Carol Ann Duffy and Robert Browning presents jealousy at the core of their poems, ‘Medusa’ and ‘The Laboratory’. Duffy explores the jealousy felt by Medusa as she uses it to foster her growing power while Browning develops the notion of jealousy as one that is used to exact revenge over those who who have wronged the speaker. Both poems are presented in the form of dramatic monologues that describe how the women use their jealousy to ensure that their partners stay with them. Medusa uses her own power and strength to instill fear into her partner whereas the woman in ‘The Laboratory’ uses meticulous planning in preparing the poison that will kill the person who took her partner away from her.
Duffy presents jealousy as a woman in the form
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The first form of power which is reflected is seen through the ‘bullet tears in her eyes’. The word ‘bullet’ expresses the pain and anger Medusa had been through and presents the hatred she had towards her husband. Duffy shows the reader that although Medusa was emotionally scarred, jealousy has turned her tears into a weapon. This can be inferred, as a bullet comes out from a lethal weapon, a gun. Thus Duffy symbolises that her eyes shoots death at people when she looks at them. Duffy uses imagery by expressing the tears as a hard and cold object of death. This connotes that Medusa lacks all emotions but jealousy as it is the only emotion she uses to develop her strength. Her strength is further expressed when she poses the rhetorical question ‘Are you terrified?’, to which she responds “Be terrified.” This signifies how jealousy has provided her with immeasurable power that makes her a terrifying force. Her power continues to grow as she is revealed to be able to turn any animal - regardless of its size - into stone. Creatures as tiny as ‘a buzzing bee’ as well as larger animals like ‘a snuffling pig’ are unable to withstand her deathly glance as her power turns them into mere dust. The enjambment that is prevalent throughout the poem connotes the idea of how her jealousy is flowing without any punctuation. As she loses control over her jealousy, Medusa is …show more content…
This is shown when she goes to the ‘devil's-smithy’ to get the poison which will kill her rivals. The ‘devil's-smithy’ is a satanic blacksmith who is seen as the maker of a weapon - in this case, the poison. Her jealousy drives her to view the poison as something which is wonderful and exquisite. The ingredients used are regarded as ‘gold oozings’, ‘exquisite blue’ and ‘sure to taste sweetly.’ The word ‘gold’ connotes that the woman looks upon the ingredients which are used to make the poison as very precious objects. The adjective ‘exquisite’ implies that the poison appears to look extremely appealing. Additionally it is also regarded as something that would taste sweet, indicating that the poison produced is a substance that would appeal to all senses. Driven by her jealousy, the speaker is convinced that the weapon which she will be using in her plot for revenge would be very effective as it has been created from the best of
The loss of a loved one is perhaps the most difficult experience that humans ever come up against. The poem Porphyria’s Lover, written by Robert Browning, adds a sense of irony to this. At the most superficial layer, the speaker’s in both Porphyria’s Lover and Neutral Tones, written by Thomas hardy, both deal with loss. The tones in Neutral Tones seem to be indifferent, or Neutral. Porphyria’s Lover speaker ends up murdering his beloved at the end the poem. While this isn’t the case with the speaker in Neutral Tones, the two speakers are much more similar than we might think. The speaker in Neutral Tones doesn’t outright murder his lover, but there is a considerable amount of disdain and contempt towards his supposed lover. The speaker in Porphyria’s Lover is quite obviously a disturbed man, the sinister nature of the speaker in Neutral Tones, however, is not as clear. Delving further into this idea, I will also discuss other obscure parallels throughout the two poems.
In the poem “Havisham”, Carol Ann Duffy presents the subject as an old, embittered woman with “ropes on the back of her hands”. In “The Laboratory” by Robert Browning the subject is a strong and determined, but very jealous and embittered, young woman. Both poems are written in the first person in the form of a dramatic monologue.
Contemporary novels have imposed upon the love tribulations of women, throughout the exploration of genre and the romantic quest. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their eyes were watching God (1978) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (2000) interplay on the various tribulations of women, throughout the conventions of the romantic quest and the search for identity. The protagonists of both texts are women and experience tribulations of their own, however, unique from the conventional romantic novels of their predecessors. Such tribulations include the submission of women and the male desire for dominance when they explore the romantic quest and furthermore, the inner struggles of women. Both texts display graphic imagery of the women’s inner experiences through confronting and engaging literary techniques, which enhance the audiences’ reading experience. Hurston’s reconstructions of the genre are demonstrated through a Southern context, which is the exploration of womanhood and innocence. Whilst Woolf’s interpretation of the romantic quest is shown through modernity and an intimate connection with the persona Clarissa Dalloway, within a patriarchal society.
