Key Quote
“"I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together."”
Robert Browning · My Last Duchess
Focus: “commands”
The Duke's chilling euphemism — almost certainly referring to his wife's murder — reveals his absolute power and total absence of remorse. The casual understatement makes the violence more horrifying.
Technique 1 — EUPHEMISM & SINISTER UNDERSTATEMENT
Browning's Duke employs devastating euphemism — 'I gave commands' is a chillingly understated way of ordering his wife's murder. The vagueness is deliberate: the Duke is too aristocratic to sully his speech with crude details, and too powerful to need justification. The caesura (pause) created by the semicolon forces the reader to fill the silence with the implied horror.
The phrase 'all smiles stopped together' is polysemic (carrying multiple meanings): it could mean her smiling ceased, or she stopped breathing altogether. Browning leaves the method of death ambiguous — was she murdered, imprisoned, or sent to a convent? This indeterminacy is the point: the Duke's power is so absolute that the specifics are irrelevant. What matters is that he 'gave commands' and was obeyed.
Key Words
RAD — STAGNATE
The Duke shows zero moral development — he is recounting what appears to be his wife's murder while negotiating his next marriage, suggesting he will repeat the cycle. His narcissistic (self-obsessed) personality sees no error in his actions; he stagnates in a prison of ego and entitlement. The poem's structure — a seamless, uninterrupted monologue — mirrors this psychological fixity: the Duke cannot and will not change.
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Technique 2 — DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE — UNRELIABLE NARRATOR
Browning pioneered the dramatic monologue — a form where a single character speaks to a silent listener, inadvertently revealing more about themselves than they intend. The Duke believes he is presenting himself as a discriminating (tasteful, refined) art collector; in reality, he reveals himself as a possessive, controlling murderer. The gap between what the Duke intends to communicate and what the reader infers is where the poem's true horror lies.
The listener — an envoy negotiating the Duke's next marriage — is silent throughout. This silence functions as complicity (shared involvement in wrongdoing): the envoy does not challenge the Duke's account, mirroring how patriarchal society enabled male violence against women. Browning uses the form to implicate not just the Duke but the entire system that permits his behaviour.
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Context (AO3)
ITALIAN RENAISSANCE POWER
The poem is based on Alfonso II d'Este, the 5th Duke of Ferrara (1533–1597), whose first wife Lucrezia de' Medici died under suspicious circumstances aged 17. The Italian Renaissance was a period of extraordinary art and culture, but also of ruthless political power — noble families like the Medicis and d'Estes wielded absolute authority. Browning uses this historical setting to explore how patriarchal power reduces women to possessions.
VICTORIAN GENDER POLITICS
Although set in Renaissance Italy, Browning wrote for a Victorian audience. Victorian wives had virtually no legal identity under coverture (legal doctrine where a wife's rights were absorbed by her husband). By presenting an extreme case of male ownership, Browning invited contemporary readers to recognise milder versions of the same dynamic in their own marriages — the Duke is a magnifying glass for everyday patriarchal control.
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WOW — THE MALE GAZE & OBJECTIFICATION (Laura Mulvey / John Berger)
The Duke's treatment of the Duchess — alive and painted — exemplifies what feminist critic Laura Mulvey calls the male gaze: women exist to be looked at, assessed, and controlled by men. The portrait is the ultimate expression of this: the Duchess is now a silent, permanent object that the Duke can curate and control — 'none puts by / The curtain I have drawn for you, but I'. John Berger's observation that 'men act and women appear' is literalised: the living Duchess dared to act (smiling at others), so she was replaced with an image that merely appears. Browning creates a proto-feminist critique of the relationship between art, ownership, and gender — the portrait is not a tribute to the Duchess but a trophy displaying the Duke's power. The poem anticipates the feminist argument that representation itself can be a form of violence: to depict someone on your terms is to erase their subjectivity.
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