My Last Duchess Flashcards
(32 cards)
Poems to compare it to
• OZYMANDIAS
• Exract from Prelude
• Kamikaze
• Tissue
Context
• Victorian (published in 1842)
• based on a true story during the 1500 Italian Renaissance (Duke Alfonso II of Ferrara whose wife died under suspicious circumstances)
• marriage market - dowry, men would pay to marry - still in the Victorian Era
• legally owned
Main theme
Power of man over woman
Dramatic Monologue Form
• Duke’s perspective exclusively, silence all other voices
• present Duke as powerful and hubristic, because he dominates
• shows a Totalitarian need to control - reinforces his power through the absence of dissent
• no female voice - represents how women are still disenfranchised in the Victorian period
• Browning is criticising gender inequality
One long stanza
• suggests the Duke is out of control and cannot express himself correctly, underlying inability to truly possess power, as he couldn’t possess the Duchess
Rhyming couplets and caesura
‘She had/a heart - … - too soon made glad’
• mirrors Duke’s meticulous nature and his need for order
• contrasted by frequent use of caesura, ‘spot of joy.’
• creates tension between formal control of the iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets, and the erratic, disjointed nature of speech (shown by caesura)
• reflects underlying instability and precarious grip on power, as he attempts to mask his emotional volatility under a facade of sophistication
Semantic field of innocence
• Duchess is presented with a semantic field of innocence, ‘spot of joy’ ‘smile’ ‘courtesy’
• appreciative and not materialistic - suggests that flaw lies in the Duke
Fear of the Duke
‘I choose never to stoop’ - inability to confront fears, afraid
Enjambent
• frequent enjambent, eg ‘called that spot/Of joy’
• reflects Duke’s inability to contain his anger as well as the Duchess’ free - spirited nature
• Duke represents patriarchal and hierarchal systems of Renaissance Italy by showing his disdain with the Duchess’ perceived failures
• also implies the Duke is uncontrolled and wild - can’t control himself although he attempts to control others
Possessive Pronouns
• possessive pronoun of ‘my’ - immediately establishes he believed her to be an object belonging to him, thrusts his materialism even upon women
• conveys sense of ownership
• more possessive pronouns in the start - less in the second half, shows he is losing control over what he is talking about as well as the Duchess, belittles and reduces the credibility of his claims about the Duchess
‘Last’
• ‘last’ hints at a chilling pattern of control, suggests she is merely one of a series of women subjected to his dominance
• adjective implying there could be more than one - therefore it emphasises the overall objectification of women
‘painted’
• links to ideas of art - implies woman are art (something to be curated and admired for the pleasure of man)
‘that piece a wonder, now’
- ‘piece’ - connotations with butchery and meat, only a fragment of her (appearance) was valued by the Duke
- patriarchal views
‘now’ - implies at the time it was made, he did not think that
‘as if she were alive’
symbolic of how, in art, he has preserved her memory in a way which best suits his pleasure more deeply
and the objectification of women in death and art as something to be admired, suits the upper class more than valuing a woman’s life and joy for life
‘Fra Pandolf’
repetition, referenced three times - extreme vanity, suggests the painter is more important than the art itself, art is to show wealth over appreciation of life - satirising the Duke
‘Fra Pandolf’s hands’
enjambment is significant - shows he is paranoid although the adverb ‘busily’ shows the painter wouldn’t have had time to act inappropriately with his wife, yet he is still suspicious - shows a schism in his psyche and over sexualisation of his wife
mind is unbalanced by jealousy
‘depth and passion’
critical metaphor of the Duke - this is the purpose of art, to intensify the depth of passion for life, but for the Duke it heightens his perception of life - he denies her depth of womanhood, and this is parallel to the time Browning was in
‘drawn’
connotations with art, shows he believes he can appreciate it but this is a miniscule action in comparison to the immense work of the artist - not superior, arrogant and doesn’t value art 1
‘that spot/Of joy’
enjambment at first implies guilt, but is contradicted - corruption of working classes, sucking out joy
‘half-flush’
sexual allusion, even in her death
‘she liked whate’er/She looked on’
ability to fully appreciate life
Semantic field showing her appreciation for life, art etc
‘glad’ ‘heart’ ‘impressed’ - nature of life/art etc, however Duke uses quantifiers to put limits on these
‘too soon’ ‘too easily’ - shows his corrupted power over life, arrogance to try and claim it
‘her looks went everywhere’
his gives this a tone of sexualisation but really this simply exemplifies her enjoyment of life
’ ‘twas all one’
he wants to be the one and only good thing, and therefore hates her innocence and love for everything, ‘bough of cherries’ ‘dropping of daylight’ ‘white mule’