look at but he feels as if the Duchess takes him for granted and she
In each of the poems, both Medusa and the Duke of Ferrara represent the fickleness of power and how it fluctuates in daily life. Duffy’s manipulation of a paradox within ‘Medusa’ displays the extent to which power plays a part in the Greek myth of Medusa. The extended metaphor of Medusa with “filthy snakes” that “hissed and
As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist. Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be. She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170). However, in a time
Both poems present voice in the form of a 1st person narrative, allowing the reader to see the point of view (opinions and thoughts) of the narrator. The poem ‘Medusa’ calls out directly to the ‘you’, the lover; ‘and here you come’. LGS on the other hand speaks out to the men and their desperation, how they are shallow creatures; ‘men were my dolphins’. One thing the poems have in common is found in the first word of the first verse, LGS uses; ‘men’ and ‘Medusa uses ‘a suspicion’. The effect of this is that the poems straight into the subject, with Duffy’s use of ‘suspicion’ inferring that the speaker is paranoid. Looking at the final stanza in LGS the voice has changed from active to passive, the
Carol Anne Duffy presents love and romance in a unique way that differentiates valentine from any other love poem. Throughout this poem carol expresses love though the original metaphor of an onion. This essay analyses how she does this so effectively and how she presents a range of ideas about love and romance.
The Greek mythology presents Medusa as a monster, with the power to turn anyone who looks into her eyes to stone and with snakes that replicate her hair. But, in the poem by Mary Sarton “The Muse As Medusa” we see an incomparable image of Medusa to the Greek mythology. In this poem Medusa helps the speaker through a difficult time. The speaker depicts herself through her poem as someone who is lost, sad and defeated by the world around her. The speaker sees herself in Medusa, where they are both misinterpreted by the world around them. Medusa being powerful is able to cope with the world's misconception of her and shows the speaker how that's possible. The speaker takes into account how the world is the one that misinterpreted them and
In the short allegory “The Birthmark”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a newly-wed couple becomes consumed by the existence of a small birthmark on the wife’s face. When the wife, Georgiana, allows her husband Aylmer, a scientist, to remove the birthmark, both realize that Georgiana will inevitably sacrifice her life for the sake of its removal. As the story progresses, so does the confliction of the newlyweds as they realize exactly what the birthmark symbolized to and for each other. Hawthorne’s hallmark use of symbolism also provides a ‘perfect’ glimpse into the mindset of two themes of psychological conflictions: perfectionism and codependency. Hawthorne seems to share this story as a possible moral of the hidden pathos we place upon the ones we love, and the invisible marks or standards we place upon ourselves for the ones we love.
The finest woks of Browning endeavor to explain the mechanics of human psychology. The motions of love, hate, passion, instinct, violence, desire, poverty, violence, and sex and sensuousness are raised from the dead in his poetry with a striking virility and some are even introduced with a remarkable brilliance.
In the play, Othello, jealousy and envy are prominent themes from the beginning to the end. As the play starts to unwind, you can see jealousy is the major cause of all the drama in the play. Jealousy or envy is a feeling of discontented or resentful longing by someone else’s possessions , qualities or luck. Iago becomes engulfed by jealousy and it causes him to corrupt Othello. They are two men that cause similar crimes but we sympathize for Othello and hate Iago because they have different attitudes towards their crime.
Medusa was a victim and not a villan. Medusa was not born an ugly, cruel lady with snakes as hair and eyes that turned people into stone, she was cursed. Even worse, Medusa was not punished for her own wrong doing. Medusa’s life was completely changed after something horrific happened to her. In this story, Medusa is not the villian, nor the monster many see her as today. Medusa was a girl who was missunderstood.
My topic is jealousy in the play Othello. Shakespeare wrote this play as a focus on the dangers of jealousy. It shows how jealousy can be kept going by nothing more than circumstantial evidence and how it can destroy people’s lives. In Othello jealousy appears in many ways, from sexual suspicion to professional competition, but as in all cases it is destructive. Shakespeare proves that jealousy is inherently unreasonable in this play. He proves it is founded in the psychological issues of the jealous person, not the behavior of the one who prompts the jealous feelings.
At first glance, Rappaccini’s Daughter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a tragic love story that ends in the death of one man’s true love and another man’s daughter. But underneath, there is a dark undercurrent that is characteristic of the Gothic Romantic strain. This is not so much a story of love and loss as it is of two scientists desire to come out on top and conquer all who try to stop them. It is a tale of man’s struggle to control nature and gain knowledge beyond that which we are supposed to have. It highlights a man who seeks to have a deep understanding of Nature’s secrets. It is Rappiccini’s desire for this knowledge that causes a rivalry with another scientist. In the end, his obsession is what eventually takes everything he loved away from him in a fashion characteristic of the Gothic Romantic strain.