Love, death, and infidelity were weaved through the readings this week. In “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning, the speaker is a Duke who is looking at a painting of his last (now deceased) Duchess and remembering her. His memories are not fond; he was jealous and possessive, and frankly, a bit of a drama queen. His suspicion is evident repeatedly, starting in line 13 where he states, “Sir, ‘twas not/ Her husband’s presence only, called that spot/ Of joy into the duchess’ cheek”. Lines 21-24 boldly say what he was alluding to earlier on, “She had/ A heart—how shall I say? —too soon made glad,/ Too easily impressed: she liked whate’er/ She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.” She blushed easily and enjoyed looking at things, so in his mind she was a bit promiscuous. He thought his wife unfaithful basically because she was polite. This, as well as his uppity attitude, are both made clear in lines 31-34, “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.” He thinks that his name alone is a better gift than anything else; he’s conceited and entitled.
Compare how poets present powerful rulers in Ozymandias and in one other poem (My Last Duchess)
Both ‘London’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ explore the ideas of power through social structures, hierarchy and synecdoche.
Browning closes My Last Duchess by establishing that envy can lead a person to commit extreme acts and hinder their- or someone else’s sanity. Browning uses characterization to exploit the character development of the duke and also enhance how envy can lead
After reading My Last Duchess and My Ex- Husband, there were more similarities than there were differences. My Last Duchess was about a jealous Duke that ended up killing his wife because he thought she was cheating with the man who painted the portrait of her that is hanging on his wall for only him to see. In My Ex- Husband, the poem is about a woman who writes about how much she hates her ex, though cannot seem to move on from his mistakes of cheating. Both of these poems demonstrate poetic devices that are very similar to each other- rhyme scheme, themes, and the structure of the poem.
In Theodora Jankowski’s journal “Defining/Confining the Duchess: Negotiating the Female Body in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi”, she analyzes the Duchess’ ability to challenge the views of the Jacobean society regarding women and their various roles even though the Duchess herself was not able to successfully combine her own diverse roles. Jankowski prefaces the journal with the fact that the many contradictions throughout the play can make it difficult to analyze at times, but allow for various interpretations of the scenes and issues at hand. The journal, which can be found on Academic Search Complete, employs the use of logos, scholarly conversation, and methodical organization in order to exemplify how the Duchess shatters the ceiling
Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Edmund Kemper, and Charles Manson. All of these people have something in common. They are all sociopaths. Sociopaths share some common characteristics: having a God complex, being easily annoyed, believing that rules do not apply to them, and lack of empathy or remorse. These qualities can be dangerous when combined in one person, and that is why many serial killers are found to be sociopaths. In his poem, “My Last Duchess”, Robert Browning presents us with a character that possesses all of the aforementioned traits. This character is the Duke of Ferrara, and his perilous personality results in the death of another, much like other sociopaths. Browning develops his character using the Duke’s unique voice, word connotation, and tone shifts.
The two Browning poems, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ were written to convey to the reader how women were treated in that era; as possession, as assets. Both of these poems can be read from different points of view and they also both are what is
look at but he feels as if the Duchess takes him for granted and she
The potent emotion of jealous love permeates throughout both Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ and Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Medusa.’ Jealous love forms a central concern of the poets, with each one focusing on different aspects, which the reader may come to identify the poems as exploring the intensity of human emotion.
While rewriting “My Last Duchess”, I went back and forth trying to decide whose point of view to write it from, but finally decided to write it from the servants point of view. I chose this character, because the servant is the only one in the narrative who closely experiences the Duke after he kills the Duchess. By writing it from the servant point of view, we can see still see how the Duke’s mental health is questionable, but yet it adds more depth to it, as we gain this knowledge from someone other than the Duke himself, and thus we can truly see how awful of a person the Duke is. There were a few elements that were lost in the changing of narrators, for instance, it is now harder to see how arrogant and conceited the Duke really is. I
The poem “My Last Duchess” is a historical event that involves the Duke of Ferrara and Alfonso who lived in the 16th century. Robert Browning "My Last Duchess" presents a narrative about a recently widowed Duke who talks with an emissary had come to an arranged marriage with another lady from a powerful and wealthy family. In the perspective of Duke, power and wealth were integral in marriage and was determined to be married to a wealthy lady from a famous family. As the Duke orients the emissary through the palace, he stops and shows a portrait of the late Duchess who was a lovely and young girl. The Duke then begins by stating information about the picture and then to the Duchess. Duke claims that the Duchess flirted with everyone and did not appreciate the history of the family: “gift of a nine hundred years old name.”(33) However, when an individual continues to read the poem, it is evident that the Duke played an important role in killing the lady. Duke states that “he gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together”(45-46) he used these words to define the death of his beloved Duchess. The aim of the essay is to analyze literary devices that emphasize the content of the poem, which includes rhetorical questions, exclamation mark, and em dash.
“My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning and “ The Rape of the lock” by Alexander Pope are two poems that convey a theme of love and objectification towards women.For instance, both poems are similar in their use imagery and metaphors to grasp their audience attention. For example, in “My last duchess” the author shows the wife in the poem as an item controlled by her husband and uses his love for her as an excuse to abuse his power. Her life is ruled by him and she would have to deal with his insane jealousy because his obsessiveness is dominating his reality of his relationship . In this poem the male role has many characteristics one of them being paranoid and not helping him reflect on reality by him owning shrine of items that belonged to all his earlier wife’s. His late wife is shown as a piece of imagery where she is kept on a wall trapped not able to leave his sight or be allowed interact with others. (Browning,1-2) In “ The Rape of the Lock “ the poem starts off with Belinda,the main character, in a dream sent to her by her guardian Sylph. The dream sends a message to Belinda that she must be careful with all men in her life once she has received the message she awakens to a love letter at her sight and forgets the dream in its entirety. Throughout the course of the poem Belinda’s Sylphs are required to protect her chastity and help her contain her purity.. The man in her life is using her as an item and not as a human being.Pope encourages these characteristics
the personality of his duchess, he is shown to be a heartless, arrogant man. His complete
Murder, mystery and intrigue all describe Robert Browning's poem, "My Last Duchess." From the speakers' indirect allusions to the death of his wife the reader is easily lead to think that the speaker committed a vengeful crime out of jealousy. His elaborate speech confuses and disguises any possible motives, and the mystery is left unsolved. Even if he did not kill his wife, he certainly has something to hide. Based on the poem's historical references, style and structure, the Duke's controlling and jealous nature becomes evident.
In "My Last Duchess", by Robert Browning, the character of Duke is portrayed as having controlling, jealous, and arrogant traits. These traits are not all mentioned verbally, but mainly through his actions. In the beginning of the poem the painting of the Dukes wife is introduced to us: "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,/ looking as of she were still alive" (1-2). These lines leave us with the suspicion that the Duchess is no longer alive, but at this point were are not totally sure. In this essay I will discuss the Dukes controlling, jealous and arrogant traits he possesses through out the poem.