic tetrameter and repeated use of refrain, we can feel at a physical level the grinding relentlessness of prison work. Many prisoners in the nineteenth century were subjected to hard labour. They were forced to tear “the tarry rope to shreds/With blunt and bleeding nails” and sew sacks and break stones and sweat “at the mill”, which reminds us of the abject misery of Milton’s Samson, implying that conditions were no better than those during the Old Testament. Wilde makes clear that the judicial system was completely Godless:
“…things were done,
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!”
The anaphora here emphasizes the absence of Christian morality where “never a human voice comes near/To speak a gentle word.” It is a place which nurtures all that is bad and destroys “what is good in man”. Anything which is good wastes away and “withers there.” So it is the Justice System itself rather than any individual which is on trial here. “Man’s grim Justice” is totally indiscriminate, suggested in the line, “It slays the weak, it slays the strong” and reinforced by the repetition.
There is also a complete absence of justice in Porphyria’s Lover. As with the Duke, the speaker in the poem appears to be certain that he will avoid censure. Because “God has not said a word”, he seems to believe that his action has divine approval. He is enabling her to remain “perfectly pure and good”, which implies that he is preventing her from sinning. This not only illustrates his mental depravity, but also suggests tendencies towards moral aberration and hypocrisy within the society of the 1830s. The unabashed double standards in the early Victorian society could allow them to be strictly religious and yet see nothing wrong in controlling and severely limiting female sexuality. While men were perfectly at liberty to act in a sexual way, for women to behave in this way would have been condemned harshly. Therefore when Porphyria flaunts her sexuality by making “her smooth white shoulder bare”, Browning’s contemporary audience would have been shocked. Browning seems intent on further shocking his contemporaries by making the speaker in the poem psychotic so there is no doubt with whom our sympathies should lie. Thus he is condemning both the contemporary mores of his society as well as the individual in the poem.
When Porphyria gives herself freely to her lover, she forfeits her independence. According to the speaker, “That moment she was mine, mine”. The repetition here underlines how objectified she has become. Not only is she his possession, but he has punished her for attempting to be a free spirit. His obsession with control is established from the beginning in the perfect iambic rhythm and in his use of diminutives to describe Porphyria, showing that he views her as less powerful than himself. For example, after winding her hair around "her little throat" and suffocating her, he props her up against his shoulder where her "smiling rosy little head" leans. The use enjambment in line 6 signals a change in his emotional complacency, most probably because Porphyria has upset his desire to be a dominant force. She wishes to be herself, which is, from his warped perspective, tantamount to being rebellious. She has appeared alone during a stormy evening, which is definitely a violation of early nineteenth century etiquette, which required women to be confined to the house and subservient. However, Browning skilfully sustains the cadence of the poem – mimicking natural speech – so when the violence occurs it is unexpected and shocking, and can be viewed as Browning’s attempt to shift accusations of blame completely away from women and unquestionably in the direction of men.
This denunciation of men’s behaviour towards women does not seem to be very evident in The Ballad of Reading Gaol, however. The violent murder of “poor dead woman whom he loved” is overlooked or excused as a crime of passion. The criminal facts of the case are at variance to this interpretation as Wooldridge had informed a friend weeks before he slit her throat in the street that he was going to do “some damage” to her. However Wilde’s focus is on the dehumanisation of mankind by the prison system and the potential for murder in every human being. Each one of us has the potential for killing “the thing he loves”. Therefore, because Wilde is asking us all to identify with this man, Wooldridge himself evades Wilde’s censure; it is society that is fervently condemned. Browning also criticizes the societies of Renaissance Italy and Victorian England but does not spare his opprobrium for the murderers themselves in both poems under discussion.
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