Page 337 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes 29.1.2 Summary

This poem is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in
the 16th century. The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and tells us he is entertaining an emissary who
has come to negotiate the Duke’s marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the daughter of another
powerful family. As he shows the visitor through his palace, he stops before a portrait of the late
Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The Duke begins reminiscing about the portrait sessions,
then about the Duchess herself. His musings give way to a diatribe on her disgraceful behavior: he
claims she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name.”
As his monologue continues, the reader realizes with ever-more chilling certainty that the Duke in
fact caused the Duchess’s early demise: when her behavior escalated, “[he] gave commands; / Then
all smiles stopped together.” Having made this disclosure, the Duke returns to the business at hand:
arranging for another marriage, with another young girl. As the Duke and the emissary walk leave
the painting behind, the Duke points out other notable artworks in his collection.

29.1.3 Form

“My Last Duchess” comprises rhyming pentameter lines. The lines do not employ end-stops; rather,
they use enjambment—that is, sentences and other grammatical units do not necessarily conclude at
the end of lines. Consequently, the rhymes do not create a sense of closure when they come, but
rather remain a subtle driving force behind the Duke’s compulsive revelations. The Duke is quite a
performer: he mimics others’ voices, creates hypothetical situations, and uses the force of his personality
to make horrifying information seem merely colorful.

Indeed, the poem provides a classic example of a dramatic monologue: the speaker
is clearly distinct from the poet; an audience is suggested but never appears in the
poem; and the revelation of the Duke’s character is the poem’s primary aim.

How does the poem compare to other works from the Victorian period?

29.1.4 Commentary

But Browning has more in mind than simply creating a colorful character and placing him in a
picturesque historical scene. Rather, the specific historical setting of the poem harbors much
significance: the Italian Renaissance held a particular fascination for Browning and his contemporaries,
for it represented the flowering of the aesthetic and the human alongside, or in some cases in the
place of, the religious and the moral. Thus the temporal setting allows Browning to again explore sex,
violence, and aesthetics as all entangled, complicating and confusing each other: the lushness of the
language belies the fact that the Duchess was punished for her natural sexuality. The Duke’s ravings
suggest that most of the supposed transgressions took place only in his mind. Like some of Browning’s
fellow Victorians, the Duke sees sin lurking in every corner. The reason the speaker here gives for
killing the Duchess ostensibly differs from that given by the speaker of “Porphyria’s Lover” for murder
Porphyria; however, both women are nevertheless victims of a male desire to inscribe and fix female
sexuality. The desperate need to do this mirrors the efforts of Victorian society to mold the behavior—
sexual and otherwise—of individuals. For people confronted with an increasingly complex and
anonymous modern world, this impulse comes naturally: to control would seem to be to conserve
and stabilize. The Renaissance was a time when morally dissolute men like the Duke exercised absolute
power, and as such it is a fascinating study for the Victorians: works like this imply that, surely, a
time that produced magnificent art like the Duchess’s portrait couldn’t have been entirely evil in its
allocation of societal control—even though it put men like the Duke in power.

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