my last duchess

• my last duchess context

  -women - 1842 (victorian era)

  -when married, women became legal property of her husband

  -existed to serve/entertain men

  -beginning to be challenged - suffrage movement was growing
• my last duchess themes

  -domestic power

  -dukes obsession with fixing wife’s behaviour = victorian society’s obsession with women’s perfect reputation
• my last duchess - dramatic monologue (1 long verse)

  -duke us self centred and dominating

  -loves to hear himself speak

  -no breaks, breathless - reader is overwhelmed which reflects dukes overwhelming character

  -doesnt care about listener - superior/ignorant
• my last duchess - enjambement

  -loves hearing himself

  OR

  -rambling on in anger/ losing control of temper

  -maybe doesn’t have as much control as he thinks
• my last duchess - iambic pentameter

  -often used in love poems - ironic-loves himself

  -tight control (duke’s tight control)
• my last duchess quotes

  ‘My’

  ‘Frà Pandolf’

  ’even had you a skill in speech-(which i have not)’

  ’I’

  ’will’t please you rise?’

  ’will’t please you sit and look at her’

  ’notice neptune … taming a sea horse’

  ’my gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name’

  ’the curtain’