aqa gsce english literature

hii

im in year 11 could someone please mark my essay and give me tips please before I hand it in to my teacher

Compare how the poets present ideas about power in ‘My last duchess’ and ‘Ozymandias’ (30 marks)

In both My last duchess and Ozymandias, the poets present ideas about power by creating protagonists of tyrannical males to highlight the extent of their cruel regimes, suggesting a patriarchal environment when both poems were written. Both poets also portray arrogance that comes alongside this power by focusing on a subject: a painting in my last duchess and a statue in Ozymandias.
In Browning’s ‘My last duchess’ the reader is first introduced to the reoccurring motif of possession by the pronoun of ‘my’. This use of directness conveys the extent of the duke’s ownership over his wife, she is merely his property, left to be unnamed throughout the poem to illustrate her insignificance to him; dispensable. The poem is a form of non-fiction, about Duke Alfonso of Italy during the Renaissance period. ‘Renaissance’ connotes to the concept of rebirth, new ideologies, and discoveries but this did not impact the role of women, making life even harder due to the instability of politics in Italy. Marriage and bearing children were weaponised and it now determined the political power of a family. Browning explores this issue by placing the poem in a dramatic monologue format. The duke dominates the conversation, leaving the reader to view his wife through his eyes, discussing an affair, ‘her looks went everywhere’ disregarding her recount of events and moves onto his next duchess in order to remain stability in society. Browning may use this blurred perspective to shed light on how authorial figures will commit immoral acts, like how the duke alludes to murdering his own wife, ‘I gave commands, then all smiles stopped together’, in order to stay in power.
This impression is similar in Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’, where she demonstrates this corruption of power in the Pharaohs dictatorship, ‘sneer of cold command’, by use of alliteration, Shelley presents the Pharoah’s aggressive and heartless tone of the plosive ‘c’ to demonstrate how by terror and force, he kept his subjects in line. ‘Ozymandias’ is also a non-fiction poem based on Ramesses the second of Egypt, set thousands of years before the Italian Renaissance era, although both themes of patriarchy are prevalent, demonstrating the everlasting, damaging effects of patriarchy on society today. Shelley also emphasises this immorality by dehumanising those under the Pharoah’s rule, ‘stamped on these lifeless things’ linking back to the theme of a hunger to maintain power in both poems. However, both poems display different viewpoints of this attitude towards power. Shelley’s poem is written in first person, through an omniscient speaker to distance himself from the underlying political messages shown in the poem, as Shelley was a radical and a romantic poet who focused on enlightening key issues that were socially acceptable in the Victorian era, creating an undertone of mockery through this in order to criticise those in positions of high-ranking power, how the pharaohs rule undermined everyone beneath him. This is similar to Browning as he is too a romantic poet, displaying a hidden tone of mockery to be recognised by a modern audience by use of the dukes’ erratic thoughts, ‘my gift of a nine-hundred-years old name with anybody’s gift’, to present to the reader, by also using a first-person perspective, his domineering presence, allowing nobody else’s judgement to cloud his, exaggerating this arrogance.

Both poets also present ideas about power by channelling the symbolic nature of images commemorated to powerful figures: the painting of the duchess and Neptune statue by Browning and the Pharoh statue by Shelley. This allows for exploration of dramatic irony surrounding these dictators, who fail to realise that power doesn’t last forever. In Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’, the Pharoah’s statue was built in the Egyptian period with the intent to remind his subjects of the longevity of his power, however this statue is now just described as ‘trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert’. This creates a tone of irony; this statue was once viewed as a symbol of the almighty, with god-like features to tower over everyone beneath but is now purely a block of ‘stone’ with no torso to stand up, shrinking into the sand over time losing its relevance. Shelley uses this phrase of sarcasm to create an allegory that anyone who holds great power will eventually drift away until they are just a grain of sand, wanting the reader to not take for granted the influence of change they can’t create before they to meet the same fate.
This is different in ‘My last duchess’ as Browning uses the painting to objectify his late wife to enhance the control he has over her. At the beginning, the painting is the key focus to illustrate how although the late duchess is no longer present and is now supposedly ‘free’ from the duke, in reality she is still entrapped in his reins. The duke still has her present in his home ‘the curtain I have drawn for you, but I’, she is to be admired but he now has this new sense of freedom to open and close to passersby at his command, which was taken from him before when she ‘rode with round the terrace’, so by use of the painting, patriarchal values are realigned, she is a mere spectacle not a woman with a voice. Browning also emphasizes the duke’s power by creating a cyclical structure at the end with a new imagery of a statue, alike to Ozymandias, to return back to the duke’s power being reinforced by commemorative symbols, but also creates a sombre tone to a modern-day reader: all his money and power will never buy him true love, creating a never-ending cycle of corruption and greed. Rather than the statue being an image of himself, its instead ‘Neptune taming a sea horse’. This creates an allusion to the Roman God of the sea, how his power has formatted into having a god-complex, seeing women as the ‘sea horse’, as a possession to ‘tame’, training them to obey and be a insignificant role in an metaphorical ocean, filled with different species (alike to his art collection).