My Last Duchess Flashcards
‘Since none puts by the curtain I have drawn for you, but I.’
-Caesura provides dramatic tension and emphasises the Duke’s power - he has full and complete control over the Duchess even in death.
-‘But’ is a comparative; nobody else is capable of enduring the power the Duke does and so nobody else can draw the curtain.
-Repetition of ‘I’ shows he is taking ownership of the Duchess. Reinforces his arrogance + nobody can challenge him.
-‘Curtain’; regular household decoration is used in MLD to display power. It is symbolic of the patriarchy as it is controlled by man.
‘This grew, I gave commands.’
-Euphemism for murder; depicts the power the Duke has and that he can kill the Duchess without any following consequence. This may be symbolic of a lack of control.
-Lack of control is also shown through the caesura + self-obsession.
-‘commands’ (noun), analogy for him hiring somebody else to kill her.
‘My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name.’
-Possessive pronoun ‘my’; possessive nature of the Duke alongside his wealth and status that the Duchess insulted and mocked.
-Duchess was of a lower social status and that Duke is insulted that she didn’t appreciate his offer of his value and status.
-Gifts are usually something memorable, but to the Duke they are a juxtaposition of that - he believes they are signs of wealth and materialism.
-Gifts is further ironic, previously mentions the ‘bough of cherries’; Duchess found this memorable, to the Duke it would’ve been worthless.
Structure of MLD
Single stanza reinforces the Duke’s outpour of emotion and suggests he is mentally unstable and has a lack of self-control.
Form of MLD
Written in first person perspective + present tense - the Duke is an unreliable narrator, his information of the Duchess is likely to be invalid.
+ ALL OF THE POEM is his perspective showing his controlling nature and a lack of a feminine narrative (link to context)
Context of MLD
-Duke is based on the Duke of Ferrara - his wife died under suspicious circumstances.
-Victorian era + industrial revolution; women were starting to demand equality but were known to be incapable of rational thought.
