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Compare "My Last Duchess" by Browning and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by Eliot.
Quick answer:
"My Last Duchess" is spoken in the first person by the Duke of Ferrara, a haughty Renaissance aristocrat with nine-hundred years of patrician lineage. He is presumably either in his private art gallery or on the piano nobile of his palazzo, proudly pointing to the objects of beauty he has collected to express his personality, power, and wealth. As the poem progresses, it becomes clear that the Duke's pride in his position comes very close to insanity. He was so possessive of his wife, so jealous of her smiles that he eventually had her murdered, though he is unable to explain exactly what her crime was. He is now negotiating for a new bride. "The Love Song of J."My Last Duchess" is spoken in the first person by the Duke of Ferrara, a haughty Renaissance aristocrat with nine-hundred years of patrician lineage. He is presumably either in his private art gallery or on the piano nobile of his palazzo, proudly pointing to the objects of beauty he has collected to express his personality, power, and wealth. As the poem progresses, it becomes clear that the Duke's pride in his position comes very close to insanity. He was so possessive of his wife, so jealous of her smiles that he eventually had her murdered, though he is unable to explain exactly what her crime was. He is now negotiating for a new bride.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is also a piece of first person narration. The character of the narrator, however, is quite different—he is a timid middle-class gentleman. The characterization is not quite...
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consistent (Ezra Pound famously complained to Eliot about this), as, in the section that begins "No! I am not Prince Hamlet," the timid little man changes into a garrulous courtier something like Shakespeare's Polonius. In either case, however, he is a minor character on the stage of life, the sort of man the Duke would dismiss as "some officious fool." Prufrock has always been timid with women, unlike the Duke, though they share an inability to express themselves.
The following repeated lines from "Prufrock" present a telling point of comparison:
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
Both poems qualify as dramatic monologues, because they both have speakers who are different from the poets themselves and who directly address another person. Neither receives a response that is recorded in the poem itself—they are both sort of one-way conversations, if you will, where only one party is seen to speak—and both narrators speak in the first-person voice regarding their thoughts and feelings. The speakers describe their emotions, revealing their characters through their emotional expression. Browning's poem also has an element of surprise, as we are certainly not expecting him to announce that he arranged for the murder of his last duchess because she wasn't appreciative enough of his "gifts." Eliot's poem does not rely on surprise but rather on a slow build-up of tension as the narrator conjures startling images, repeats lines, and speculates about others' responses to him, leading up to a question that he never asks. In one sense, then, both poems rely on irony: the duke's unexpected admission surprises us as does Prufrock's ultimate inability to ask the question he's been building to throughout the text.
Both of these poems also deal with male/female relationships. The duke in Browning's poem demonstrates a dominant attitude over women. He is dissatisfied with his duchess because she is a flirt, and because she gives attention to many men, and doesn't reserve all her attention for him. It "was not her husband's presence only" that caused her to blush with joy. The duke was too controlling to allow that - she was his property and must behave as he instructs. But she would not be "lessoned" as he felt she should. Browning demonstrates the subservience of women in his poem.
Eliot, however, gives women the edge. For poor Prufrock, women have the power. They are able to entice and to scare him. They are able to direct the course of a relationship. Prufrock wishes to push a relationship forward, but he hesitates - he is scared to be brushed aside by a women who would say "that is not what I meant at all." There is an indirect suggestion here that these women are, at the very least friendly, at the most flirtatious. However, where as Browning's duke looks to control that, Eliot's man is intimidated by it. Women have moved up in society by the time of Eliot's composition.