my last duchess

• Browning employs the dramatic monologue form, adopting the voice of the Duke of Ferrara, to provide a psychological insight into a hubristic and paranoid megalomaniac in order to lambast the mistreatment of women in the Victorian patriarchy.
• "half flush that dies along her throat."


  caesura is used in conjunction with violence
• "I gave commands / then all smiles stopped together."


  the poem explores a paradox of power throughout the poem. The Duke is the embodiment of political power and control and yet he feels disempowered and insecure in his marriage.
• "And I choose / never to stoop."


  tight and controlled structure - the uniformity of the iambic pentameter mirrors the Duke's insistence on control.
• "my last duchess painted on the wall"


  ekphrastic poem - women are commodified to elucidate the Duke's ownership and control