Female Voice and Female Power in Robert Browning’s Dramatic Monologues

Abstract

From the perspective of narrative voice in female narratology, this paper first explores the silenced women, who lose right to voice, and the female narrators, who lose control over voice in Robert Browning's dramatic monologues. However, despite their inferiority in voice, which is what modern feminists fight to obtain, both those silenced female characters and female narrators represent a small and precious victory for female power. Silenced women show the power to make men fear losing their dominance. The female narrators, on the other hand, demonstrate complete adaptation to the maledominated society by unknowingly using male privilege for their own purposes. By studying the female voice in Browning's work and further analyzing texts, we can learn certain limitations of his time, his delicate observation of and unique insights into gender power relations, and probably his hope for females to break the established ethic.