Davaris Brown Professor Johnson English 1102 18 April 2012 Explication of “My Last Duchess” This narrative poem is about a Duke who is looking at a picture of his dead Duchess. He talks about the portrait on the wall of her, which he admires. The Duke thinks about how the Duchess compares everything to him. The death of the Duchess shows another side of the Duke which started to show while he’s talking and is unrevealed at the end. The Duke thinks he is bigger than God and also a jealous and possessive man.
Moral Ambiguous Characters Throughout Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the moral ambiguity of the central character, Dorian Gray, becomes more and more distinct. The story starts with Dorian being venerated by the artist Basil Hallward, and throughout the story the reader learns of Gray’s several wrong doings. Meeting Lord Henry almost straight away negatively influenced Dorian. He had started out blameless and innocent, but by the conclusion had been the cause of numerous deaths, all because of his selfish wish to stay beautiful forever. “His actions show a character who insists the soul is real, but loves the gaping chasm between the beauty of his body and the corruption of his soul” [ (Wilde 105-123) ].
Poetry Compare and Contrast Love and Madness True love is the theme in the poem “Porphyria’s Lover,” by Robert Browning, and “Annabel Lee,” written by Edger Allen Poe. They were written in the same time period both having romantic notions, and share the same dramatic monologue style. Both are similar poems in their deranged views of love. However, the manner in which their beautiful lovers die and how they felt after their death, differ greatly. The men in both poems truly loved their women in the beginning, but by the end they had become obsessive, drove themselves to insanity, and slept next to the dead bodies of their lovers.
This is first seen through jealously. Carlos describes how he could ‘barely look’ at Francesco’s wife due to the fact that ‘she had known the pleasure of his body in a way that I could never know’. The ending of the sentence ‘I could never know’ shows the sad acceptance of Carlo due to the fact that Carlo was already in a relationship and also because he is dead. The second notion of sadness can be seen in the death itself in the form of grief. As Francesco was dying Carlo describes how his eyes were ‘blinded with tears’.
Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue uttered by the Duke of Ferrari which highlights the jealous and sadistic nature of his character and the mysteriousness which surrounds his late wife’s demise. The poem starts with him drawing the attention of the person whom he is talking to, who is, as one later finds out, a messenger from the Count’s family whose daughter’s hand the duke seeks in marriage; to the portrait of his late wife on the wall. The duke praises the work of the painter, Fra Pandolf, who had spent a whole day slaving over the painting to make it look so lifelike. He instructs the messenger to sit down, and goes on to describe how anyone who has ever seen that picturesque expression on his lady’s painted face, has never failed to ask him, as he has always been present for no one dares to draw the curtain from the painting except him, the reason behind the lively expression. He then thinks about his late wife, remembering that it wasn’t just his company which made her blush.
The man always thought his partner loved him back equally as much as he loved her, perceiving almost a perfect relationship to the reader. Not only do we come to the conclusion that she was unfaithful, we begin to wonder if what we know about the protagonist could be "deceiving". Second, Guy de Maupassant presents deception not only through the actions of the living, but also the dead. Later on in the story, the protagonist heads to the cemetery to spend the night weeping on his partners grave. Furthermore, one of the crosses at the cemetery said "Here lies Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of fifty-one.
First of all, Wharton’s subtle action toward Ethan’s torn feelings for Mattie and being loyal to his wife. Ethan was unfortunate to have a choice in leaving his wife to be with Mattie but, tried a futile decision to both trying to do suicide. In the novel there were events in which Ethan was indecisive over rebelling against Zeena’s decision of firing Mattie. I was very compassionate toward Ethan when he heard that Mattie was being sent away as for his reaction was as said “now his one ray of light was to be extinguished”. The moments between Ethan and Zeena showed me how miserable he truly was and made me sympathize with him for their
Along with the frequent use of rhyming couplets and enjambment, this makes it clear that the Duke was a suspicious and dominant man to his dead wife and also shows his control. The first evidence in the poem to support this is “Will’t please you sit and look at her?” and also “Sir, twas not her husband’s presence only, called that spot of joy into the Duchess’ cheek!” Both are said in reference to his wife to the Count’s envoy. These are effective as we are presented with the subjective viewpoint of the Duke. Like Shakespeare, Browning wrote plays as well as poetry which is evident as we see how he combined the techniques of play writing and poetry. Again, as the Duke talks about the Duchess
He stops at a painting of his late wife, his ‘last Duchess’ and begins a speech of which he is recanting his thoughts of her. From this speech, his wife was popular, especially with men, and a passionate and pleasant lady (to the reader only). The Duke is telling of his intolerances of her actions, being that of flirtations with men, however innocent, and how she did not rate his ‘gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name’, but instead treated him as she did others. It is well hinted that her behaviour angered the Duke so he had his Duchess killed, ‘I gave commands;Then all the smiles stopped together.’ It would seem his speech is also for the purpose of letting the envoy know his expectations of his new wife, that being very different to the last. Because the poem is in the form of a dramatic monologue, the reader only shares the conversation of the Duke.
My last duchess is a poem created in 1845 by the Victorian poet Robert browning about renaissance duke of a place called Ferrara. The poem was about a duke who is going to get married after the death of his last wife and he is talking to the messenger sent from the count of Tyrone. In the poem the duke is seen as a narcissistic and rapacious when he is talking to the emissary. Also the duke holds his wealth and position higher than anything else which contributed to unscrupulous relationship the duke and the duchess had. The duke’s rapacious nature can be seen many times throughout the poem, one of these moments can be seen from line 1 to 10 in the poem where he talks about who painted the painting and their reputation in the artistic world more than the subject of the painting.