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

Differing Views of Male-female Relationships in Three PoemsIn the three poems we experience three different views of howmale-female kinds should commence place. In My Last Duchess weexperience the view that the male should get the main role inrelationships, in La Belle Dame Sans Merci we hear of a relationshipwhere 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 andwomen should have an equal amount of power and no one should bedominant.In My Last Duchess the thoughts of a very possessive and arrogantDuke of Ferrara are shared. He anticipate his married woman to behave in a veryconservative manner and wanted her to treat others as inferior.The Duke shows his position of power in the poem by referring to heras My Last Duchess. The Duke uses the possessive pronoun My whichshows that the Duke doesnt want anyone else to enjoy his wifescompany and he wants her all to himself. This shows that he has powerover his wife as he refers to her as a belonging it also shows thathe is arrogant as well as dominant. Furthermore, we can see that theword expire implies that the Duke had previous wives it also suggeststhat she is his duchess no more and so something must have happened toher. As a result of this we get the impression that the Duke simplymarries 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 calico it I callthat piece a wonder Fr Pandolf. Here we see that the Duke showsoff 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 ofthe woman which helps the reader to visualise why the knight can becontrolled by her.In conclusion, we can see that wherever one someone in therelationship has had more p ower, whether it has been the man or woman,the relationship has ended in a sad state of affairs. In apiece poem therelationships are completely different, Brownings poem views women as universe inferior to men, Walshs poem views women and men as being equaland Keats views women as being faerys, having supernatural powers anddominating the man. The main inference among the three poems is thatthe role of the sexes within a relationship can change, depending uponthe characters in the relationships and the amount of power eachperson does posses.