“My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning: Explained
Poem, Summary, History, Poet, and Analysis
The Poem
My Last Duchess
FERRARA
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 pretense
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!
Summary and Basic Information
“My Last Duchess” is a dramatic monologue, as the contents are the words of one man, Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, an Italian noble giving a tour of his private art collection to the emissary of his prospective bride. It reads almost as a parody — the Duke laughing at the dependency and social ignorance of his deceased wife — not only in modernity, but also in its time of inception, as ideas about women and gender were being questioned, reviewed, and criticized by academics and artists alike. Because this poem was written in 1842 and is subject not only to the language of its time but also constrained by meter (iambic pentameter) a summary of exactly what is happening might be necessary to fully enjoy the humor and genius of the work. I’ve found a great resource in Lit Charts when trying to understand the poem myself, and included the link here.
For the majority of this article, I will be using a feminist lens to analyze the poem, so while other facets of the work might not be adequately emphasized, I have chosen to focus on what the poem says about femininity because I feel it is the most demanding question the work addresses.
History
While Robert Browning is English, “My Last Duchess” is set in Italy, which lags behind the former in granting women rights, but might have also been chosen as the setting because critiquing another culture is always safer than addressing one’s own. Below is a comparison of the two countries in regards to gender equality.
England
Many date the feminist movement’s inception to 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention, and the subsequent reading of The Declaration of Sentiments by Cady Stanton; however, the British Mary Wollstonecraft was also a prominent feminist, sometimes even referred to as the Mother of Feminism, who lived in the eighteen century, and was known for her opus, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. And, of course, while modern critics have warned us to be prudent when using any woman in power as a paragon of feminism (especially in this case, as these early queens did little for women’s rights, it seems) Britain does have a history of legitimate female leaders that is remarkably extensive, Mary I (or Bloody Mary) being the first in 1553. This link includes a list of powerful female rulers and co-rulers of England. Other significant advances in England’s feminist history are listed below:
- 1869: John Stuart Mill, Utilitarian economist and philosopher, publishes his book The Subjection of Women.
- 1870: married women can legally possess their earnings.
- 1880: three women are awarded degrees by the University of London.
- 1918: women over 30 are allowed to vote if they meet a property qualification.
- 1928: women over 21 are allowed to vote, like men.
- 1970: an act requiring equity in women’s pay is passed
- 1975: The Sex Discrimination Act is passed, making it illegal to discriminate against women in employment, education, and training. Women also gain the right to maternity pay.
- 1979: Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman Prime Minister of Britain.
Italy
Before 1861, Italy was made of disunified city states, the Risorgimento period was an era where people were calling for state amalgamation. In 1865, however, after unification, little was done to include women in this new system; the Codice di Famigli were responsible for regulating family law, and this code was not favorable to women. Like in many other western states, women could not vote, keep their income, divorce their husbands (were actually thrown in jail for infidelity), and children were the property of the husband rather than jointly apportioned.
It was only in 1903 that the Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane was created, part of the International Council of Women, with objectives of securing rights for women and raising awareness about the lack of gender inequality. These efforts were endorsed by conservative and socialist women alike. Meanwhile, common women were also entering the discussion: Ernestina Prola became the first Italian woman to obtain a driving license (1907), Emma Strada was the first to get an engineering degree (1908), and Teresa Labriola was the first to pass the Bar in Italy (1912). Around this time, in 1908, the Queen of Italy, Elena, supported the First Congresso delle Donne Italiane, and also gave a speech recommending the creation of a financial support and pension system for women; she also talked about improving pregnancy healthcare in the country.
Later, like in America, when World World II afflicted Italy, men went off to war, and women proved their capacity to work and learn in the factories. “The lower chamber of the Italian Parliament approved women’s right to vote in 1919. However, the law didn’t pass because the Government fell before the Senate could approve it. The same happened in 1922, the year of the Marcia on Roma” (a coup led by Fascist leader Benito Mussolini).
