A Summation

Throughout the course of the semester I have learned a lot about both Elizabeth and Robert Browning but I found that I took a particular liking to Robert’s work. One the first piece’s by Robert Browning that our class studied was My Last Duchess and this was the first time I had encountered a dramatic monologue or at least the first time that I was aware that I was reading a dramatic monologue. The more we analyzed Robert’s dramatic monologues the more intrigued by them I came.  I didn’t know it with the first few dramatic monologues we analyzed but the way that Robert constructed his monologues was intentional and it was meant to create the conflict I was having in my own thoughts.

            It wasn’t until we read a critical essay by Robert Langbuam that I could understand how and why I was having conflicts in my thoughts of the monologues speaker as I read. In Langbuam’s essay he elaborated on Robert’s construction of his speaker and listener through the form of a dramatic monologue. It was then that I learned about sympathy vs. judgment. The idea of sympathy vs. judgment as Langbuam purposed in his essay is that the internal conflicts the reader of one of Robert’s dramatic monologues is undergoing about the speaker is a result of that Robert intended. Robert knew that his readers would struggle going back and forth with having sympathy for the speaker and also judging them.

            Langbuam said that the speaker of many of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues took on a similar character and that that character was the cause of the readers struggle between sympathy and judgment. Robert Browning was extremely masterful at creating these ominous, cunning, and mysterious speakers that would always craft the intended effect on the reader. The speakers Robert created always seemed dominate and powerful to the reader as they were the only ones to speak and they were extraordinarily persuasive at times due to their questionable sanity. The speaker’s almost always had an obsessive manner to them whatever it was that they wanted or thought was that they could talk about. This insane obsession leads readers into siding with the speakers ideology no matter how obscene it maybe. Eventually, though the readers own morals would come into play and an understanding that the speaker’s ideology was often not a moral one and thus the conflict arises within the readers thoughts.

            Robert Browning’s ability to create the sympathy versus judgment conflict through the meticulous development of the character of the speaker fascinates me. Even having obtained knowledge of intention of the conflict I still can read one of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues and catch myself time and time again sympathizing with and then judging the speaker that Robert crafted.

            This course has opened my eyes to a form of writing that I had not yet experienced and I don’t think I would have liked to come across it any other way than through Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues!