Feminism In My Last Duchess

It is difficult for some people to go against the beliefs of the majority, especially when a topic is considered too controversial to challenge. In Margaret Atwood’s “My Last Duchess”, this happens to be the case for her female protagonist when her class studies a poem by Robert Browning that is also titled “My Last Duchess”, in which a Duke had his Duchess killed for his own selfish reasons. Unexpectedly, the young girl’s interpretation of the Duke is vastly different from the rest of her class, thereby leading her to struggle with having a contentious opinion in addition to dealing with the realities of womanhood and teenage relationships. The purpose of Robert Browning’s poem, “My Last Duchess”, in Margaret Atwood’s short story of the same …show more content…
The effect of a male-dominated society on the school system’s curriculum includes reading poems and stories that have men holding power over women. The female protagonist begins to challenge the required literature at her school because the female characters are not good role models for young women since their downfalls are a result of being too eager to please and trusting the wrong men. In the story, the young girl questions what purpose these weak female characters serve in the classroom: “why did we have to study these hapless, annoying, dumb-bunny girls?” (Atwood 224). This quotation aids in understanding why Atwood’s female narrator identifies with the Duke as opposed to the Duchess because it illustrates her yearning for females to be represented as powerful and intelligent instead of merely an object that men can easily push around. The female protagonist does not sympathize with the Duchess because she represents everything the protagonist does not want herself and other females to be. In Atwood’s short story, the female protagonist’s criticism of the sexism that is present in her school and society is an example of her passionate feminism that motivates her desire to be as powerful and intelligent as the Duke in Browning’s …show more content…
The result of this is a young girl realizing that the women in literature are not always represented as strong-willed and powerful in comparison to men, thus leading women to believe a patriarchal society is the norm. By analysing “My Last Duchess” in a new light, Atwood’s protagonist discovered she refuses to accept the narrative that women do not exude the same authority as men. As demonstrated by Margaret Atwood, interpreting works of literature can lead to unprecedented discoveries in which the hidden messages of the written words are made