And after the war? Well, on February 1, 1945 Italian women were given their allowed voting rights, and exercised them shortly after in the Referendum of 1946 to choose between Republic and Monarchy; and later, in 1948, the Italian Republic’s Constitution legally guaranteed women equal rights. But although this was the formal record of emancipation, it was not altogether societally effective. Below is a list of women who continued to fight, not for rights denied necessarily, but for rights that were still not fully acceptable for women to exercise:
- 1951: Angela Cigolani becomes the first Italian woman in government.
- 1958: the ban on brothels is enforced (although depending on your feminist perspective, this could be considered regressive).
- 1959: the Women Italian Police Corp is created.
- 1961: Italian women can become diplomats and judges.
- 1970: divorce becomes legal.
So, in the time of “My last Duchess,” women are not legally allowed separate identities from their families or husbands; they are economically and socially bound to the males of their life — secondary humans. The poem was written before both the Seneca Falls convention, before the Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane faction was created. Written before Italy was even a unified state — it’s an early poem of feminist reading, but also early in the modern world as a whole.
The History Within the Poem
Although the conversation is largely imagined, the characters had real basis in the world; the epigraph, “Ferrara,” alludes to Alfonso II d’Este, the fifth Duke of Ferrara who at age 24, in 1558, married Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici, the 13-year-old daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany who is pictured in the painting below.
While the Medicis are now in the pantheon of the meddling rich families, they were new to high society at the time. They had educated Lucrezia, and her dowery was more than nominal, but the marriage was still one of unequal status: a nouveau rich family joining a “nine-hundred-years-old name.” This could account for some of the resentment felt within the poem, and in reality, the relationship seems mutually contemptible. The Duke actually abandoned his bride for two years, and she died at only age 21 (there were rumors, likely spread by enemies of Ferrara, of poisoning, but it is suggested that she died of tuberculosis).
A few years after she died, Ferrara asked to marry a daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I. The marriage was arranged, and Nikolaus Madruz, a courier, is likely the person Ferrara addresses in the poem. Albeit the painter Frà Pandolf and sculptor Claus of Innsbruck are fictional.
Robert Browning’s Early Life
Born on May 7, 1812 in London to a middle-class family, Browning was the first child of Robert Browning, a clerk in the Bank of England, and a nonconformist musician Sarah Anna Wiedemann Browning. The musical interests of his mother paired with the scholarly interests of his father (who amassed some 6,000 books, many of them rare) allowed for the young Browning to cultivate his varied interests, who intelligent, was also averse to formal schooling. For instance, at 12, he had written a book of poetry entitled Incondita (which he later destroyed as he lacked a publisher), but after attending private schools, was taught in the home by a tutor, learning French, Greek, Italian and Latin fluently by 14. His rage to master was great, but his liking of school was less so.
Further, Browning grew up in a house that not only encouraged the pursuit of knowledge but also encouraged the practical application of philosophy and intellect, namely in abolition; as a boy, the Robert Browning Senior had been sent to make his fortune in the West Indies but found slavery distasteful and hoped for opportunities within art and scholarship. However, the Robert Browning Senior’s father disapproved of these aspirations, leading to his partial abandonment of these talents so he could support his family through bank clerkship. Therefore, when he had a son, he gave him every opportunity to realize his artistic ambitions:
He would later go on to marry Elizabeth Barrett, and by the time of his death (1889), he was one of the most respected English poets. Click here to see some of his most famous poems (I suggest “Porphyria’s Lover” and “Fra Filippo Lippi).
Of course, there is much more to Browning’s success than what I have listed here, and I encourage anyone reading to go past my simplistic depiction of his life.
