Notes on *"My Last Duchess"* Transcript

Major Points from "My Last Duchess" Transcript

Introduction

  • The poem is like a scene from a play.
  • Browning uses sound to emphasize the Duke's personality.

The Painting and Initial Questions

  • The Duke refers to the painting as "my last Duchess."

    • There's no difference between a person and an object in his mind.

  • Viewers are curious about the Duchess's expression in the painting.

  • They're interested on the depth and passion in her eyes.

The Story Behind the Expression

  • People want to know the story behind the expression, similar to the Mona Lisa.

  • The Duke implies people ask him about the expression, though they might be hesitant due to his power.

The Curtain and Objectification

  • The curtain is key to understanding the Duke's psychology.
  • He treats the Duchess as an object.
  • Curtains are for artificial things/imitation of life.
  • The poem is in dramatic form, and plays with what is real vs artificial.

The Duke's Perspective

  • The Duke is obsessed with control.

  • He starts by saying, "It was not her husband's presence only that called that spot of joy."

  • The Duke imagines the painter, Fraf Pandolf, complimenting the Duchess.

    • Painter may have said, “her mantle laps over my lady’s wrist too much”.
    • Painter may have said he could never reproduce the tone of her skin when she flushed.

  • The Duchess may have thought of it as courtesy.

  • The Duke thinks she was too naive to understand the painter was flirting with her and it was inappropriate.

Duchess’s Personality

  • Her heart was too soon made glad, too easily impressed.
  • She liked whatever she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
  • The curtain is all about blocking her look.
  • The use of enjambment creates a sense of flow.

Examples of What Pleased Her

  • The dropping of the daylight in the West.

  • The bough of cherries some officious fool broke in the orchard for her.

  • The white mule she rode with around the terrace.

  • She blushed

The Duke's Pride and Jealousy

  • The Duke mentions his "nine-hundred-years-old name."
  • The Duke believe his lineage is a gift to her.
  • She should spend her entire life smiling at him.
  • The aristocrats hired Leonardo Da Vinci to do a painting for them (Da Vinci just means from the town of Vinci).
  • He pictures all these people who just don't stack up with him, including a mule, and she smiled at all of them and the sun!

The Duke's Inability to Communicate

  • The Duke wonders who would stoop to blame this sort of trifle.
  • Even had you skill in speech, which I have not.
  • The Duke wouldn't say anything even if he was to talk to her and say, like, oh, like, I don't like that you do this or that, that he wouldn't do that because it'd be lowering himself to even talk about it to reveal that it bothered him, and he didn't do that.
  • He expects people to know what he wants.
  • He doesn't reveal anything about himself to her even though she's very open.

The Duke's possessiveness

  • She smiled, no doubt, whenever I passed.
  • But who passed without much of a smile?
  • What is it worth if everybody gets it?
  • There is a sexual analogy, the classics case of men's sexual jealousy.
  • Men are never 100% sure that his child is his. So there's always that tension of am I this person's homosexual partner.
  • Women tend to be more bothered by emotional infidelity.
  • Men are more bothered by physical infidelity.
  • She is a total cliche.

The Duke's Actions

  • This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together.
  • The Duke gave commands that led to her death.

The Duke's Negotiations

  • There she stands as if alive.
  • Will it please you rise?
  • The count, your master, is known munificence.
  • His ample warrant that no just pretense I make for dowry will be disallowed.
  • The fair daughter's self, as I avowed at starting, is my object.
  • The Duke is now seeking a new duchess.
  • He is negotiating with a count for his daughter's hand in marriage.
  • He expects a large dowry but claims his primary object is the daughter herself.
  • This scene reminds the viewer of the Duke is a monster, and everybody's really terrified of him.