My Last Duchess by Robert Browning

“That’s my Last Duchess painted on the wall,/Looking as if she were alive. I call”

• The rhyme scheme is made of rhyming couplets showing the Duke’s desire for a partner

  • The contrasts with the possessive pronoun “my” which shows that these two partners are not equal- the male is far more important

  • Browning points out that men in a patriarchy have too much power and this corrupts them

  • The rhyming also shows the speech is rehearsed

• The enjambment of “I call” after the caesura implies the Duke is trying to hide the fact that he has rehearsed this speech by making “alive” seem like the end of the line while the reader can see “call” rhymes with “wall”

• “last” implies the duchess is dead but she is not the last permanent duchess- she is just part of a long list of women he has had executed

• The painting is not one that is hung on the wall but a fresco- a fresco is painted directly on wet plaster

  • We know this because Fra Pandolf “Wormed busily a day” to paint this, and you had to paint the wet plaster before it dried

  • This gives us a sense of urgency with the Duke and we can see he doesn’t decide to have her painted until he decides to have her killed

    • He chooses this way because any kind of painting would take too long and he’d have to wait to kill her and this shows the Duke’s viciousness which is shown in his humour “as if she were alive”

“twas not/Her husband’s presence only, called that spot/Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek”

• We can infer that the Duke killed the duchess out of sexual jealousy as Fra Pandolf may have been flirting with his wife and we can see this as he says “her husband’s presence only” which implies ownership and that the Duke only wants the Duchess to have eyes for him

• However, another interpretation is that her death was not caused by jealously as the Duke is actually with the Duchess and Fra Pandolf when the painting is made as she is in “her husband’s presence”

• Further the ‘Fra’ in Fra Pandolf means friar and monks wouldn’t be having affairs

• You can argus either that his sexual jealously is ridiculous given the situation, or that there is none at all

• “spot” is symbolism and implies that the Duchess has sinned because she finds joy in life

  • In the poem, the Duke does not take joy in life, but only in the things that he can own

“as if she ranked/My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name/With anybody’s gift”

• The Duke kills the duchess out of disappointment as she ranks the Duke’s last name with anyone else’s

  • The duchess doesn’t realise that the Duke’s gift is the most important gift she could receive- she does not know her place in a patriarchal society

• “Ranked” makes this an 11 syllable line where was the rest of the poem before this was 10 showing that the Duke is losing control

“but who passed without/ much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together.”

• Plural of “smiles” suggests the Duke had both his duchess and another man killed because he suspects she is having an affair- this is a metaphor for death

• This could also mean he’s had too much of her smiles and grew bored or irritated of her, and so she is killed

• The rhetorical question shows that the Duke is irritated because she gives “much the same smile” as everyone else does when they see the Duke and not the smile he thinks he deserves from his wife

• Additionally, we can infer the Duke has no sexual relationship with any of his duchesses as they don’t spend time together, she just smiles when ever she “passes” him

  • This fits with the character of the Duke as he seemingly has no interest in things that involve life but he cares very much about wealth and art

  • The lack of a relationship shows that women are just a possession to him and he kills her because she doesn’t glorify him like his wealth and art does

• Browning is attacking the nobility in both England and in Italy by showing us their heartlessness, greed and materialism as well as their lack of care for the common man- especially women who they treat as objects

“Notice Neptune, though,/Taming a sea-horse, though a rarity,/Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!”

• The Duke feels like an all powerful God see sees it as his right to tame these women, and if they are not tamed then they will be killed

  • Comparing women to seahorses robs them of their humanity and objectifies them

• This also represents the patriarchal society where men are treated as gods and women were treated as lesser than human

• Neptune was given powers as a God and he created horses and introduced them into the world

  • The seahorse actually shows the Duke is inferior- the Duke wants to be a God but a sea-horse does not compare to the horses Neptune made

    • The wife earlier was also depicted riding a “white mule” is a marriage between a donkey and a horse- it cannot reproduce

    • This hints at the idea that the Duke cannot reproduce either which again hints there is no sexual relationship

• The last word of the poem being “me!” shows how egomaniacal and self-centred the Duke is

Form and structure

• The poem has rhyming couplets- this reflects the Duke’s desire for a partner

  • This also tells us this dramatic monologue has been heavily rehearsed which is surprising as he has his last duchess killed showing that he feels completely above the law