My Last Duchess Thomas Hardy Analysis

Brittany Borke

Professor Johnson

English 2010

5 March 2018

Essay Assignment One

Why is it that heartbreak attaches with the tenderness that love is suppose to bring? The romance, the affection, and the intimacy is something both Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy endured, however so is the heartbreak. From the first stanza to the last Browning and Hardy use similar images and metaphors to create two poems that are so alike yet so different.

In Robert Browning’s poem, My Last Duchess, the speaker of the poem is the Duke and he tells the audience that he is speaking to an ambassador who has come to arrange the Duke’s marriage. However, the Duke has been recently widowed and the ambassador is soon to discover that in a not so expected

Not just because she passed away, but she’s not the young woman she once was. Then he begins to wonder if he can hear her? And if he can, can he see her? He wishes he could and that he still remembers what she was wearing the last time they saw one another. He then wonders if it’s the other way around, if she can hear him? He then suddenly hears a voice, but it’s all just a memory since he is an old man mourning the loss of his youth and a loved one. Furthermore, the poem uses both end-stops and enjambments. The tone of the poem captures the sense of confusion and mourning the speaker is experiencing. As well as the excitement that Hardy feels when he supposedly hears the voice of a woman he knows is dead. This sense of excitement allows the audience to feel hope when thinking about life after a loved one has passed away. The Voice also follows a dactylic

However, in Robert Browning 's poem it’s more so the Duke’s power he had his mistresses death. Throughout the whole poem it can be seen that the speaker of the poem loved be in control, after all the painting of his dead wife is behind a curtain, who he gets to control who sees it or not. Additionally, the Duke views everything that he owns and everyone he interacts with as an opportunity to expand his power. His marriage(s) need to be dominated by him, the servants need to be dominated by him, and the artwork he possesses are shown to whoever he wants to show them to. The speaker mentions that his passed wife didn’t quite understand these things and that’s basically why she’s no longer here. Yet, in the The Voice, the theme of death is explored by showing grief. Both for his beloved wife and his youth self. It can also be seen throughout the poem that his grieving process is making him confused on whether he can hear or see her. Either way, it can be seen that he truly loved her and mourns on her