'My last Duchess' composed by Robert Browning.

The poem deliberately engages its readers on a psychological level, for the musings of the duke force one to think about the moral aspects of his actions. He starts by reminiscing about his deceased duchess’s portrait and then his thoughts wander to the duchess herself. From his ramblings it is clear enough that he considered her an incorrigible flirt who dared defy his authority and express joy at other men’s achievements. This is evident from the following lines- “she thanked men—good! But thanked them Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked my gift of a nine hundred years old name with anybody’s gift.” This disapproval of her conduct and subsequent jealousy in fact helped him plan her murder as he himself states quite clearly in the following lines-“this grew, I gave commands; then all the smiles stopped together.”

But the duke’s chauvinism and thirst for power do not merely stop at that. He is now determined to marry the daughter of the Count of Tyrol, whose dowry is currently being negotiated with his agent. In this attitude, he demonstrates the characteristics of the morally dissolute renaissance male—power hungry, chauvinistic and suspicious minded.

The height of his amorality of character is however most pungently expressed in the end when he proudly points out other masterpieces in his art collection to the agent of Tyrol. He thus not only harbors no guilt on her part but also, considers her portrait to be a mere piece of art maybe worth a lot in monetary terms but worth no more than the Claus of Innsbruck creation emotionally. Thus one may rest assured that the unpleasant thought of the duchess would never ever cross his mind except when he takes pride in her beautiful portrait made by the skilled Fra Pandolf. It almost seems as if she had never existed and was as inconsequential as the other pieces in the room.

The duke thus never the less considers the duchess justly punished for her natural sexuality. She dared to trespass his domains of absolute authority and order and encroached upon his self-conceit and pride and she was killed for committing this offence.

Browning intended this poem to challenge the norm that had come to be established by the Renaissance. This was evident from the fact that he portrayed the duke as the obvious villain of the tale. This poem also asks a question that must be asked of all art—“does art have a moral component or is it merely an aesthetic exercise? In these latter considerations Browning prefigures writers like Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde.