“My Last Duchess:” Tenure Found in Victorian Literature

From 1837- 1901, Queen Victoria, the first British monarch to become a visual icon, reigned over England. Her image described the clear balance she managed in her life. Yet, she was awarded that balance due to the Industrial Revolution occurring during that time period. When Victoria was crowned, “there were five cities having more than a hundred thousand people, and London was growing by as much as twenty percent a decade” ( Wolfson and Manning 17). Additionally, there was a huge development of technology: photography and mass production of goods. Most of the goods sold had labels of the Queen on them so that her image can emanate prestige and power. The immense increase in technology created a Victorian culture that was a “turn, even an escape, from the tumultuous and confusing here-and-now” (Wolfson and Manning 8). Accordingly, the Victorian culture became characterized by a sense of positive energy. At any point in the nineteenth century, laborers produced new and fresh goods. They believed that they can render their previous lives obsolete and give rights to all laborers. Also, the Victorians vindicated a sense of control where they had to manage their entire surrounding based on the industry created. Thus, many poets graveled and delved with these Victorian ideals. As a result from the latter explanation, “My Last Duchess,” by Robert Browning, is composed of a genre and form directly relatable to the senses of energy and control present in the Victorian era of the nineteenth century.

“My Last Duchess” presents a Duke speaking, at first, of his Duchess as a shy, embarrassed, and modest person. He directly states this by describing how she blushes when she is given any kind gesture. The Duke, however, does not find her to be a “perfect” Duchess, rather she is filled with guilt and is “too easily impressed” (Browning 23). In the following lines, the Duke unconsciously presents his stand toward the Duchess: “The dropping of the daylight in the West/ The bough of cherries some officious fool/ Broke in the orchard for her…” (Browning 26-28). Here, the Duke is clearly stating how the Duchess is a flawed character who does not obey righteous orders; rather she is easily pleased by any man and accepts gifts like those of cherries. The Duke does not realize the gracious acts presented toward her, but only focuses on his opinion that she is adulterous. Thus, he is aggravated at her behavior because she does not rank him superior prioritizing social and political status. On the contrary, the Duchess ranks the Dukes “nine- hundred-years-old name/ With anybody’s gift” (Browning 33). For these reasons, he gets the Duchess killed, and her painting then hung on the wall to be admired and reminisced.

How exactly is the genre of the piece a direct correlation with Victorian ideals? “My Last Duchess” is a dramatic monologue that involves dramatic irony and further leads readers to connect those ideas with the notions of positive energy. A dramatic monologue is a genre of poetry where the poet is not exactly the speaker, yet there are staged personalities. The speaker is in a specific, dramatic situation addressing the audience within the poem. In addition, the speaker reveals elements about himself while he is in the “speech” process. This aspect is engulfed with dramatic or tragic irony which is an acknowledgment to the “contradictions of experience” in the piece (Deutsch 74). At this point, the speaker reveals to the reader information unapparent to the speaker. Throughout the entire poem, the Duke, is a staged individual who is addressing a certain audience. Without knowing, he directly ranks hierarchy as superior to anything else. Because she does not believe rank is important, the Duchess is then killed. This is clearly addressed in the poem: ‘”Paint/ Must never hope to reproduce the faint/ Half-flush that dies along her throat:”’ (Browning 17-19). The “half- flush” on her throat is a direct symbolization to her murder consequently showing readers how, right at the start, the Duke gives information that seems to be hidden from him. The language in the poem starts becoming out of proportion because there is a discrepancy between what the speaker thinks he is saying and what the readers knows. Moreover, this specific form highlights the Dukes personality. In his piece “Ferrara and “My Last Duchess,”’ Louis S. Friedland attacks the Duke’s Last Duchess. Is the Duke talking about the Duchess he killed before or the final one he just did? Friedland explains that “the identification of the “last Duchess” depends, oddly enough, upon the recognition of the other lady in the story, the one who may become the Duke’s second wife” (679). One can conclude that Browning refers to the previous Duchess he had killed, meaning that there is another women or another “lady in the story.” The concept of “the other” is a thorough relationship with the Victorian idea of energy. Victorians believed in the notion of creating new things, expanding their surrounding, and constantly producing great numbers of mass production in order to improve their ways of life. The Duke’s attitude, revealed through the genre, associates to the idea of finding a Duchess who will fit his qualifications, but at the same time “removing” others who do not.

