My Last Duchess Essay

In the poem “My Last Duchess” , Robert Browning critiques the socioeconomic norms of the Victorian aristocracy. He makes a social commentary on the nobleman's abuse of power and his grotesque attitude towards women. Browning respectively creates characters in “My Last Duchess” such as the Duke of Ferrara, who is a reflection of aristocratic norms, and the duchess, who is a victim of circumstance. Browning uses these ideas to facilitate the reading and make us understand the nuances in the dramatic monologue as his social commentary is what encapsulates the poem’s meaning as a whole. Firstly, Browning uses the setting of the poem to serve his commentary on society, which also allows us to find out about the duke’s socioeconomic background

That is to say, the duke viewed her as his property, believing she wasn’t deserving of happiness outside of his confines. Furthermore, The duke interpreted his duchess’ behavior as a disrespect to his lineage name: “as if she ranked / My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name / With anybody’s gift.” (32-34). Again, Browning shows the duke’s egotistical nature as all he cares about is his lineage, and not so much his duchess. Moreover, if the duke even addressed these concerns with his duchess, it would be, from his point of view, a lowering of his standards as the common fallacy in those times was that women were considered incapable of reasoning. However, Browning is proving that these depictions of women are wrong by making the duke the vacuous one in the poem. For instance, the duke’s reasoning is not grounded in reality because he comes to these bizarre conclusions: “perhaps / Fra Pandolf chanced to say, / “Her mantle laps / Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint / Must never hope to reproduce the faint / Half-flush that dies along her throat.” (18-19). The duke’s assumptions do not make sense to begin with because he just assumes that his duchess has that “spot of joy” on her because the painter was making remarks about her looks. The duke also accuses his duchess of having a heart “too soon made glad, too easily impressed” and thanking men “too good”, when in reality, all of these behaviors he was pointing out were in fact qualities of a gracious person. Nevertheless, this all connects to the duke’s grotesque view of women as being objects and not having the right to happiness. His irrationality has led him to even believe that his socioeconomic status is that of a god’s: “Notice Neptune, though, / Taming a