¶ … Last Duchess
Jealousy, Rage, and Possession in Browning's "My Last Duchess"
Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" emphasizes Victorian ideals of women and allows readers to understand how they were objectified. In this macabre poem, Browning uses the themes of jealousy, rage, and possessiveness to describe what motivated the Duke to behave as he did. In the poem, the unnamed narrator has transformed his wife into an object on numerous occasions and appears to pride himself on controlling women, and nonchalantly boasts to the emissary making arrangements for his next marriage how he controlled his previous wife and the consequences of her not obeying him. The narrator remains oblivious to his own faults throughout the poem and focuses only adding to his collection of prized possession, whether they are actual objects or wives.
In "My Last Duchess," the narrator objectifies his wife while she is alive and after she has died. While the duchess is alive, the narrator tries to transform his wife into an object, a possession he can control and manipulate. While his wife was alive, the narrator failed to assert his claim over his wife and her behavior, which often sent him into a jealous rage. The narrator exclaims, "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."[footnoteRef:1] Through this complaint, the narrator implies that his wife was unfaithful because she was too easily impressed and was enchanted by the world around her. The narrator's jealousy also seems...
Furthermore, the narrator continues to argue that despite carrying his "favor at her breast,"[footnoteRef:2] she accepted gifts such as "[the] bough of cherries some officious fool/Broke in the orchard for her,"[footnoteRef:3] which he construed as being unfaithful because he believed that if she was willing to accept these gifts so easily, then she would also easily attempt to repay the favor sexually. The narrator contends, "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."[footnoteRef:4] Not only was he jealous of his wife, but the narrator was also jealous of his family's name, furiously admonishing his wife for shaming him with her behavior. In this context, it appears that in addition to attempting to control his wife and treating her as an object or property. Not only is the narrator possessive of his wife, but he is also possessive of his family's name and heritage and does not realize that he has also turned it, and what it represents, into something else he can control, and give and take away at will. [1: Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess," line 21-24, accessed August 21, 2013, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15701] [2: Ibid, line 25] [3: Ibid, line 27-28] [4: Ibid, line 31-34]
While the narrator recognizes his wife's faults, regardless of how minor they might be, he does not attempt to rectify her behavior and expects her to automatically behave…
