My Last Duchess: Rhythm, Structure, Word Choice, Irony, Sarcasm and a Host of Other Poetic Devices to Illustrate the Character of the Speaker
The mood and tone of My Last Duchess and the character of thenarrator are immediately and concisely revealed in Browning's (1842) firstline, "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, / Looking as if she werealive" (1-2). Kennedy (1982) claims that "Browning may have modeled hisspeaker after Alonzo, Duke of Ferrara" (295). In this poem, the speakernarrates an account of his former wife, the titular Duchess of the poem,who the speaker has murdered. While the opening line demonstrates thematerialistic, controlling, and murderous nature of the narrator, Browninguses a variety of poetic devices from rhythm and imagery to allusion andsymbolism to fully characterize the nature of his speaker. In the end, thepoem is wholly ironic in that the speaker finds himself a maligned andabused man, when in actuality he is a remorseless, controlling, and The poem is in the form of a dramatic monologue, with the speakerdescribing what he found to be his dead wife's lascivious behavior. Hespeaks of his deceased wife as a woman whose smiles were granted toogenerously to others than him, "Sir, 'twas not / Her husband's presence
We see thisjealous quality of the speaker through Browning's (1842) use of word choicewhen the speaker describes the person carrying the cherry boughs to hiswife as "some officious fool" (27). Thesetechniques add power and impact to this illustration because of the heavyreliance on irony in the poem. She took great pleasure and smiled heartily at the "dropping of daylight inthe West", "the bough of cherries", and her "white mule" (Browning 1842, 26-28). Written in AABB couplets and iambic pentameter, the poem also usesrhythm to reveal a good deal about the speaker's persona. We see he is manipulative and controlling when he expressedthat only he is in charge of who now sees his former wife's countenance,". As Orlandini (2001) notes about Ferrara, "In this climate internalstruggles arose between the more powerful families, divides alongtraditional lines into the Ghibellines and the Guelphs" (1). since none puts by / The curtain I have drawn for you" (Browning 1842, 9-10). too soon made glad, /Too easily impressed: She liked whate'er / She looked on, and her lookswent everywhere" (Browning 1842, 21-24). However, inreal life the speaker detested the fact that he could not control who,where, and when the Duchess exhibited such qualities. Thespeaker refers to artists to show he is cultured and refined, like that ofFra Pandolf. Further, thestructure of the poem illustrates the speaker's controlling nature. Such commentsalso point to the ironic nature of the Duke's depiction of himself. Such structurehelps us read the poem exactly as the poet intended, in order to more fullyconvey what he is trying to illustrate about the speaker.
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,
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