My Last • Dramatic monologue- • The Duke’s tone of • Pride, jealousy • The reader • The marriage
Duchess controlling nature disdain is unsuited to • Perceived offenses suspects, although market was
• Irony- in that the Duke is her actual • The Duke stammers can never confirm, topic in the
so arrogant that the characteristics, (dashes, that the Duke 1850s when
reader gets more exemplifying her enjambement) and ordered his last Browning wrote
information than he innocence and seems to find it Duchess’s murder the poem
intends to reveal contrasts their difficult to articulate • ‘This grew; I gave • Possible
• ‘Fra Pandolf’, ‘Claus of personalities his motives, he commands; / Then critique of a
Innsbruck’- neologistic • Presented through perceives his all smiles stopped society that
allusions- boasts about ekphrasis, objection of her as together.’- caesura allowed young
his wealth and status, objectified by the unworthy of himself- gives a chilling girls and
grandiose sense of self- Duke- ‘painted on the hence he chooses effect, pauses women to be
worth wall, / Looking as if ‘never to stoop’ created by sold off to men
• Sees women as objects- she were alive’ • Skewed worldview- semicolons implies who mistreat
separation of ‘self’ and (simile- mocking sees the Duchess’s violence behind the them
‘object’ puts emphasis tone) attractive and good scenes • The poem itself
on the latter, suggesting • ‘all and each/ Would traits (‘spot of joy’, ‘a • The crime of is set in
its denotation instead of draw from her alike heart… too soon appropriating her Florence
meaning object of desire the approving made glad’) as an image- refrain of during the
• Poem ends with ‘for me!’ speech’- generous, affront to his ego; ‘as if alive’ or ‘as if Italian
• He makes his crime kind the realism of the she were alive’ Renaissance
relatively obvious, • Given no voice painting is a reinforces the • Possible
knowing he is protected • Next victim may be reminder of this Duke’s ownership commentary
by status- lack of the emissary’s • ‘as if she ranked my over her even in on the debate
remorse master’s daughter gift of nine-hundred- death; her smiles around if
years-old name with become only for beauty and
anybody’s gift’ him moral virtue
• ‘Notice Neptune, • His crime is are
though, / Taming a worsened by the synonymous
seahorse’- Duke’s fact that the
urge to maintain interlocutors (the
control, as emissary and the
seashores do not reader) are unable
need to be tamed; to object to his