Robert Browning: My Last Duchess

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's husband, Robert Browning, also was a poet. However, he did not enjoy the same popularity during his lifetime as Mrs. Browning. Robert Browning's poetry gained more notoriety after his death. Browning's poetry raised questions about society and what was proper through violent and grotesque images. His work, My Last Duchess employs such tactics to shock the audience awareness.

The perspective is from the recently widowed Duke of Ferrera who is meeting an emissary to arrange another marriage. He stops at the portrait of his previous wife and begins to tell the tale of her demise.

"Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. 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, Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even if you had skill
In speech --(which I have not)-- to make you will
Quite clear to such an one" (line 30- 37).

While speaking of his late wife, the Duke reveals his own jealous nature. He envies other men around his wife. He is suspicious of her actions and does not trust her.  He believes that she holds his gift of his name and the same level as the gifts other men give her, but he does not ask his wife her opinion of the gifts. Instead, he chooses to live in his paranoia that the Duchess is unfaithful and a flirt. All of his accusations are in his mind. He lacks proof of her infidelity and because the poem is told from his perspective the audience also does not know if the wife was immoral. However, the Duke in his paranoia still murders his wife. He "gave commands; then all her smiles stop together" (line 45-46). The Duke wants to believe his wife was committing a sexual sin, therefore he kills her. The Duke reacts much like the other Victorians except he takes the punishment of a sexual woman a step further to murder. An open and sexual woman is something to be feared. Victorian women were meant to be looked upon as innocent virgins, not flirts who openly seek attention from men. Therefore, the Duchess had to die for inviting sin to her life.

However, I do not think Browning believes the Duchess has to die. His image of her death is simply to cause a reaction from the reader. Browning is trying to incite an emotion from the audience. It is up to the audience to decide who is wrong in the poem, the Duke or the Duchess? Who possesses the moral high ground in the poem. The Duke murders his wife, but he believes he was in the right. The Duchess may flirt, but there is not concrete evidence of anything more. He is asking Victorians if sex is truly the bigger sin, or should Victorians reevaluate their ideas of sex and sin.