Write a critical appreciation of Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”-facexor

Write a critical appreciation of Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”.

My Last Duchess
My Last Duchess

Answer: "My Last Duchess" is written by Browning. In this poem, he dramatizes the internal conflict of the speaker. He is conflicted with the faults of his last wife. He desires for change in the upcoming marriage to his new fiancee. Ultimately, the struggle deals with power and jealousy.

The beginning note is supposed to elucidate that the speaker of the poem is that the Duke of Ferrara. This imparts the reader with location and class environment. At the opening lines, Browning sets the scene for the poem, focusing the reader's imagination on the painting on the wall. The central premise of the poem is put in place presenting the dead wife will appear to come back to life only through the artistry of the picture.

Using a painting of that former duchess as a center, he describes what he saw as her unfaithfulness, frivolity, and stubbornness, and implies that he prefers her as a painting rather than as a living woman. Throughout the poem, the duke reveals his belief that ladies are objects to be controlled, possessed, and discarded. In many ways, this reflects the thinking of his era, when Victorian social norms denied women the right to be fully independent human beings. Through this kind of portrayal of the duke, Browning critiques such a viewpoint, presenting sexism and objectification as dehumanizing processes that rob women of their full humanity.

Ultimately, the poem heavily implies that the duke was so vexed by the idea that his former wife had an inner life of her own that he had the "last duchess" killed. Of course, the duke avoids explicitly confessing to assassinating his wife, and Browning himself allegedly once said that the duke may have simply had her sent to a convent.

Thus, the poem underscores how objectifying women ultimately silences them, robbing them of their voices and autonomy.

1 comment:

ajay said...

Thanks 👍