Thread by @GCSE_Macbeth

1) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to LONDON:

- both poems show how inequalities in power always seem to victimise women. It is women who suffer in the transaction of power with men who want ownership over their bodies -- whether aristocracy or street prostitutes.

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Both poems show how power that is gained through title or heritage typically ends up in the hands of the wrong people -- the monarchy behind their "palace walls" in LONDON and the Duke in his castle.

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- both poems show that power makes you inward-looking and cruel, unable to show compassion even to those you have worn to love and protect.

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2) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to OZYMANDIAS:

- both poems show the arrogance that leads powerful men to abuse the power they "command"
- while OZYMANDIAS shows that in the long-term such power is fleeting, in the short term of MLD many vulnerable suffer or die

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3) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to CHECKING OUT ME HISTORY:

- both poems show how power consists in being able to control the narrative and history of the powerless.

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Just as the speaker in COMH is aware that the true story of his own past has been hidden from him, so the Duchess lives on only in the unreliable, accusatory stories told by the Duke. He has the power now to construct her for future readers.

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- both poems portray the PARANOIA that comes with power. European society censors or represses historical incidents of black insurrection. Challenges to authority are simply erased. Simillarly, as soon as the Duke senses a challenge to his supremacy he reacts with violence.

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4) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to PRELUDE:

- I would use the two poems as examples of opposite attitudes to power. In the Duke's arrogance he cannot conceive of a power greater than himself or his "nine-hundred-year-old name".

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The Duke cannot experience beauty or art or even a sunset without framing it within his own power and insecurity.

In PRELUDE the speaker has a shocking encounter with a power far greater than his own -- the power of NATURE -- and is brought into a state of AWE.

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5) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE:

- OBEDIENCE is a key theme in both poems. Power is sustained through the unquestioning obedience of the powerless.

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- grand narratives such as the prestige of nations, or upholding of family honour, take precedence over the rights and safety of individuals
- NARRATIVE is a common theme. COTLB gives remembrance to voiceless soldiers; not for the Duchess, whose story belongs to the Duke.

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6) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to REMAINS

- the poems present speakers with two opposite emotional reactions to having committed violence. For the Duke, his actions can be rationalised and concealed.

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For the soldier in REMAINS, the violence cannot be contained or processed. It keeps coming back, all too present in his mind.

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7) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to KAMIKAZE...

- ideas about DUTY are present in both poems. The Duke feels a duty to protect the honour of his title and ancestry; the pilot in Kamikaze has neglected his duty even though he made a seemingly "good" decision.

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Both poems show that DUTY can be a smokescreen for harmful and damaging ideology -- in KAMIKAZE, the nationalist mentality that demands pilots commit suicide and leads to thos who don't being shunned. In MLD, the Duke's warped sense of DUTY gets the Duchess killed.

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- the idea of NARRATIVE again. In both poems, the Duchess and the Pilot are denied a chance to tell their own story. We can only read their actions through others' interpretations. In Kamikaze, the Daughter is interrogating the pilot. In MLD, the reader must do the work.

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8) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to EXPOSURE:

- I would compare the two contrasting approaches to LANGUAGE in each poem. The DUKE uses euphemism and ambiguity to detach himself and his listener from the truth about events. He is emotionally distant.

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The DUKE uses heightened diction -- rhymed couplets disguised with enjambment and caesurae, emphasising his aristocratic lineage and control of discourse in his castle.

In EXPOSURE, the solder cannot detatch himself from his situation. In this poem...

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...poetic diction ("pale flakes with fingering stealth") and convoluted syntax ("sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew") are the signs of an increasingly damaged mind. They are a way of expressing raw truth about war.

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- AGENCY is a useful concept in these poems. In EXPOSURE, we get the counter-intuitive idea that war is boring -- that the waiting around in hostile conditions, rather than actual combat, is psychologically damaging. But the soldier is powerless to act. "Nothing happens."

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In MLD, the Duke has almost too much agency, and can abruptly end the life of the Duchess with the slightest perceived reason.

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9) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to WAR PHOTOGRAPHER...

- PICTURES are common to these poems, as well as NARRATIVE again. Every picture tells a story, but who gets to control what story it tells?