Analysis
Throughout “My Last Duchess” you feel as though you’re sitting with rambling company in awkward silence, like at a funeral where the husband complains about how his wife never lost that extra weight she had, and that it’s her fault she got a heart attack and died. Like most would think a funeral would be to honor life, most would also assume a painting would be commissioned for the purpose of loving observance. However, Ferrara uses the painting as an object of ridicule and reminder of his personal unhappiness while implying the mutual unsatisfaction of his Duchess (or rather, her glazed acceptance of it). There is a line in Lousia May Alcott’s short story, “Love and Self-Love” that seems applicable: “I loved her as I loved a picture or a flower — a little more better than my house and hound — but far less than I loved my most unworthy self.” This meaning, he loved her in the shallow way we can have strong but inconsequential opinions about frivolity — we feel as though the opinions we have ornate things is more substantive than the actual objects we scoff at for seeming vapidness. For instance, I feel as though everyone will hate a TV show for its lack of artistry, but those same people will continue to watch the show because they have nothing else to do. We have such strong opinions about people and art, but never wonder what it says that we commissioned the art or helped to form the people. We never wonder at ourselves when we admire the very qualities we claim to critique, for it is interesting that we can be amazed at the solid gold frame of mirror at the Versailles Palace, remark that it was a waste of money and destructor of a regime, and yet never see our own faces in glass marveling at the display. You did, afterall, visit the palace.
In the case of Ferrara, he has several objections to his wife’s easy digestion of praise. However, does not seem upset over this quality, but rather wishes it were prejudiced all but him. (This is, as he describes his old wife to his new wife’s emissary. Clearly he is not dreadfully loyal either.) It’s like going to the palace, and knowing people starved to build it. We question the cruelness, but how would we feel if that castle were built instead for us? Ferrara wants his wife to be a castle of infinitely interesting rooms, but in reality, only really wants her to have one: a shrine of him. Ferrara’s remarks that the duchess “had a heart — how shall I say— too soon made glad, too easily impressed,” and is disgusted by this indiscriminatory acceptance his wife seemed to have held; there is some implication that this means her expectations of herself were low, as she seems amazed at anyone who tells her she is beautiful. As Judith Murray will remark, susceptibility to flattery is a sign that of a person who has lived without external acknowledgment of their talent. And in this time, women are criticized for vanity, but not allowed to pursue cultivation of the mind. Women are paintings that can be laughed or scorned.
There is also the ridiculousness of the power dynamic. At the end of the poem, the Duke tells his company to “Notice Neptune, though, taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!” Neptune, the god of the sea, tames a small fish, and this is seen as a great display of power. Ferrara, a rich man, and his Duchess’s only way to live comfortably, claims to have held ownership over a sad creature without the right to her own money, profession, or even to her confined domesticity roles (her children would be her husbands). Unlike David and Goliath, the Duchess has little societal backing — at least there were people hoping for David’s eventual victory. But the Duchess didn’t have the government on her side, and she most clearly, as a descendent of the deviant Eve, did not have God.
And the funniest part is, Ferrara seems ashamed of his wife’s actions, but still asks us to look and admire her in the first few lines. He seems ashamed of her lackings, but if she were more refined, wouldn’t this make her an object unable to subjugate? Ferrara does not seem to particularly care for his former wife (he even says that he prefers her to a painting than a living person) but he seems willing and even fervent at times to possess her. I suppose you still want to be invited to the party, even if you don’t want to go. Further, while the Duke makes fun of his Duchess, Browning makes fun of the Duke. The title, “My Last Duchess,” seems to imply the joking tone that we would equate in modern times with “Oh, my fifth husband.” And we laugh because it seems hilarious that these capricious people make large promises to people they seem to discard at whim. Oh, my last duchess, what a ditz! Hope the next one is better. Wink, wink.
Of course, we shouldn’t judge earlier societies so harshly, as we are only as good as we have learned to be from these former mistakes. And as we, in the twenty-first century, read a poem from the nineteenth, about a subject from the sixteenth, we should remember that our interpretations can be flawed, especially from such a distance. But that’s not what this poem is about. It’s not just a historical tale, but a warning that even our simple actions, such as owning harmless paintings, can be real indicators of our minds and values. It’s a poem about celebrating how far we’ve come, mourning genius lost to ignorance, and continuing to be thoughtful about the limitations we impose on players in a game we’ve made.
