Each of the poems presents a man who is obsessed with a woman. In John Keats’s poem, the primary character, a forlorn knight, describes himself as helpless in the face of the woman’s charms: she has the power. In Robert Browning’s poem, the speaker is the Duke, who brags about his control over the now-deceased duchess in a portrait he is describing: he has the power, or so he believes. In both cases, the woman’s departure has left the man alone.
In the knight’s situation, the warrior in armor has been accustomed to doing battle with other similarly armed men. He was apparently unprepared for a battle of the heart, which he has lost. Seduced by her looks and sounds, the knight is convinced of the woman’s love, yet he finds himself disappointed in his inability to possess her. His interpretation is that his beloved did not fight fair. His only way to understand her power over him is to attribute it to supernatural forces. The woman must have been an enchantress, or perhaps was not even human; she cast spells on him that made him love her but then abandoned him. She was without mercy. The knight presents her power as illegitimate because it had magical properties.
As regards the Duke, he tells the listener numerous details about the portrait and the famous artist, Fra Pandolf, who painted it. He intends to convey that he admired his duchess for her virtues, but he ends up revealing more about his jealousies and suspicions. The Duke implies that he had his wife killed—which seems an odd suggestion, given that the listener is the agent with whom he is negotiating the terms of his second marriage. He may believe he is being so subtle that the listener will not understand that implication, or he may be deliberately warning the listener what might befall the new bride if she were unfaithful. Although he goes out of his way to emphasize his powerful position, the Duke also reveals that he is a man at the mercy of his passions, a person who understands power as rule by force rather than intellect.
No comments:
Post a Comment