What we see in a picture is a representation of reality, but...

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...it's always a partial, unreliable, EDITED representation.

As with the reader in War Photographer who forgets the trauma of war as soon as the drinks arrive, so the addressee in MLD is assumed to have little lasting reaction once the curtain is drawn.

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Both poems might make us investigate the role of the artist: the War Photographer himself, and Fra Pandfol in MLD. Both contribute their part but neither is fully in control of the reality they are paid to represent for others.

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10) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to STORM ON THE ISLAND...

- In both poems there is the idea of the physical environment as a reflection / extension of the speaker, albeit that those environments are opposite.

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In both poems, those environments can be seen as reflecting an attitude towards conflict: the Duke's palace is filled with symbols of his defense against any threats to his (masculine) authority: the dead Duchess, Neptune "taming a sea-horse".

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In SOTI, the Islanders build their houses "squat" -- in constant defensiveness towards the conflict they seem inured to.

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The key difference, I think, is that the Islanders seem to suffer for that defensive attitude. They try to gain an emotional distance from a storm happening "comfortably" elsewhere, but Heaney makes it clear they are also damaged.

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In contrast, we cannot really say that the Duke suffers for his defensive attitude. Any inference that he is lonely or isolated by it is us doing the work, not Browning.

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But it's interesting that both poems have suggest that defensiveness and vigilance has tipped into paranoia -- in the "huge nothing" that the Islanders fear, and the unreliable account of the Duchess' unfaithfulness.

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PS: I'm well aware that SOTI is a complex poem which I've probably oversimplified. Forgive me.

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11) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to BAYONET CHARGE...

- I would compare INNOCENCE and EXPERIENCE. In Bayonet Charge we're inside the mind of a "raw" young soldier; in MLD we hear from an experienced, wiley aristocrat.

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Linguistically there's a stark and illustrative contrast between the two. In BC, the frequent use of metaphor suggests the soldier constantly trying to make sense of what he sees: where description won't do, imagery has to suffice. In contrast, ...

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the Duke is mostly in total control of his language: he uses euphemism ("all smiles stopped") but employs very little intentional symbolism: Neptune and the sea-horses.

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The "bough of cherries" and the "white mule" have symbolic value, but they don't represent a flailing, uncomprehending mind the way the metaphors in BC do.

There's also contrasting attitudes to HISTORY and the grand narratives that put both characters where they are now:

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The Duke's "nine-hundred-year-old name" is a matter of personal pride; it exists like the walls of his castle, immovable and needing to be defended. Compare and contrast the "cold clockwork of the stars and the nations" that the soldier feels almost persecuted by in BC.

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12) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to POPPIES...

This may not be the most analytical comparison, but if you let me wax lyrical for a minute I think there are some nice comparison points between these two poems.

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PROPRIETY: the DUKE's vendetta against his wife comes from a question of what constitutes improper behaviour: her TRIFLING and his refusal to STOOP. But behind the codified behaviours that accompany his title, there is an absence of real human feeling.

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The MOTHER in Poppies, conversely, uses little rituals as a way of repressing overwhelming emotion: making her military son look smart; walking as if in a procession to the war memorial.

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13) If I was comparing MY LAST DUCHESS to TISSUE...

I'd need my head checking?

But seriously...

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- The poems, I think, reflect two different approaches to HISTORY. For the Duke in MLD, the historical narrative behind his identity is a static, simplistic thing. There is his "name", the codes of behaviour that accompany it, the women who are gifted it but never own it.

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- TISSUE, in contrast, argues for the fragility and impermanence of grand narratives and grand structures alike. History, in Dharker's poem, is worn thin and made delicate by its humanity.

A nice point of comparison is the painting in MLD and the Koran in TISSUE.

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Although the Duke insists on how lifelike the portrait is, it's a symbol of life, not death: of humanity subsumed into a static historical narrative, hidden away behind a curtain.

But Dharker's Koran is updated, loved and pored-over. It is living history.

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Dharker -- playing on different meanings of "tissue" -- sees hope in a future where the hubris of grand man-made objects gives way to a more egalitarian world built on shared history. The Duke sees no future; just a repetition of the past.

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