Browning’s My Last Duchess:Analysis- How does the characterization of the Duke affect you?

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
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 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 exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

 

I have discussed this poem several times on this blog(click here) g but today I wanted to share  something new with you. These new ideas can help you think about the Browning poem slightly differently than perhaps you have before.

So as you read this I would like you to think about the over crowded, ‘wordiness’ of the Duke’s dramatic monologue and imagine him standing right before you talking in this rather peculiar and unsettling way.

Do you find him pompous? Is he too fond of his own voice?

Why does he want to talk? Is he confessing to his crime or celebrating his crime  through reenacting it to his listeners.

Anecdotes are a popular way of communicating and this ‘anecdote’ is ironically surprising in its subject matter and the fact that the Duke’s power makes such an anecdote possible.

For the Duke can swagger through his story, knowing no one has the authority to punish him.

Now imagine this voice, listen to it and decide whether…..

Is he ranting in a peculiarly ‘cold’ way? What is the ‘tone’ of his voice?

Could you even describe his verbal performance as being like a cold fever; Oxymoronic I know, but you think about it.

A cold feverishness perhaps to his monologue? He is a self confessed killer after all.

May be you think a  ‘fastidious fever‘ perhaps?

So imagine the Duke here, right before you, and imagine the sound of his voice as he intones on and on about his importance, his status -his ability to murder his young wife because he ‘gave commands.’

Imagine….

The Duke is standing before us and the Count’s messenger or ’emissary’ gesturing towards a portrait of his ‘last’ wife who was painted skilfully and expensively by a famous artist named Fra Pandolf.

We are listening to a verbal portrait which is not unusual in itself until we start to notice how the words only focus on the dead Duchess in a negative manner and strangely seem to read ordinarily positive personal  attributes like smiles and blushes in  very pejorative and damning ways.

The Duke breaks up the Duchess into bits. His voice dismembers her. She is only viewed through certain behaviors or bodily bits. This is called ‘synecdoche’ and always creates a feeling of alienation in a text.

Think about your own experience. Do you dislike others because of their smiles? Because they blush?Surely the opposite is usually true. we like people because they behave in warm and friendly ways. We find this reassuring. 

But the Duke is very different. He is a sadistic megalomaniac who relishes his ability to remove anyone he finds irritating.

Surely this type of dislike suggests something pathological is going on inside the psyche of the duke?

He imprisons the Duchess even in death behind a curtain that he controls; she has become a work of art, a beautiful, yet lifeless object.

You go back to the smiles and the blushes. Surely we do we miss people because their smiles are no longer with us?

The Duke like many Victorian men, sees the friendly, blushing radiance of the Duchess as signs of her dangerous sexuality and attractiveness.  Subsequently she becomes imprisoned within the Duke’s malign net of words.

In a curious way, the cold sterility of the Duke’s vocabulary also seems secretly or covertly paranoid, even insane. The apparent cold,clinical detachment masking an unhealthy obsession with the signs of the Duchesses betrayal.

When anyone is paranoid, all the ‘signs’ they fixate upon, reinforce their version of reality. They read the world ‘otherwise’ in terms of their ‘map of reality’. Everything is seen to justify their belief system, their premise.

The Duke regards women as commodities; he believes they are not trustworthy and likely to betray his 900 year old name. He creates a fiction, believes it and then murderously acts upon it.

Curiously the Duke’s  insanity is every bit as agitated and  brutal as Stanley Kowalski’s violent misogyny  in  Tennessee William’s nightmarish,  brilliant play A Streetcar Named Desire, except Williams’ play is very much Southern Gothic; all heat, sexuality and overwrought tears!

By contrast, the Duke lives in Ferrara, an ostensibly mannered and cultured Italian city during the Renaissance.

Both protagonists are devoid of compassion towards women and purposefully ‘read’ women negatively, even sadistically.

Yet paranoid characters also make compelling viewing, even compelling ‘writers’ within the boundaries of their texts.

You can certainly ‘hear’ the Duke’s mental instability progressively percolating through the poem, just as we hear Kowalski’s brutal undermining analysis of the fragile heroine Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar named Desire.

Both texts reveal the power of verbal brutality and the way in which verbal cruelty can become physical , resulting in the literal murder of the Duchess and the sexual violation and mental ‘murder’ of Blanche Dubois.

Imagine the damaging power of words. Now read the poem again….