Long questions from My Last Duchess

 L.A.Q from My Last Duchess 

1.Discuss My Last Duchess as a dramatic monologue 

Ans. A Dramatic monologue is a type of poem in which through an abrupt beginning, an imagined speaker addresses and interacts with a presumed audience whose presence can be felt even through their silence. The speech is compressed into a single vivid scene and serves a narrative sense of the speaker’s history and psychological insight into his character.  

The poem begins with the monologue of the Duke of Ferrara, a historical figure from the Italian Renaissance,who pulls back a curtain to reveal the painting of his “last” wife to the emissary of a Count:

“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive.”

The Duke conflates the painting and his wife into an object of “wonder” to be possessed and shown off. Therefore, “she” is addressed as “that’s”, an object of Duke’s unquestionable authority and dominance. The word “last,” hints at his plans for a series of wives, which soon is made clear in the identity of the audience who were the emissary of the Count to bring forth a proposal of marriage along with a lucrative prospect of a handsome dowry. The silence of the audience also juxtaposes the verbosity of the Duke’s pride and affluence and his unreluctant violence against his wife on the suspicion of infidelity which is nothing but an excuse to conceal his dominance and destructive pride that demands a despotic obedience and surrender from his wife as per his will. The unveiling of the curtain ironically reveals the true colour of cruelty and psychological complexity of the Duke who hardly knows any difference between a human and an object.With a subtle narrative stroke, Browning finely conveys to the readers a source of the Duke’s motives—sexual rivalry for his wife’s attention, his avariciousness for dowry and his absolutism by showing Neptune taming the sea horse to the envoy, suggesting his desire to tame the “voice” of his women. All these aspects combined to make the poem one of the finest instances of a dramatic monologue.

 

2. Character of the Duke. 

Ans. Robert Browning has chosen the form of a dramatic monologue to encapsulate the psychic reality of a character within a few moments of his utterances. The voice that is only audible is that of the Duke of Ferrara entertaining an envoy of a count who is supposed to be his new in-laws. Apparently, the Duke intends to surmise the envoy with his tone, diction of words and a dominant presence only to create an impression of him to be sophisticated and a great connoisseur of arts. But, eventually, he, in the process of unveiling his ‘last’ duchess reveals the true colour of neurotic, domineering and possessive disposition. The aberrant psychology of the duke is noticed in the way he is jealous of everyone around the Duchess, even his poor "officious fools”. His dominance is articulated the way he impels an artist to complete the portrait within a day, leaving him no room for his artistic self expression. He wants the duchess to hold him on high pedestal and treat him with reverence for his favour of a “nine hundred years’ old” family name upon her. This shows how he is steeped in the pride of his prehistoric ancestry. Unfortunately, the duchess was too simple to comprehend his cruelty and consequently, he gave command and “all smiles stopped together”. For the duke everything around him is an object including his wife whom he considers nothing but a territory of his ownership and the failure of which leads to cold-blooded murder. The duke stands for exhibitionism to show off his prowess and possession of great pieces of art and his love for them as they have no “ voice”. His greed is evident in his mention of a lucrative dowry. But that is not enough to please him. What he wants is absolute docility from his wife, suggested by Neptune, taming the sea-horse, a symbolic replica of him who tames the “ voice” of his women.  

3. Character of the Duchess. Narrate the difference between the Duke's portrayal of the Duchess and the way you perceive her character.

Ans. The character of the duchess is modelled after Lucrezia Medici, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Duke of Tuscany, who was believed to have been killed by her husband—the Duke of Ferrara. But, Browning uses the Duchess’s character to illustrate the detrimental effects of a patriarchal and moralistic view of Victorian society that used to conceive women as “an angel of the house” whose territory is confined within the domestic world. Through the Duke’s monologue, the poem highlights the oppressive dynamics of power and control that the Duke imposes upon her, treating her merely an object of his whims.Thus, the duchess is not much of a character in her own, rather she functions largely as an object to demonstrate the extent of the duke’s possessiveness. 

From the duke’s filtered biased eyes she was described as overly flirtatious, equally appreciative of everyone’s compliments, and easily impressed by both significant and trivial things. He views her as flawed as she did not conform to his expectations of submissiveness and deference. The “spot of joy” that the duke interprets as a sign of her infidelity, was nothing but a gesture of a shy woman in front of a stranger. Her simplicity and innocence is discernible in the following lines :

 “too soon made glad, / Too easily impressed.” 

Her smile , however pure, was considered by Duke to be his sole belonging and a denial to his oppressive mechanism. Thus he gave commands and “all smiles stopped together”. The duchess was courteous to all she came around despite their class and creed, and this starkly contradicts the duke’s maintenance of the hierarchy with his "officious fools” and the emissary of the count. Therefore, the Duchess despite being lifeless, seems quite alive in the representation of the duke and in the reception of the readers.

4. What role does the emissary play in the poem My Last Duchess? 

Ans. The unnamed emissary of a certain count plays the purpose of a silent audience pivotal to the structure of a dramatic monologue. As through the emissary, we, the readers, go through a growing sense of discomfort upon hearing the duke’s explanation of the Duchess and get acquainted with the true shade of the Duke himself. The silent emissary allows the space for the Duke to vent up his insolent pride in his prehistoric ancestry that turns him a despotic husband, a dominant master and above all a brutal man who does not hesitate to silent his wife forever when she doesn't seem to conform to his domineering expectations. It is through the emissary we get to see how the duke controls the gaze of his silent spectator to look around the objects of art he possesses with pride. The treatment of the emissary by duke evidently reflects his preference to maintain a hierarchy of power to make his subordinates treat him with deference. Like, the Wedding Guest in Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the White Man in Joseph Conrad’s Lagoon, the emissary silently leads to the revelation of the Duke's disposition and his past misdeeds but, here without a repentance. The silence of the emissary juxtaposes the verbosity of the duke and his absolute desire to tame the subordinate “voices” as Neptune “taming a seahorse.”

5. How does Browning deal with the theme of masculine gaze of patriarchy in Duke's treatment of the Duchess ? Or, What aspect of Victorian society is reflected through the narrative of the poem? 

Ans. A complete study of My Last Duchess can hardly be completed without understanding the pretext of the Victorian gender roles that used to look upon women “an angel of the house” or an object of a male gaze. In Victorian society the women were given a secondary role and her image was conceived as a mother, wife, daughter in terms of her relationship to her male relatives, allowing her no “room of their own”. This relegated women to the domestic and “immanent” role in the patriarchal hegemony. This dominant ideology of sexism led to the objectification of a woman who was treated as an inferior to man and therefore, an “object” to be looked upon. Thus, the Duke’s ego was not only self-fed but encouraged by the social milieu as well. His perspective about women was a product of his time. Hence, the duchess is represented to us from the biased perspective of the duke, filtered with male chauvinism and an insolent pride in prehistoric ancestry. The way he reveals that the duchess had incurred his displeasure by her expansive friendliness and her refusal to acknowledge his superiority in all things, it clearly reinstates the Victorian expectations from a woman to love, honour, and obey her husband as her marriage vows stated. Therefore, “the spot of joy” on her cheeks, her being too “easily impressed” and her growing “smiles” seemed to defy the prescriptive gender norms that Victorian society advocated. Consequently, the duke gave commands and “all smiles stopped together”. This articulation was a spectacle to generate a sense of “discipline and punishment” to reassert his power and affluence. Thus, the microcosm of a single duke’s psychic reality serves to portray the psychological phenomena of a time that conceived woman as an object of a male gaze and territory.