My last duchess

• What’s the structure of my last duchess?

  • dramatic monologue = controlling
  • Rhyming couplets, desire for control
  • Enjambment - carried away with his anger, reinforces he’s unstable, an unsettling obsession with power
• What are the big ideas in my last duchess?

  Pride, jealousy, power, control, obsession
• What’s the context of my last duchess?

  • based off alphonso 11 Duke of ferrera
  • Links to marriage market, commodification, class system and objectification
• What’s a summary of the poem?

  • a duke points out his portrait
  • Angered by the duchess’s behaviour
  • Hints he murders her
  • The visitor is arranging the dukes next marriage
• “That’s my last duchess”

  • Possessive pronoun - his, no one else’s
  • no name - dehumanises her
  • “Last” - replaceable links to commodification
• “That spot of joy”

  • Enjambment - eternalised, can’t get rid of it - jealousy
  • Metaphor - blushing (link to female expectations)
• “A heart - how shall I say-“

  • Dashes - fury/rage , exasperated
  • Breaks - loses control
• “ a nine hundred year old name“

  Links to legacy