Summary and analysis of Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor's "The Pragmatics of Silence, and the Figuration of the Reader in Browning's Dramatic Monologues"

In this blog, I will be summarizing and analyzing an essay : “The Pragmatics of Silence, and the Figuration of the reader in Browning’s Dramatic Monologues” by Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor who is professor at the Pennsylvania State University.

 

Summary  

In her essay, Wagner-Lawlor analyses the silence and its effect in Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues. She argues that because of the speaker’s behavior the listener has to be a silent figure. Indeed, the speaker seems to be superior to the auditor. He can be an aggressive and narcissistic character and the listener seems to have no choice but listening to him. But this silent from the listener can lead to this ambiguity : is his silence a kind of approval or is it the opposite ? In a second part, Wagner-Lawlor argues that the reader must be set apart from the listener. According to her, the reader is not submitted to the speaker of the dramatic monologue and he has more freedom. Moreover, the meaning of the silence can be interpreted differently. The listener’s silence can be perceived as an agreement whereas the reader’s silence can be interpreted as a disagreement.

 

Analysis

I agree with Wagner-Lawlor’s idea concerning the meaning of the auditor’s silence. “The aggressive narcissism of the speaker, who does not let the auditor speak, sets up a violation of “access rights” to discourse” wrote Wagner-Lawlor. Indeed, the listener is deprived of his right to respond to the speaker and that could explain his silence. If it is true that the speaker puts himself in the foreground of his monologue, the silence of the auditor does not necessarily means that he agrees with him. If we can interpret it in this way as readers, we can also interpret it differently. The silence does not always means approval even from a submitted character.

In her essay, Wagner-Lawlor also wrote : “ Whereas the auditor’s silence may represent an involuntary consensus, the silence of the actual reader, who is forced to step out of the place of the noninterpretive auditor, may signify the opposite”. I agree that the reader may be opposed to the speaker. As we can read in Robert Langbaum’s essay “The Dramatic Monologue: Sympathy versus Judgment”, the reader is shared between sympathy toward the speaker of the dramatic monologue and moral concerns. But the reader tends to be more sympathetic than ready to condemn the speaker’s action. I believe that even if the reader, through his silence, has more freedom to express his opposition to the speaker, it must not be necessarily interpreted in this way.

Robert Browning's life

Robert Browning was born in 1812 at Camberwell, Surrey, England. His father was a bank clerk and thanks to his collection of books, Robert Browning had an unlimited access to many works. He began to write early and learned different languages such as Latin, Greek and French. In 1833, he published his first major work, Pauline, anonymously.

In 1844, he read Elizabeth Barrett's poems and began to correspond with her. He met her a few months after. They eloped and got married in 1846. Robert Browning moved with her in Florence, Italy, and they had a son, Robert Wideman Browning. There, he published in 1849 his Collected Poems and Men and Women in 1855.

After the death of his wife in 1861, Robert Browning moved to London with his son. He published Dramatis Personae in 1864 and The Ring and the Book. He is notably remembered for his use of the dramatic monologue and is often compared to Alfred Lord Tennyson, even if their styles are different.
Robert Browning died in 1889 in Venice and was burried at Westminster Abbey.

Elizabeth Barret Browning's life

Elizabeth Barrett was an English Romantic poet. Born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, she was the oldest of twelve children. Her family was from Jamaïca, where her father had plantations and she was the first to be born in England. She spent her childhood in Hope End, at Ledbury, Herefordshire. She was educated at home and began to write very early. Elizabeth did not have a good health. She developed a lung aliment and also suffered a spinal injury while she was riding a pony at the age of fifteen. Her health got worse after the tragic death of her brother Andrew ("Bro") in 1840 while they were at Torquay, Devonshire.
 
Elizabeth began to write early. She taught herself Hebrew and was also interested in Greek studies. In 1826, she anonymously published her collection An Essay on Mind and Other Poems. She also published her translation of Prometheus Bound in 1833. In 1844, she published her collection of Poems. They gained the attention of the poet Robert Browning and he wrote her a letter. They exchanged letters during the next twenty months and finally became engaged in 1845.But their romance was opposed by her father, who did not want his children to marry, and they eloped in 1846 to settle in Florence, Italy. Elizabeth bore a son, Robert Wideman Browning.

In 1850, her Sonnets from the Portuguese were published. They were dedicated to her husband. In Casa Guidi Windows and Poems before Congress, Elizabeth expressed her sympathy for the Italian stuggle for the unification of Italy. She was very interested in social justice. Her poem "A Curse For A Nation" was published in a Bostonian abolitionist journal. In 1857, she published her novel Aurora Leigh, which can be called as semi-autobiographical.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Florence in 1861. She is remembered as one of the greatest poets England has ever had.