Comparing My Last Duchess, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and A Woman to Her

Differing Views of Male-female Relationships in Three Poems In the three poems we experience three different views of how male-female relationships should take place. In ‘My Last Duchess’ we experience the view that the male should have the main role in relationships, in ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ we hear of a relationship where the woman is in total control of the man and has all the power. Finally in ‘A Woman to Her Lover’ we read that both men and women should have an equal amount of power and no one should be dominant. In ‘My Last Duchess’ the thoughts of a very possessive and arrogant Duke of Ferrara are shared. He expected his wife to behave in a very conservative manner and wanted her to treat others as inferior. The Duke shows his position of power in the poem by referring to her as; ‘My Last Duchess’. The Duke uses the possessive pronoun ‘My’ which shows that the Duke doesn’t want anyone else to enjoy his wife’s company and he wants her all to himself. This shows that he has power over his wife as he refers to her as a belonging; it also shows that he is arrogant as well as dominant. Furthermore, we can see that the word ‘last’ implies that the Duke had previous wives; it also suggests that she is his duchess no more and so something must have happened to her. As a result of this we get the impression that the Duke simply marries then divorces, or kills, his wife just to receive her dowry, and to get more money. Also, we can see that when the Duke refers to the picture of his wife, he immediately names the well known artist that painted it; â€Å"I call that piece a wonder †¦ ‘Frà   Pandolf’†. Here we see that the Duke shows off the fact that his painting was created by a famous artist, he may ... ...her main type of imagery used is sensual imagery ‘Full beautiful’, ‘sweet moan’, here, Keats allows the reader to build up a picture of the woman which helps the reader to visualise why the knight can be controlled by her. In conclusion, we can see that wherever one individual in the relationship has had more power, whether it has been the man or woman, the relationship has ended in a sad state of affairs. In each poem the relationships are completely different, Browning’s poem views women as being inferior to men, Walsh’s poem views women and men as being equal and Keats views women as being faery’s, having supernatural powers and dominating the man. The main inference among the three poems is that the role of the sexes within a relationship can change, depending upon the characters in the relationships and the amount of power each person does posses.