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Despite the close similarity between Shelley’s The Cenci and Browning’s The Ring and the Book, these two works have seldom been compared or analyzed together. These two works share many points of similarity: both were written in Italy when Shelley and Browning resided there, and they are based on actual murder cases that occurred in Rome and deal with the deaths of two young women, Beatrice and Pompilia respectively. However, the most striking common feature of these two works is that both Beatrice and Pompilia are victims of oppressive patriarchal ideologies that formed the dominant social structure of contemporary Roman society. In addition, through these Roman murder stories, both Shelley and Browning direct the attention of readers to the Woman Questions of their contemporary English society. The patriarchal power that murders Beatrice and Pompilia is supported by tradition, customs, law and various institutions. Among these, religion plays by far the most important role in supporting this patriarchism. Despite the strong oppressive power of patriarchism, however, both Beatrice and Pompilia resist and try to break the oppressive social structure that is formed by patriarchism and other repressive social powers, even though they are ultimately killed by it.