Tuesday, February 26, 2019
How Robert Browning Portray’s Mood in ‘the Laboratory’.
The Laboratory Essay The subtitle to Robert Brownings rime The Laboratory, Ancien Regime, tells us that it is set in France before the revolution, when the feat of women embittering love rivals was very common. The poem is a dramatic monologue. The cashier appears to be a charr, a f bet which is not apparent in the opening stanza, barely becomes so as the poem develops. In the scratch line stanza, the fibber is putting on a mask and watching the person in the science laboratory through a haze of smoke thro these airheaded smokes curling whitely.She shows her naivety whilst putting on the mask, as she thinks she is protecting herself, and doesnt think it shadow harm her. This shows us that she doesnt think of the consequences of her actions. The fibber refers to the laboratory as this devils-smithy, which is the first sign that something sinister is going on. The lowest line of this stanza leaves us in no doubt of this, as the charwoman asks, Which is the poison to poi son her, prithee? The repetition of poison emphasises its importance.The opening language of the second stanza, He is with her, suggests that the cashier has asked for poison to be concocted because she is jealous. It would seem that her lover has deserted her for some other woman. She says that they think she is crying and has gone to pray in the drear / dispatch church. The couple, meanwhile, are making fun of her, stressed by the repetition of laugh in line 7. The stanza closes with the brief phrase I am here, emphasising the setting of the laboratory which is in such sharp contrast to the church.The phrase Grind away at the start of the third stanza shows the womans eagerness for the chemist to make the poison. Browning brings the exposition alive by using alliteration in the phrases moisten and mash and whip at thy powder. The narrator is not in a hurry and says she would rather watch the concocting of the poison than be dancing at the Kings court. In the quartern stanz a the narrator comments on the ingredients of the poison.The chemist is mixing it with a pestle and mortar, and the woman names the gum from a tree as florid oozings, giving the whim that it is both beautiful and valu fitted. She then looks at a blue tranquil in a soft phial, finding the colour exquisite. She imagines that it will prove sweet because of its beautiful appearance and is surprised that it is a poison. Stanza five begins with the narrator wishing she possessed all the ingredients, which she refers to as treasures. Browning uses ersonification to describe them as a wild crowd, and the woman considers them as pleasures, a sinister place to poisonous substances. The use of the adjective invisible means that just a precise amount would be required. The narrator delights in the thought of being able to carry pure death in any one of a tilt of small accessories, such as an earring or a fan-mount. In the sixth stanza the narrator turns her thoughts to how easy it will be at court to feed a mere lozenge, same(p) a sweet, that will annihilate a woman in just half an hour.She names two women in this stanza, Pauline and Elise, and it is not clear if one of them is the current target of her jealousy and desire to murder. She delights at the thought of Elise dying, and Browning uses enjambment to create the be given her head / And her breast and her arms and her hands, perhaps because she is jealous of Elises beauty. The seventh stanza opens with the fast exclamation Quick and the narrator is now excited as the poison is arrive at. She then reveals her disappointment, however, as its colour is grim, unlike the blue liquid in the phial.She hoped that it would make her intended victims drink look so appetising that she would be encouraged to drink it. In the eighth stanza she is concerned about how comminuted the amount of poison is What a drop She says that the other woman is good bigger than her, and thinks that she ensnared or caught the ma n in her trap because of her size. The narrator is not convinced that the drop of poison will be fatal this never will free / The soul from those masculine eyes. It will not be enough to stop the victims pulse, which the narrator describes as magnificent.In the ninth stanza the narrator recounts, in lines using enjambment, how she had gazed at the other woman the previous evening when her ex-lover was with verbalise to her. She had hoped that by staring at her she would fall shrivelled. This obviously did not happen, barely the narrator knows that the poison will do its work. Stanza ten has slightly shorter lines than the others, and the narrator addresses the chemist directly. She knows that the poison will act quickly, but she does not exigency her victim to have an easy death Not that I compact you spare her the distract.Browning uses alliteration in a cluster of three to describe how the narrator motives the other woman to suffer the effects of the poison, in the phrase Br and, burn up, bite. The stanza ends with the narrator commenting that her ex-lover will always have the memory of the pain on the dying womans face, and she appears to relish this thought. The narrator asks the chemist if the poison is ready at the start of the eleventh stanza. She asks him to remove her mask and not to be morose, or gloomy.The poison will be lethal for her victim, and she does not want the mask to stop her having a good look at it. She describes it with the riming phrase a delicate droplet, and alliteration appears again as she comments my strong fortunes fee meaning that it has cost her everything she owns. In the closing line of the stanza, she wonders if she herself can be harmed by the poison, considering the effect it will have on her victim. The twelfth and final stanza begins with the narrator once again showing how much the poison is costing her.She tells the chemist Now take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, and the alliteration in the phrase gor ge gold adds emphasis. She shows her gratitude by telling the chemist, whom she addresses as old man, that he may kiss her on her lips if he would like to. She asks him, however, to brush this dust off her, referring to traces of poison, as she is afraid it will harm her besides lest horror it brings. The poem ends as she proclaims that she will dance at the Kings a triumphant announcement.Whether or not her victim dies from ingesting the poison, we do not know, but she shows no remorse and is obviously determined to go through with her murderous plan. Browning has given the lines of poetry an upbeat, fast-paced rhythm that convey the womans lighting at the idea of poisoning her victim. Browning has created a character who is solely ruthless and eaten up by jealousy, determined to carry out an act of revenge that will prove fatal to another woman, like wench Macbeths ruthless ambition to become queen, despite the fact that she has to kill people to get to it.
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