My Last Duchess (p.663)

In the poem, My Last Duchess, the Duke of Ferrara is giving a tour of his castle to the servant of a Count. While giving the tour, he stops in front of a painting of the late Duchess and begins to tell the servant about her.  As I read this poem I immediately realized certain characteristics of the Duke. He is wealthy, he is proud of his status and he is a product of his time. We see that he is wealthy because in the last line of the poem he shows the servant a bronze statue “cast in bronze for [him]!” (line 56) and he lives lavishly in a palace. When the Duke is telling his story of his last duchess you catch this sense of pride and arrogance. In a part of the poem he says, “as if she ranked/ My gift of nine-hundred-years old name/ With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame/ This sort of trifling. Even had you skill/ In speech-(which I have not)- to make your will/ Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this/ Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,/ Or there you exceed the mark” (lines 33-39) He not only shows he is proud of his ranking and his “name”, but he feels he is too good the have to tell the Duchess what she is doing wrong that bothers him.  He doesn’t believe he should have to actually say the command out loud but the Duchess should just know.

            I believe the Duke tries to act proud and like he is so great, but realistically he has self esteem issues. He tells the servant that the Duchess was too friendly with other guys and even a little sexual towards them,  that she smiled too much.  He says “ Sir. t’was not/ Her husband’s presence only, called that spot/ Of joy into the Duchess cheek (lines 13-15) …. She had/ A heart- how should I say?- too soon made glad,/ Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er/ She looked on, and he looks went everywhere.” (lines 21-24)But as I read on I gathered that some of this may be just in the Dukes mind. The Duchess may have smiled at other people, but I feel that smiles can simply be a sign of kindness. The Duke did not take her smiling this way. He did not even tell her what she did wrong he just “gave the commands:/ Then all smiles stopped together.” (lines 45&46) When I first read this, I did not believe that the Duke could have possibly killed the Duchess, but in the next line when he says “There she stands/ As if alive.” (line 46) I came to the chilling realization that he did in fact kill her.

            The impact of the Duke’s arrogance, jealousy and suspicious nature when it came to the way the Duchess interacted with others possibly resulted in the Duke forbidding any contact between the Duchess and others.  That isolation and the Duke’s paranoia about his Duchess’s outward joy in living would have been enough to possibly kill her.  The Duke possibly learned first-hand that the love of a woman is not a possession that can be locked away and viewed when one wishes.  That possessive nature and his attempt at locking her away would have killed their happiness and possibly the Duchess along with it.  It was never clear whether the Duchess was promiscuous but the Duke’s fear that a blush or a smile was indicative of her infidelity dominated the theme of the poem.  To capture a smile in a painting that the Duke cherished so much was ironic in view of his behavior and the way he actively tried to prevent the Duchess from displaying the very smile captured for eternity in the painting.

            This poem shows that the Duke is just a product of his time. He was in an arranged marriage, which was very common in his time and he did not take much value in his wife.  During this time period women were not held to very high standards. They were to be as appealing as possible to the men, while still being “proper”.  This meant that although the women went through school for many years to learn to be suitable for a man, the men still fantasized about different kind of women and only took their wives as someone to do household duties. The Duke had no emotional or romantic tie to his wife. He killed her! Then he just found another Duchess.