My Last Duchess: Themes

The Ego-Driven Desire for Control

The Duke is a man of great wealth, power, and status, which has given him an outsized ego that drives his desire to control everything. One aspect of his controlling personality shows up in the way he talks about the artists whose work populates his personal gallery. For instance, the Duke mentions twice that his late wife’s portrait was done by Fra Pandolf. Beyond mere name-dropping, he mentions that “Fra Pandolf’s hands / Worked busily a day” (lines 3–4), subtly insisting that the famous artist labored at his command. The Duke makes a similar implication later, when he says that Claus of Innsbruck produced a statue of Neptune specifically “for me” (line 56). In addition to his control over the artists who work at his behest, the Duke used his power to exert control over his wife. Though he initially struggled to keep her flirtatious smiles at bay, all he had to do was “[give] commands; / Then all smiles stopped together” (lines 45–46). It’s also important to note that the Duke’s monologue is a performance meant to control the visiting emissary’s perception of him as they head into marriage negotiations.

The Objectification of Women

Given that Browning’s poem mainly revolves around a highly prized portrait of the speaker’s dead wife, it’s important to discuss the theme of the objectification of women. The central problem the Duke had with his late wife was his inability to control what he perceived to be her excessively flirtatious personality. He complains to the emissary that “she liked whate’er / She looked on, and her looks went everywhere” (lines 23–24). Elsewhere, he makes an even more explicit suggestion of her promiscuity: “Sir, ’twas not / Her husband’s presence only, called that spot / Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek” (lines 13–15). Unable—or unwilling—to convince her to behave differently, the Duke simply had her killed. However, her likeness remains preserved in Fra Pandolf’s celebrated portrait, which captured the late Duchess’s countenance in such a way that she looks “as if she were alive” (line 2). By reducing his wife into an art object that he can keep in his own private gallery, it appears that the Duke has the best of both worlds. That is, he gets to enjoy the presence of her beauty without ever having to worry about her lack of faithfulness.

Power Goes Both Ways

The Duke seems convinced that his power and status entitles him to complete control of everything. Over the course of the poem, however, it becomes increasingly evident that he’s equally subject to the power of others. As an example, consider the Duke’s lengthy and unreliable account of his late wife. The more he talks about her smiley personality, the more upset he seems to become. His aggravation comes to a head in a particularly contorted rant (lines 34–43):

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.

The Duke subtly contradicts himself here. In the beginning of the passage, he complains about being unable to express his jealous feelings to his late wife. By the passage’s end, however, he reframes this inability as a form of refusal. That is, he declares that he didn’t say anything out of a sense of pride, since addressing the subject with her would be tantamount to stooping—“and I choose / Never to stoop.” What all this unreliability reveals is that the Duke is a profoundly jealous type, and even though he had his wife killed to assuage it, his jealousy clearly hasn’t diminished. Ironically, then, though the Duke believes he holds all the power, he’s still in the thrall of his “last Duchess.”

Previous section Setting Next section Motifs