Robert Browning is the author of "My Last Duchess" and he shows the audience how it is a dramatic monologue. In a class lecture, the professor had mentioned that the poem is set in the 15th century. During that time, it was common for a young woman to be arranged in a marriage. As the poem unfolds, the audience learns the speaker of the poem, Duke Ferrara, is talking to another male character and begins to tell the story of his previous wife. As they are standing in front of the portrait of the Duke's last wife, now dead, the Duke talks about her imperfections. The reader discovers that the ex-wife's "imperfections" were qualities such as generosity, courtesy to those who served her, and an overall respected woman. What follows are examples …show more content…
More importantly, the Duke did not approve the behavior of his previous wife and will tolerate it again. As the story begins, the Duke is speaking to the other male character about the portrait of his previous wife. A painter by the name of Fra Pandolf had painted the portrait and it is said that Pandolf's hands may have wandered as well. The following lines can make the audience wonder about the relationship between Pandolf and the Duke's ex-wife. "That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands / Worked busily a day, and there she stands" (lines 3-4). The Duke is now left to wonder that if his ex-wife and Pandolf may have had a relationship of some sort. In the poem, the Duke does not reveal the painting to any person. He is the only person that is allowed to reveal the portrait from the curtains that cover it. Although he does not show anyone the portrait, the Duke had revealed the painting to the other …show more content…
A man had picked some cherries from orchard and she had ridden around the land in a mule. A Royal family usually rides around on a horse, not a lower class animal such as a mule. A family with such high class does not do physical labor such as physically go to the orchard. The Duchess was very courteous to the help around the house because she would thank them for their work. In other terms, the Duke did not believe that the Duchess was not mean enough. The people that worked for the family respected the Duchess because she was very kind to them, but in the 15th century, people were divided into class systems. The Duke and Duchess were highly ranked whereas the servants ranked at the bottom so it was very common for the high class to be snobby and rude to
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
Have you ever fallen in love? Have you ever developed strong feelings for another? If problems arose between the two of you, were you able to overcome them? Well certain men in Robert Browning’s works couldn’t seem to. . . “overcome” these differences with their women. Browning grew up learning from his father’s huge library. His wife was much more successful at writing than him. Eight years after her death, his career turned around for the last 20 years of his life. During this time, he wrote many short dramatic monologues such as My Last Duchess and Prophyria’s Lover. These two very intriguing and disturbing Monologues, My Last Duchess and Prophyria’s Lover, by Robert Browning, involve two very messed up men whose actions are both alike in their idea of immortalizing their woman, but different in why they chose to commit the act between the two stories, and a conclusion may be drawn from this observation.
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning is story of a duke recanting his story about his late wife. In this poem the author uses diction similar to conversational words as if he was speaking to someone or something, varied syntax, where he questions to engage the reader, and a vain and superficial tone where he places the value of his late wife to some simple bronze.
The purpose of this essay is to analyze and compare and contrast the two paired poems “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning and “My Ex-Husband” by Gabriel Spera to find the similarities presented within the pairs. Despite the monumental time difference between “My Last Duchess” and “My Ex-Husband”, throughout both poems you will see that somebody is wronged by someone they thought was a respectable person and this all comes about by viewing a painting on the wall or picture on a shelf.
The doomed Duchess of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue, “My Last Duchess” is the embodiment of the incarcerated woman taken to the eternal extreme. The setting for this poem is the Italy of the Middle Ages, a time when women had still less freedom than in the Victorian era. Women were regarded as possessions, a form of imprisonment within itself. As Johnson states the theme of “marriage as bondage” is consistently explored throughout Browning’s early wor...
Both My Last Duchess and My Ex Husband are similar because they revolve around unrequited or lost love. Both speakers, a man and a woman, though different in sexes, express similar plight for unresponsive spouses who compel them to be jealous and bitter, therefore not bothered by their loss. Each speaker in the poems is conversing with a friend and explains what led to the end of their former relationship. “She thanked men,—good! But thanked Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody’s gift (Browning, 31-34). On the other hand, Spera describes the speaker’s disc...
Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is a haunting poem that tells the story of a seemingly perfect wife who dies, and then is immortalized in a picture by her kind and loving husband. This seems to be the perfect family that a tragic accident has destroyed. Upon further investigation and dissection of the poem, we discover the imperfections and this perfect “dream family” is shown for what it really was, a relationship without trust.
In contrast to Macbeth’s love for his wife, in Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ there is an absence of the romanticised emotion of love. The Duke refers to his wife as ‘My Last Duchess. Here the use of the possessive pronoun ‘my’ gives us the idea from the outset that the Duke saw his wife as merely a possession. The iambic pentameter of ten syllables per line used in the poem also emphasises possession by stressing ‘my’ further in the pattern. Browning’s portrayal of love is one that is absent of emotional attachment, but instead something by which he could possess and have power over her. It could be argued that there are similarities in the way that Lady Macbeth also uses the emotion of love. Being in the form of a dramatic monologue, use
In Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," a portrait of the egocentric and power loving Duke of Ferrara is painted for us. Although the duke's monologue appears on the surface to be about his late wife, a close reading will show that the mention of his last duchess is merely a side note in his self-important speech. Browning uses the dramatic monologue form very skillfully to show us the controlling, jealous, and arrogant traits the duke possessed without ever mentioning them explicitly.
The Duke of Ferrara was made jealous by everything the duchess did, no matter how unimportant it was. He was especially jealous of Fra Pandolf, the man who painted the duchess in the poem. A woman should be pleased only by her husband, as was not the case with the duchess and Fra Pandolf. She was “too easily impressed'; by the painter (line 23). Fra Pandolf was not the only man that made the duke jealous. Everyone who passed the duchess received “much the same smile'; as the duke (line 44). The duke expected to be the only man to receive a smile from his wife.
Browning’s works were the primary model for the basic form of the standard Victorian dramatic monologue which was based around a speaker, listener, and a reader. Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” became a model for the dramatic monologue form primarily because of the strict approach he took while developing the poem. One of the aspects characteristic of this work is the authors level of consciousness. Each element in “My Last Duchess” is thoughtfully constructed with form and structure in mind. This poem is filled with dramatic principle that satisfied the Victorian period’s demand for an action and drama that were not overtly apparent in the work. In the case of “My Last Duchess” the drama of the poem is how his character, the Duke, is introduced. In dramatic monologues the character’s self is revealed through thoug...
In "My Last Duchess", by Robert Browning, the character of Duke is portrayed as having controlling, jealous, and arrogant traits. These traits are not all mentioned verbally, but mainly through his actions. In the beginning of the poem the painting of the Dukes wife is introduced to us: "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,/ looking as of she were still alive" (1-2). These lines leave us with the suspicion that the Duchess is no longer alive, but at this point were are not totally sure. In this essay I will discuss the Dukes controlling, jealous and arrogant traits he possesses through out the poem.
The Speaker in ‘My Last Duchess’ is conversing with the servant of a count whose daughter he is proposing to marry. He treats t...
Throughout "My Last Duchess," Browning uses diction to further increase the haunting effect of his dramatic monologue. His precise and scattered word choice is meant to make the reader recognize the underlying haughtiness in his speech to the Count's emissary. The Duke refers to his former wife's portraits "depth" and "passion" in order to place a cloudiness over the realism of the painting. This, along with the "faint" and "half-flush" appearance that "dies along her throat," brings about an overcast appearance to the poem. The Duke's "trifling" lack of "countenance" is evident in his jealousy of
...ding this poem, it is obvious to think that the Duke was definitely a cruel and heartless man. Assuming he had his first wife killed, he didn't seem to care. He just forged ahead in an attempt to find another woman he could control. As a matter of fact, he used his influence to actually warn the servant of his plans for his marriage to the Count's daughter. Instead of mourning his first wife, he seemed to revel in the fact that he was now able to control her beauty in the portrait by only allowing viewing to those he invited to see it when he opened the curtain. Oh, what a powerful feeling that must have been for him! In the 20th century, however, I think this poem would have been written differently to reflect the freedom women have today. No woman would have put up with him! Maybe the Duke would have had second thoughts about how he treated his beautiful Duchess.