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My Last Duchess Abuse Of Power

158 Words1 Pages
“I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together” (Browning 45-45). The dominating theme shaped by The Duke in Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” is power. Browning put an emphasis on power from the very beginning of the poem. The Duke in the poem is the speaker; He is entertaining an emissary who is visiting on the business of arranging another marriage for the duke. As they are walking through the Kingdom, they stop and pull the curtains off of a painting, which the Duke is the only one allowed to do this. The painting is of his late Duchess, he talks of her disgraceful behaviour: Claiming she flirted with any man who laid eyes on her, and how she did not appreciate his “nine-hundred-years-old name” (Browning 33). As he continues
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