An Analysis of My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
“My Last Duchess” is written as a dramatic monologue, which is a poem that is read as if on stage, talking to an audience or character in a play. This method of writing has been used because the poem wants to give one perspective, the Duke’s, in an effective manner. By using this technique, Browning is also silencing the antagonist, the
Duchess, and becoming the protagonist. The rhyming scheme consists of rhyming couplets, which give the poem a sense of order, and make the speaker, the Duke in this case, seem well educated and in control of their emotions and actions.
These methods of writing help show the character of the protagonist and the way he viewed the traditions during
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The Marxist view interprets the poem as if the Duke thinks of everything as his object, and the feminist viewpoint makes the Duke look as if he doesn’t treat the Duchess as he should. The Duke’s personality is revealed by different aspects in the poem, for example the rhyming scheme, rhyming couplets, makes the poem flow more easily, which leaves no gaps for interruption. This shows the
Duke’s love of being the centre of attention and being in control.
The Duke also shows this keenness of control when he says the painting is of “my last Duchess”, showing he treated her as just another article in his collection of art. The Duke also mentions Frà Pandolph in his conversation with the count’s servant, showing he is proud of the painting he has of the Duchess and he is showing off about having a great artist to paint this picture that he calls “a wonder”.
However, when he says he calls “That piece a wonder, now”, he says it as if he didn’t appreciate the Duchess until she was dead. The Duke is also purveyed as a very clever, well educated person, as he has the ability to speak very poetically, but he does pretend to be inarticulate at times to let the reader/listener fill in the gaps, for
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He is also very worried about the behaviour of the Duchess because he thinks that it will make him look bad to the rest of the Victorian high society, this is because the women of Victorian times were expected to be an “Angel in the House”, and to be the very symbol of virginity and if they were not, they were automatically classed as a whore.
The feminist view on this poem is that the Duke is silencing the
Duchess by talking in a monologue and not letting people hear the
Duchess’ opinion. The poem is highly criticizing the role of women in the Victorian times. The Duke basically disapproves of the way the
Duchess acted around other men because the women of the household were supposed to be the pinnacle of virginity and innocence during these times. However, the Duke did not like the uniqueness and independence the Duchess had, for example,
Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her, but who passed without
Much the same smile?
This indicates the way that the Duchess acted towards other men, and the Duke did not like it because she treated them the same as
Harte showed Duchess’s emotional side of her. Her “...pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears...” (Harte, 2) shows the Duchess as emotional, a drama queen, spontaneous and impulsive. This was before she changed, though. “The Duchess, previously a selfish and solitary character, does all she can to comfort and console the fearful Piney.” (Moss and Wilson, 4) Duchess's character reveals that people can switch their habits no matter what the circumstances
She questions “why should I be my aunt / or me, or anyone?” (75-76), perhaps highlighting the notion that women were not as likely to be seen as an induvial at this time in history. Additionally, she questions, almost rhetorically so, if “those awful hanging breasts -- / held us all together / or made us all just one?” (81-83). This conveys the questions of what it means to be a woman: are we simply similar because of “awful hanging breasts” as the speaker of the poem questions, or are we held together by something else, and what is society’s perception on this? It is also interesting to note Bishop’s use of parenthesis around the line “I could read” (15). It may function as an aside for the reader to realize that the six year old girl can in fact read, but also might function as a wink to the misconstrued notion throughout history that women were less educated and didn’t
know how much he loved her, by buying her beautiful dresses and jewelry. He wanted to
...nche in a way that he has been unable to throughout the play so far, and by doing this, he is also cancelling out her aristocratic upbringing.
Compare and contrast what the poems My Last Duchess and The Laboratory are saying about human relationships. Compare and contrast what the poems ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Laboratory’ are saying about human relationships and how the poet makes the poems interesting. The laboratory is about a woman wanting to poison/ kill her rivals so she can be the kings mistress. My Last Duchess is about a man describing his last Duchess, and how the painter flirted with her, he describes her features that show the painter was flirting with her. Both ‘The Laboratory’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ are of anger and resentment, in ‘The Laboratory’ it is the discarded mistress who is jealous about other women flirting and dancing with the King, and in ‘My Last Duchess’ it is of the Duke, and he is showing dis-pleasure in the way the his last Duchess conducted herself with other men.
