The Duke is so persuasive as a speaker that something about his request to be seated seems more of an order than being a good host. We have not been aware of becoming ‘under his command’. The Duke has managed to achieve this by the cunning placement of his words. It is the poem’s verse-form that enables him to do this. Browning uses what is a very conventional form – the iambic pentameter (this has five”feet”, each with two syllables, the second [usually] being stressed). Browning arranges the lines in rhyming pairs (couplets) but he also uses the technique of enjambment which is where the lines of a poem run on, they do not use end-stops. Most of the punctuation marks appear within the lines and most of the lines end without a punctuation mark. This technique stops the rhyming couplets from creating a predictable rhythm which would be there throughout the whole of the poem. Browning also uses enjambment because rhyming couplets that stopped at the end of each line would seem mechanical and not at all like real speech.
So we can see that one of the reasons the Duke is so persuasive is because the enjambment makes the poem sound much more conversational. The other and more significant reason is that ‘My Last Duchess’ is a dramatic monologue – this is why the conversational tone is so effective since the Duke (the speaker) and the audience are not kept at a distance from each other. The Duke can draw his listeners in.
The dramatic monologue is the speech of a single character in a scene of dramatic importance. During the monologue, the speaker will reveal what this scene is, as well as its setting and who he is speaking to. What is most characteristic about a dramatic monologue is that the speaker will reveal his motives for being at the scene, as well as his personality. Often, while the speaker is trying hard to justify himself to the audience, he will accidentally show the faults in his character or even unforgivable or evil actions he has taken.
When the Duke begins to reminisce about the Duchess and the sessions where Frà Pandolf worked on her portrait, he is led on to think about the “spot of joy” on her cheek and he tells his listener that it is a blush of pleasure at being the object of male attention. From this point, he presents the Duchess’ character as disloyal and immoral:
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.
(Lines 21-24)
He begins to become obsessive in remembering the reasons why he thinks that joy was a “spot”, an ugly blemish on her cheek. The Duke relies on the assumption that his audience will find his anger at the Duchess entirely justified. – but the more he talks, the more his contempt shows and the more sympathy we feel for the Duchess. He remembers how she smiled on him, whenever he “passed” her – and he remembers with disgust how she smiled on everyone the same way.
“This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive.”
(lines 45-47)
These four abrupt, emotionless sentences bring the Duke back to where he started at the beginning of his monologue, standing in front of the portrait of the Duchess. He does not say what his commands were but there is something ominous in “all smiles stopped together”. In the second line of the poem, the Duke described the image of her in the painting as “looking as if she were alive”. He now uses the same phrase again: “There she stands/As if alive” – this repetition makes the Duke’s words much more sinister. Suddenly his conversation switches subject: “Will’t please you rise?” (line 47). He has decided that the audience has looked enough at the Duchess – in life, the Duke could not control who she looked and smiled upon, but now in death he is able to keep her out of sight and silent “since none puts by/The curtain I have drawn for you, but I” (lines 9-10).
‘My Last Duchess’ relates to another poem by Browning, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. They share similarities in method as they are both written in the form of dramatic monologues. They also share similarities in their concerns – both speakers are obsessive and ruthless men and they both doubt the modesty and loyalty of the women they love. The Duke and Porphyria’s lover become so possessed by their suspicions that their crazed minds lead them to decide that the only way to be sure of the truth is by murdering the Duchess and Porphyria.
In contrast to the Duke, who “gave commands” to dispose of the Duchess, Porphyria’s Lover freely admits he killed Porphyria. We could also say that, in contrast to the Duke, as the unreliable speaker in a dramatic monologue the speaker in this poem is more easily understood. First, the poem was originally published as one of two “Madhouse Cells” which clearly points to the fact that the words of the insane speaker are not to be believed. Second, everything that Porphyria’s lover says is then made false by his own words.He says that “his love of her…[is] all in vain” (line 29), but in fact “she was come through wind and rain” (line 30). He claims that Porphyria is proud yet he does not say how or give any example and she does not show any sign of this – but he later admits that he is proud of what he has done. He also claims that she neglects him, yet Porphyria burst in, full of life to “shut out the cold and the storm” and to heat the “cheerless grate” to make the “cottage warm.”
The actual murder of Porphyria is done in “full-view” of the audience. The speaker describes the process undisguised:
I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her.
(lines 37-41)
It is this image which is the most shocking to the audience, that Porphyria is strangled with her own hair and the horror continues when we learn that the lover sits beside her dead body all night, propping her “smiling rosy little head” (line 52) on his shoulder.
‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ are both dramatic monologues spoken by male characters who control and abuse women (to its extreme). The Duchess and Porphyria have no voices to speak with since they are already dead before the beginning of ‘their’ poems. The Duchess is killed and kept as a painted image and Porphyria is killed and kept as a corpse. Browning’s characterization of men in these poems is extremely difficult not to be affected by.
