A Freudian Psychoanalytic Study of the Protagonists in Robert Browning’s Poems My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover

Abstract

This paper explores the Freudian psychoanalytic perspective of the psychological aspects of male characters in Porphyria’s Lover (1836) and My Last Duchess (1842) by Robert Browning. These poems address obsession, possessiveness, narcissism, and moral deviance and how unconscious desires rule over reason and consequential morality. The obsessive obsession of the speaker in Porphyria Lover dominates over the id and superego, and the ego plays the role of a rationalizing mechanism, leading to the murder of Porphyria. In My Last Duchess, the Duke is subjectively dominant over the behavior of his wife and its legacy by acting with narcissistic pride and being hypersensitive to perceived disrespect. This research study reveals that there are structural parallels in obsession, moral disengagement, and ego rationalization through textual analysis of narrative voice, symbolism, imagery, and dramatic monologue technique. The poetry of Browning brings out the way in which social and cultural pressures of the Victorian world combine with personal weaknesses to create devastating actions. These monologues are placed by the research as early psychological case studies that provide insight to human desire, control, and ethical collapse.