Not only does the poem’s ironic and dramatic genre reflect Victorian principles, but also the images and poetic forms shape the senses of control and ownership. Most of the time, the Duke describes the Duchess as an object or a materialistic form. This raises the question about the ideas of possession present in his psychoanalysis. At the end of the poem, a Greek mythical image is described raising some vital issues. The Duke addresses his audience to “Notice Neptune, though,/ Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,/ Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for [him]!” (Browning 55-57). In Greek mythology, Neptune is the God of the sea who rules and governs all the sea creatures. The Duchess is directly compared to the “sea-horse” who is delicate and fragile. Yet, “Neptune” or the Duke wants to have power over the Duchess so that no one can come close or touch her except him. This same controlling factor is present at the beginning of the poem where the Duke states that “none puts by/ The curtain I have drawn for you, but I” (Browning 9-10). Directly at the beginning, the Duke tells his readers that only he can touch the painting. He is the only one who has the power to control and possess it/her. Friedland addresses these psychological issues:

The Duke is an egotist who is either unwilling to content himself with a normal degree of possession or, physically incapable of attaining it, and exacts the last measure of obedience to his will for exclusive ownership (675).

He wants to seize the Duchess as an object just like his other materialistic belongings: the painting or sculpture of “bronze.” In addition, the poem’s form and rhyme scheme suggest the same possessive notions. The rhyme scheme is in aabbaabb… form. It is illustrated as follows:

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, a
Looking as if she were alive. I call a
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands b
Worked busily a day, and there she stands b

The entire poem follows this scheme and the aabb form creates a closed couplet where “two lines of verse, usually in the same metre and joined by rhyme to form a unit” (Deutsche 39). That “unit” creates a type of organization. Instead of being a free flowing verse, the speaker intends it to be a closed couplet rhyme that further emphasizes the concept of power. As a result of the Duke’s psychoanalysis conveyed through the poem’s form and images, the Victorian beliefs of ownership are finally illustrated.

This poem, “My Last Duchess,” delves into the ethics of Victorian culture that generate senses of control and energy. The poem reflects aesthetic representations that were present during the nineteenth century. Through dramatic genres and descriptive, organized forms, the speaker ultimately attacks himself becoming obsessed with the notion of consumption, manipulation, and possessiveness. Although the entire piece can be very well related to the Victorian principles and ideals, yet it also calls upon a different mindset. How do readers “consume” literature? How can scholars manipulate poetry and art to the way they please? Maybe, at one point, that is all readers tend to accomplish- rendering and decomposing a poem to its deepest core until someone embraces a eureka moment, a grand idea. This poem not only foreshadows previous elements of culture and life, but also questions readers to the way they consume, possess, control, and sometimes manipulate any given text just like the Duke did to his “Last Duchess.”



Works Cited

Browning, Robert. “My Last Duchess.” 100-Best-Loved Poems. Ed. Philip Smith. New York: Dover, 1995. 64-65. Print.

Deutsch, Babette. Poetry Handbook: A Dictionary of Terms. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins,1974. Print.

Friedland, Louis S. ‘Ferrara and “My Last Duchess.”’ Studies in Philology 33.4 (1936): 656-684. JSTOR. Web. 3 Feb. 2010.

Wolfman, Susan and Peter Manning. “The Romantics and Their Contemporaries.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J.H Dettmar. New York: Pearson, 2006. 3-59. Print.