‘That’s my Last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive…’
So begins one of the most and chilling poems in the English Language. The seemingly casual gesture ( so typical of Browning’s Dramatic Monologues) frames a tale of monomania and murder. The Duke has killed his young wife, the Duchess and silenced her forever by making her into just another artefact or commodity decorating his palatial home. The Duchess is voiceless and remains silent behind the ‘curtain’ behind which he has incarcerated her seemingly forever.
But perhaps not.
For Browning’s wife resurrects the doomed Duchess in ‘Lord Walter;s Wife’ and makes her retaliate against the mutism to which Victorian Women has been so condemned. Just as if Dickens’ Oour Mutual Friend, a secret from the past rises to the surface and demands to be acknowledged and heard.
The locality is different, this is no longer the safely exotic world of Ferrara and the past.
more later.