Essay | How Do "Porphyria's Lover" and "My Last Duchess" Compare?

Robert Browning's poems `Porphyria's Lover' and `My Last Duchess' are both about psychotic men who kill their lovers. However, the men differ in their motives.

The poems have similarities and differences in their writing style. Both of the poems are biased and narrated by possessive and psychotic men. Also, both poems are narrated in the style of dramatic monologue. However, they are written in different tenses. `Porphyria's Lover' is written in the present tense as a flashback, whereas `My Last Duchess' switches between the past and present tenses. `My Last Duchess' is written in a style that is talking to the reader/audience but `Porphyria's Lover' is written in a regular style. Also `Porphyria's Lover' uses more figurative language than `My Last Duchess'.

Both men kill their lovers from things that their psychosis caused them to see. However the things that they saw were not always the same. One expression that...
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