“MY LAST DUCHESS” BY ROBERT BROWNING
TECHNIQUES
This poem is a dramatic monologue in which one speaker (monologue) reveals his personality by various direct / indirect means. There is a sense of setting and context for the monologue; also there is a sense of how the speaker will sound, move, gesture; there is also a sense of characterisation through what is said and the tone of what is said; despite its poetic form there will be a very strong sense of spoken English.
Metre is the way of describing the particular rhythm of a poem based on the nukner and the pattern of the syllables which are stressed. This poem is nominally in iambic pentameter – five iambic feet in a line e.g. x/ x/ x/ x/ x/ . It is easier to see that the lines rhyme in couplets – rhyming couplets. Such verse seems very poetic and obviously poetic unlike prose but Browning uses a number of techniques to make the poem sound like natural speech despite the very structured lines.
E.g. run on lines where the sense of the lines will “run on” to the next line as it might do in a sentence; the use of parenthesis to give the impression of “asides”; the punctuation generally is used to show hesitation as if a person were talking; there is also references to the person listening; there are also references to what another person said as people do when talking: “So, she said…”; there is a sense of using gestures – “That’s my last Duchess…”; tone is used to indicate how the speaker talks, suggesting his attitude and character.
N.B. You must be able to illustrate ALL these techniques with quotation and comment on the effects of them – to convey a dramatic scene, give a sense of a conversation and portray a character.
Browning (1812-89) was a poet who wished to present realistic characters in his work. He wrote plays as well as poetry and was a master of the dramatic monologue as a poetic form.. He wrote also “The Bishop Orders his Tomb” in this style. He had a great interest in Renaissance Italy and a fascination with evil, both of which feature here.
THEMES / IDEAS
Although the poem can stand on its own as a characterisation of an arrogant evil aristocrat, it is also able to communicate certain ideas.
1. That charm, intelligence, culture, breeding do not necessarily signify morality. In fact the Duke’s lack of morality might be thought worse because he is obviously a civilised person who knows exactly what he is doing!
2. That love of beautiful things can become a negative and not a positive characteristic if it turns to selfish possessiveness.
3. That the power of wealth and position can lead people to believe that they are beyond the reach of normal laws. They become so arrogant that they do not even try to keep their behaviour secret.
4. The poem comments indirectly on the dangers of arranged marriages where the brides might be seen as merely objects who are just part of a financial package. And the objects disposable! In a post feminist age this is even more alarming and seen as completely unacceptable yet in some cultures still prevails!
5. The contrast between the Duke’s veneer of charm, sophistication, politeness and culture and the ruthlessness with which he dealt with the imagined slight to his pride. Again it shows the danger of judging people by their superficial behaviour. Perhaps you know of some people in public life who present one image to the world but have been found out to be very different in reality.
6. The danger of that family of characteristics: pride, arrogance, vanity, self-centredness. Throughout the poem we see how they affect the Duke. The words my, me and I feature prominently. The first and last lines refer to objects he is obviously so proud of owning – my last Duchess and the stature cast in bronze for me.
In contrast to the Duke we are presented with the opposing virtues of the Duchess who is everything the Duke is not: natural, demure, lacking in arrogance, having the common touch, taking pleasure in simple everyday things, evoking affection in everyone she meets, lacking any sense of superiority.
She seems to have a simple natural purity which further highlights the Duke’s underlying viciousness and that total lack of concern for morality - which is described as amorality.
CRITICAL EVALUATION (PEE)
Requirements :
Personal engagement with text, techniques, themes and ideas.
Knowledge of the text – quotations and understanding of poetic techniques.
Structured and relevant response to key elements of question.
Enjambement: run on lines:
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive;
Caesurae – pauses in the centre of lines rather than at the ends ( end-stopped lines):
I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Dramatic stage directions:
Will’t please you sit and look at her?
Parentheses – asides to capture the sentence structures of speech using brackets and dashes:
(since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
Tone – giving the characteristics of the Duke – power, arrogance and conceit etc:
Strangers like you
and
If they durst.
Sarcasm That spot of joy
And bitterness
Ellipsis – to indicate hesitation in speech:
She ha d
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 .
Ellipsis and dashes to indicates musings of an all-powerful arrogant conceited aristocrat:
She thanked men, - good; but thank
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?
Word choice, tone and archaic language:
And if she let herself be lessoned so, not plainly set
Her wits to yours , forsooth , and made excuse,
E’en then would be some stooping, and I chuse
Never to stoop.
Dramatic stage directions, chilling tone and deliberate implications followed by an antithesis of everyday courtesies, charm yet implied power and threat:
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;
Power, amorality and arranged marriages highlighted by antithesis and tone:
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting is my object. Nay we’ll go
Together down, Sir!
Contempt, conceit and arrogance disguised by charm, culture and good manners:
Notice Neptun e , though,
Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.
The use of the techniques of rendering speech sentence structures in poetic form using rhyming couplets is a work of great art itself. The picture of the Duke painted in words by Browning reveals the inner man hidden beneath a veneer of respectability and charm, culture and breeding. The antithesis of these two sides of his personality heightens the amorality of his nature in contrast to the demure, natural, sweet, fun-loving last Duchess. The ideas expressed in the 19th Century are still relevant today in our world of image, possessions and power.