Robert Browning

Robert Browning did not receive the sudden success that his wife Elizabeth had. Unlike most of the writers of that time, he did not want to relay his own personality through his poetry which made it more difficult for readers to feel the same sense of passion while reading his work. He found his personal talent after he starting writing poems where the star in the work had an aberrant personality that the reader could sympathize or identify with. Browning brought new complex levels to dramatic monologue.

Browning had the tendency to make his stars tell their own deep dark secrets, but in order to figure it out the reader needs to pay close attention to the words. One example of this is Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess”. The speaker in this poem is supposed to represent Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. He is in negotiation with a father of a woman who he plans on marrying. They stop to look at a portrait of the old duchess, his last wife, who had recently died, where poison was suspected. By the end of this poem, I felt like he was the one responsible for this young lady’s death.

In the beginning, the father and the duke stop in front of the portrait to discuss the duchess. Even at this point, I knew that the duke did not feel anything for this woman because instead of reflecting on her and her personality, he chose to talk about the artist and when the painting was done. It was as if he was talking about this portrait as he would have talked about any other portrait in the palace.

Continuing in the poem, the duke’s true personality started to come out when he was talking about things that angered him about his duchess. “A heart- how shall I say? – too soon made glad,/ Too easily impressed; she liked whate’ver/ She looked on”. It seems like the duke thought she was a huge flirt and she liked to talk to any type of man. This seemed to make him very jealous and upset because I think he felt like he was being taken for granted. I think he believed that when she was smiling at him, she might have been cheating on him so he had to do something about that, “I gave commands;/ Then all smiles stopped together”.

After reading this, I could feel the duke’s bitterness and his desire to have this woman out of his life. I really believe that he had a hand in her death. This poem ends with the father and duke walking away from the portrait and going to look at another one, “Notice Neptune, though,/ Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,/ Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me”. He spoke about this second portrait in a similar way that he did the first one which shows me the indifference he had for his duchess. I would think that someone who lost their wife and was truly upset about it would have some sort of sad feeling when talking about a portrait of her.

I feel like Browning wrote this poem with an open ending so the reader can make their own interpretation of what happened. He did not talk about the death of the duchess or even how she died, so the reader must decide what the duke meant by what he was saying. My personal feeling was that he did not like this woman and the way she made him feel so he got rid of her. I felt like it was very ironic that he was telling this story to the father of the new woman that he wanted to marry. If my father heard this story, I do not think that he would allow me to marry him.