Imagine a girl who is prettier, smarter, and more charming than you. She can talk to other people easily, be the favourite child, and is even more feminine than you. Arrgh! Isn’t it irritating? Don’t you want to push them, strangle them, or even kill them? Whoa, that elevated quickly, didn’t it? Without even knowing ourselves, jealousy can steer us into taking immoral decisions, just so we can satisfy our own insecurities.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads only lives once.” You’re living the feelings and emotions of the main character, as you read the book, or poem. The more books you read, the more lives you live.
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… I find myself fully immersed in The Laboratory, by Robert Browning. In seconds, I’m experiencing the life of a broken-hearted mistress, who wants to poison the girl she is jealous of. I asked myself.
Do I really want to be like her?
Well, no.
Sometimes, our passion overrides the good in us.
But, there’s always that one “problem” in the way.
Blurred with selfishness, we try to get rid of it by the swords of force and cruelty.
What amazes me even to this day, is that Robert Browning implicity conveys the concept that death can be right under our noses!
Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
Pound at thy powder,- I am not in haste!
If we look at the first line, you can tell the presence of imperative tone is very chilling. The commands of “grinding” and “mashing” up a paste suggest that she is so eager to use a fatal poison that will get rid of the other desirable and attractive woman. She’s literally savouring the preparations of a murder!
Do you have any idea how inhumane it is to make another person suffer, just because you’re suffering? If I were her, I wouldn’t be watching an alchemist “pound thy powder”, and “observe thy strange things” to kill someone who lives in my dreams!
“Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn’t change the heart of others-- it only changes yours”. They say that you can’t flatten a scrunched up paper again, because it’s permanent.
Would you push someone down, just so you can climb up to the summit? That’s just unacceptable.
Now, onto my second point.
To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
A signent, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!”
Did you realise something?
Pure death is as something that can be hidden in other objects, like accessories. Usually, these items are carried, or owned by upper class woman.
An upper-class woman... like her ex’s fiance?…
If an upper-class woman is carrying around these things with death, then something fishy is going on...
That’s right, Robert Browning uses metonymy, a technique which is used to refer the poison to pure death! The mistress believes that if the poison was somehow carefully integrated with the other woman’s “earrings, or signents”, then she’s walking to her own pathway of death.
Using physical objects, and referring it to the stages of life is pretty daunting, especially when there’s a jealous woman on the loose.
“Comparison is a very foolish attitude, because each person is unique and incomparable. Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears.” We are all like stars, but we shouldn’t cloud ourselves with darkness, or else, we stop shining. I don’t want anyone in here to loose the good in them because they are jealous. Not only that, the concept of death being hidden still makes me question my existence. I mean, live your life, and don’t be so negative on yourself! That’s what I learnt from The Laboratory.
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