The topic of the poem in My Last Duchess is infact a painting, had it
It goes on to speak about sympathy in general and how Browning “delighted in making a case for the apparently immoral position”, how he found dramatic monologues the best form to do so, and how he went about it. It keeps going for a couple more pages on things which I will not go into because they have little relevance to any interpretation of “My Last Duchess”.
The speaker in poetry is very important. He/She tells the reader what is going on and what meanings can be taken from the poem. Certain things can have different meanings, depending on who the reader thinks the speaker is. In "My Last Duchess," the speaker is the Duke. He provides the reader with his side of the story of why his last duchess is dead. In the beginning of the poem, the reader thinks that his duchess is still alive, because of the comments that are made. "This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands as if alive." This is the line where he tells the readers that her behavior worsened to the point that he could not take anymore. He gave the commands to kill her. All of her smiles at different guys compliments stopped at once. There she is, in this painting, standing as she did when she was still alive.
The first two lines of the poem introduce us to the main topic of the duke's speech, a painting of his late wife: "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,/Looking as if she were alive. " We immediately begin to suspect that the duchess is no longer alive, but are not sure. The clever language Browning chose suggested that something was wrong, but left enough ambiguity to quickly capture our attention as readers. Also in these lines, we are given our first hint that the duchess really isn't all that important to the Duke. He speaks of the painting as if it was the Duchess, suggesting that his late wife was nothing more than her external appearance.
Analysis of To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell and Sonnet by Elizabeth B. Browning
The narrator in “the Book of the Duchess” is more than just a character unable to identify the truth behind the knight’s metaphors, he is seeking for something greater. The narrator has an ulterior motive to try and make the grieving knight discuss in greater detail of the tragic loss. In this paper, an argument will be make that the narrator has ulterior motives in regards to his interactions with the grieving knight. In particular, this paper will discuss the methods in which the narrator uses to better invoke an emotional responses from the knight. To clarify the thesis of this paper, narrator uses methods such as pretending to be ignorant of the situation or acting coldly towards the knight to extract more information about the loss. The
Comparing Robert Browning's Dramatic Monologues My Last Duchess and The Laboratory Robert Browning was a Victorian poet who lived from 1812-1889. He mainly wrote dramatic monologues, this means you must have a speaker and a listener. Both "My Last Duchess" and "The Laboratory" were published in 1845. "My Last Duchess" was set in the Italian Renaissance and during that time to own large life size painting was a show of wealth. "My Last Duchess" was written in a time when women were to hold their husbands and everything that he did with the maximum respect and show little or no emotion towards anyone else. "
To begin with, the whole story is told from Irene’s perspective where we can see a considerable measure of dissatisfaction and disdain on her side. Throughout the story, Irene and Clare has a strange relationship. Even though they were high school friends, they were never close with each other. Irene considers Clare as narrow minded, cold and hard. While Clare utilizes her physical appearance as leverage in the bigot and sexist society, introducing herself as a question of sexual yearnings, Irene stays unobtrusive with her sexuality and never endeavors to utilize her magnificence to pick up favorable position in any means. Even though it is appeared throughout the book that Irene doesn’t care for Clare, it is obviously clear that Irene is hypocrite
Both poems show men as being active, but only “To His Coy Mistress” shows. women as passive as the woman involved is showing her power to say no, but the duke's wife is sleeping around.
In the early 1800s, the world was being introduced to a new type of writing that strayed from the scientific ideals of the Enlightenment Era and entered the world of Romance. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a highly influential person in this movement. She led a life full of oppression, which had an extreme impact on her writings. Browning’s life experiences through the adversity that she faced, influenced her career by providing inspiration for her works.