my last duchess

Question 1

key quotes

Answer 1

• none puts by the curtain i have drawn, but i
• calling up that spot of joy
• she had a heart…too soon made glad
• she liked whate’er she looked on
• she thanked men_i know not how
• my gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
• i gave commands,/then all smiles stopped
• even had you skill in speech(i have not)
• notice Neptune/taming a sea horses

Question 2

language and themes

Answer 2

• the dukes arrogance is clear when he talks about his late wife and his possessions
• the duke treated his wife as one of his possessions and was treated like an object not a real person
• the dukes paranoia reflects his insecurities and his subsequent compulsion to mould his wife’s sexuality
• the upper class normally claimed to be more superior but the duke shows this isn’t true

Question 3

What poems can you do a comparison with the pride and power of humans in?

Answer 3

• Ozymandias

- checking me history

Question 4

about

Answer 4

• the duke proudly points out a portrait of his late wife to a visitor.
• he gives bitter thoughts about her disgraceful behavior. of which he claims that she would flirt with any man and she didn’t appreciate the gifts of his nine hundred year old name.
• there is the suggestion that he had killed her.
• the duke then returns to his businesses of arranging his next marriage.

Question 5

form, structure and context

Answer 5

• this poem is a dramatic monologue written in iambic pentameter. with rhyming couplets which could also reflect the dukes tight control of everything.
• the duke was a paranoid and saw sin everywhere he looked. the duchess is a victim of the dukes desire to mold her sexuality. this reflects the obscure compulsion in Victorian men to shape women and their identities.
• the context of the poem is the renaissance was a time when debauched men like the duke asserted their authority.