Assignment:
We’ll be spending one day each on discussion of Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Rosetti’s “In an Artist’s Studio,” and the questions to guide each discussion are the same.
- Describe the speaker.
- Describe the woman depicted.
- What is the relationship between viewer(s) and the Duke and/or the Duchess?
- How is the reader implicated in this relationship?
Discussion:
1. The speaker of Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” is Afonso II, the Duke of Ferrara. He is discussing the organization of a new wife, after his last one died, with a servant of a Count (Perhaps the Count of Tyrol) “The count your master’s known munificence, is ample warrant that no just pretense/ of mine for dowry will be disallowed.”(49-51) In this discussion, the Duke has shown the servant a portrait of his “Last Duchess” and continues to jealously remark on her behaviors. “She thanked men— good! but thanked/Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked/My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old-name/With anybody’s gift.”(31-33). Clearly, Browning wanted the speaker, the Duke, to come off as self-important, pompous, and weak (in that, at that time, management of your wife was a husband’s responsibility). He cannot fathom that anyone would treat him, especially given his societal standing, the way his last duchess treated him: just like everyone else “Sir, ‘twas not/Her husband’s presence only, called that spot/Of joy on the Duchess’ cheek…”
2. The woman depicted is the pre-deceased Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia, who died while married to the Duke, Alfonso. She is immortalized in a portrait, “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,/Looking as if she were alive.”. She is described, perhaps incredulously, or aggressively by the speaker, Alfonso, as having “A heart… too soon made glad.”. In other words, she is kind and joyful, but easily made so. She is also a woman who does not adhere to the rules of society distinctly, as when Alfonso got upset with the Duchess for smiling too much at everyone, or perhaps it can be interpreted as being too kind, he “gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together.” (45-46) This depicts the Duchess as resentful of Alfonso’s presence, or at least rebellious against the rules of domestication that she is meant to adhere to given her social class.
3. As discussed above, the relationship between the Duke and the Duchess is tumultuous. The Duke is jealous of those who take advantage of how the Duchess, is “Too easily impressed”. The Duchess, on the other hand, is resentful of the Duke’s desire to admonish her, and is cold towards him after he attempts to. “I gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together.” (45-46). There is very little sense of missing his deceased wife, or even mourning her. Rather, he admired her, but only when the qualities of her that were admirable were a result of his existence, “she liked what’ere/She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.”(23-24)
4. The reader is implicated through this poem as though they are taking part in a the discussion themselves. As the reader is addressed by the speaker as “you/your”, it is as if we are the servant. “The Count, your master”. In this way, we look at the portrait, and are subject to the continually dichotomous description of the Duchess, as well as the gloating of the Duke, as if he is trying to overcompensate, “Nay, we’ll go/Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though/ Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity,/Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!”. In this way, the reader is seen as a representative of someone whom he is trying to make a good impression on, and perhaps represents societal viewership or his own self-implicated short-comings for which he must overcompensate.
