How Does Browning Tell the Story in 'My Last Duchess'

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This story of a man who has, out of jealousy and insecurity, disposed of his wife, most likely by murder, is chillingly told by Browning through the voice of the murderer himself in a dramatic monologue. Throughout, Browning turns the speaker’s words against himself: the apparently all-powerful narrator loses control of his narrative, just as he lost control of his wife, and must kill his story in order to continue in his plans to gain another wife. Browning sets this story in Renaissance Italy, specifically in Ferrara, which is named in the poem’s subtitle. The specific time-period is not named, but the names of the artists mentioned in the poem recall famous painters such as Fra Angelico and Fra Lippo Lippi, who lived in the quattro – and cinquecento in Italy. This period is renowned not only for the flourishing of artistic talent and the production of beautiful works of art (often of surprising verisimilitude) but also for violence, intrigue and murder: indeed, Ferrara itself, seat of the d’Este family, was a byword for fabulous displays of artistic and architectural taste alongside appalling brutality. These ideas embody the violence and materialism at the heart of the story, and which, it is hinted, motivated the Duke’s murder of his last Duchess. The immediate setting for the story is an upper chamber in the ducal palace, away from the ‘company below’, and Browning uses this as a means of making his narrator a more intimidating character, capable of dominating the isolated and socially inferior audience (the Count is, we are told our ‘master’). The use of a setting which amplifies the Duke’s power is a key aspect of Browning’s narrative method here, in that the power belies the weakness and insecurity which cause the Duchess’ death. The final image of ‘Neptune, taming a sea-horse’, ought to be a final flourish for the Duke in his theatrical show for the

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