My Last Duchess Relationship Analysis

Robert Browning’s poetry shows the power imbalances in male and female relationships and often takes the form of dramatic monologue to show the differences between men’s motivations and women’s.
In Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’, an authoritative and rich Duke is made to feel powerless as a result of his wife’s misplaced affections. The favourable qualities of his wife, such as her kindness and gratitude, are interpreted by the duke as offences, “as if she ranked my gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name with anybody’s gift”, implying possessiveness and unruly emotions such as jealousy can cloud judgement. This is interesting as generally a man would be thought of as being more rational, and a woman as being ruled by her emotions. The Duke believes …show more content…
The weather is violent, the wind “sullen”, yet Porphyria appears to have a form of power over it as she is described as “shut[ting] the cold out and the storm”. Just as she has power over the elements, Porphyria seems to have power over her passive lover – and even in death, she has an intoxicating effect on him. Porphyria is the dominant partner in the relationship; she physically reassembles her lover’s body, placing his “arm about her waist”. This mirrors the way the lover rearranges and almost plays with Porphyria 's body when he kills her, “propped her head up as before”. It seems as though the lover is so unreceptive he may as well be dead, and as if the two swap roles. There is also a subversion of gender roles with the woman doting on the man, and their relationship is more reminiscent of one between a doctor and a patient than a romantic one. Porphyria makes “the cheerless grate blaze up, and all the cottage warm”, which could be read as representing how full of life she is. The lover does not appreciate or respond to Porphyria’s vivacity when she is actually living, but remarks on very lifelike aspects of her when she is dead – her eyes that “laugh” and cheeks that “blush”; he resents the fact she is so animated and engaged in a social life that draws her from his side, but relishes in these characteristics after her murder. The lover projects his own desires and …show more content…
The speaker, presumably a woman, reveals “he is with her, and they know that I know”, indicating a sense of hurt and betrayal worsened not by the infidelity itself but it continuing even when the speaker becomes aware of it. The actions of the man here would not have been too harshly looked upon – Victorian women were able to be divorced, but not divorce, on grounds of infidelity. Women were not believed to have the right to sex for pleasure but just as a means of reproduction, and so were held to a different standard than men. What makes this female speaker unusual is her resolution to exact revenge, whilst her adulterous partner presumes “[her] tears flow”. This pits the traditional view of women as emotional beings up against this presentation of a revengeful, wronged person. It could also be read that the speaker is being presented in a masculine way, with her being in a laboratory and carrying out experiments. She is unusual in that she revels in such an activity and chooses it over a more traditionally feminine one, such as going “dancing” where “men wait” her. The speaker divides the woman Elise up into her separate body parts in her mind, “her head and her breast and her heart and her hands”, which could be representing the objectification of women and the thought of them as just a body, a view shared by many. Therefore, the speaker is colluding somewhat in