Formalist analysis of Browning's "My Last Duchess"

¶ … Last Duchess

An Analysis of Browning's "My Last Duchess"

Browning's "My Last Duchess" begins with an informal construction ("That's my last duchess") establishing the wistful, conversational tone with which Browning's Alfonso speaks of his late wife in the dramatic monologue style so frequently employed by the poet. This paper will analyze the poem from the standpoint of a formalist literary critic, evaluating Browning's "Duchess" according to language, structure, tone, imagery, plot, and other devices.

The plot of Browning's dramatic monologue is simple: Alfonso is strolling both literally and figuratively down memory lane -- a hall which houses a painting (by Fra Pandolf, we are told) of his late wife. The recollections stirred by the painting's viewing reveal the characters of both Alfonso and his "last duchess," and end suddenly, as though the narrator were content to muse only a moment. Ironically, the poem ends as it begins -- seemingly spontaneously (and yet not so -- for there is, in the Duke's sudden shift of focus to a bronze statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse, a kind of elegant transference that puts the portrait of his late wife on par with a figurine of one of the gods). Such is Browning's deft use of imagery -- what appears to be non-sequitur is actually a brilliant and lucid reflection of the mind of a man whose gracious (yet self-serving) demeanor unwittingly equates a simple, humble woman with a strong, magnanimous god.

The graciousness (and pride) of Alfonso is also noticeable in his tone: he speaks to his visitor (and to us) as though the ease of years of friendship were between them. The monologue is a kind of casual, spur-of-the-moment conceit, which summons feelings of incomprehension at the humility born in the breast of his late wife and even still struggling to make its way into the breast of the living duke, about to marry again. The tone is gentle yet baring of the soul -- all is revealed by the Duke, who cannot help but reveal all as he reveals the painting of the one who was unimpressed by vanity. Like Lear, Alfonso admits to a kind of longing for flattery that his last duchess could not possibly have given, for "twas all one!" (25) with her.

The structure of the poem reveals how, in a sense, it has all become one for the Duke as well. In his reminiscence is the fact that her looking upon all things of unequal rank as though each were ranked equally in the face of eternity (where she now resides) had far more truth in it than his absurd longing for obeisance. From the painter's hand who attempted to portray the woman to the husband's words that actually reveal the woman to the hall in which the words are stated, the monologue navigates through a setting that brings the Duke and his "nine-hundred-years-old name" (33) face-to-face with the unsettling fact of his own earthly intransigence. The poem's structure is designed to serve as a journey-narrative -- and just as the narrator arrives at the brink of self-discovery ("Then all smiles stopped together" 46) Alfonso, by turning the subject to that of his expected dowry, spares himself from confronting the fact that he silenced his late wife because she failed to satisfy his pride.