Womens Behavior in Coleridges Christabel and Brownings My Last Duchess :: My Last Duchess Essays

Womens Behavior in Coleridges Christabel and Brownings My Last Duchess Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Browning wrote in 2 different eras. Coleridges Christabel and Brownings My Last Duchess both deal with womens sexuality. The women of the poems are both presented as having sinned. Christabels own belief that she has sinned is based on how a woman of her time was suppositious to behave. The Duchesss sin is that she violates the code of conduct for a noble wife. Yet, can the modern reader really feel these women did anything wrong? The only sin in these devil poems is that women are supposed to suppress their emotions. The real problem is that they defied the humor that women are not supposed to be as sexually open as men. A woman was only to behave as these two women did towards their husband, and even with him do so behind closed doors. Women were to serve as the Angel in the dramaturgy both of these women defy that image. That type of thinking is characteristic of Romantic and Victorian standards of women. This is especially true of the upper classes to which Christabel and the Duchess belong. Coleridge raises the question What happens to a womans self-image when she defies social expectations? Christabel struggles with this question passim the poem because she defies the standards for how a woman should behave sexually. However, Coleridge is not trying to makes Christabel a heroine for doing so. The poem has more to do with the effect of breaking rules on women. Coleridge depicts Christabel as a young woman discovering herself. She has no taste for convention, as one can see by her wandering around in the woods at night. Apparently, this is not proper behavior, as the poet describes her action in a scolding tone, What makes her in the woods so late, / A furlong from the castle gate? (Coleridge 25-26). The reader is given the idea from the beginning that Christabel is