Compare the ways poets show how relationships can affect people in ‘Les Grands Seigneurs’ and ‘My Last Duchess’
In both ‘Les Grands Seigneurs’ (‘LGS’) and ‘My Last Duchess’ (‘MLD’) a range of techniques are used to portray the desire for dominance, corruption and how relationships can deeply affect one’s emotions. In ‘LGS’ a woman reflects on her relationship with men and how their attitude towards her changes before and after she gets married whereas ‘MLD’ is about a male’s perspective on marriage and how loyalty and affection towards each other is vital.
The characters in both ‘MLD’ and ‘LGS’ are portrayed to show some sort of resentment to their lovers. In ‘LGS’ the narrator can be seen as showing hatred towards her husband: she was once respected by men as she describes herself as ‘their queen’ and she ‘sat enthroned before them’ which shows how she was thought of as a goddess by men. However at the la volta after she is ‘wedded’ she is treated as ‘a toy, a plaything, little woman’, this is sharp contrast from earlier in the poem as she who was once treated like a queen is now a ‘little woman’ as if she has no significance and is treated as an object of entertainment. This can be seen as the cause of her attitude towards love and negative view of men as the use of ‘hurdy gurdy monkey men’ shows how she thinks of men as artificial and people who have no depth or true emotion towards their love.
In ‘MLD’ resentment is portrayed as the narrator is critical of his wife as he describes her as ‘too easily impressed’ and so this causes him to envy those who she is friendly too as it can be interpreted that he believes his wife should show more affection and kindness towards him instead of others as ‘if she ranked’ others the same as him. The narrators resentment is clearly shown when he orders her death as he ‘gave commands’ so ‘all smiles stopped together.’ And so