‘Analyse the narrators psychology in
Browningʼs Poetryʼ
‘Analyse the narrators psychology in Browningʼs Poetryʼ
In Browningʼs poetry abnormal psychology is portrayed through form, rhyme, structure,
language, and meter but also through the names of the poems themselves in some cases. The
male narrators represent a cold remorseless attitude to human life with a lack of care and
represented inconsequential attitude to the lives that they cruelly take. The woman on the other
hand represents a more emotional and energetic depiction of psychopathy more in line with the
gender stereotypes of the rime. Through these alternative approaches I will discuss how
Browningʼs poems depict the narrators psychology.
The critic Clyde De Ryals stated that in the Dukeʼs “unguarded moment” “he reveals all”, setting
out to initial tell the story of the Duchess yet undergoes a Freudian parapraxis revealing a lot
more about his psychology than he originally intended to reveal. His subtle and unconscious
slander of his victim exposes a self-justifier and man “insecure behind a tyrants swagger”. He
attempts to villainise the Duchess but instead paints another portrait of a youthful and happy
woman (who seems not much more than a girl), who finds joy in even the “dropping of the
daylight” with the soft rhythmic ‘dʼ sounds hinting at a possible calmness within her personality.
He cannot express what exactly he does not like about the Duchess with the repeated
references to her “spot of joy” and increased frequency of fractured language reinforcing the
poems greatest achievement which is showcasing the decline of a “ego sustained by the use of
language most subtle and auditous” as stated by critics. The long list of complaints which
begins at Line 20 are never exactly pinpointed and the use of dashes, breaks in sentence and
end stops which increase in frequency leading up to the Duchessʼs death present a fractured
poem symbolic of the Dukeʼs fractured psychology. The dashes create dialectical sounds and a
sense of uncontrolled speech, maybe reflecting an uncontrollable nature within the Duke.
In the same way the Duchess is immortalised through her portrait Porphyria is immortalised
through her eyes. The lovers obsession with Porphyriaʼs physicality through her “smooth white
shoulder” and “yellow hair” alongside “blue eyes which laughed without a stain” simultaneously
glorify her while also objectifying her into a possession/ prize which the narrator deems is only
attainable through domination of her through death. In murdering her she becomes the perfect
objective prize for the obsessive male psychology. Both the Duke and Porphyriaʼs Lover hold
similarities to the narrator in Edgar Allan Poeʼs The Black Cat through the iambic tetrameter
which presents a cold and remorseless attitude towards love. By exhibiting this disjointed string
of logic, he strangles his lover leaving her in her most pristine, innocent, and elegant state.
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