Looking As If She Were Still Alive

When we speak of Victorian feminist literature, the person of whom we often speak is Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I find it ironic that her husband, Robert Browning, should be the one to produce such a poem as this both powerful in its statement and eery in content.

"My Last Duchess" is a social commentary of sorts that mockingly depicts the emotionless and sterile attitudes of men towards women. Browning successfully paints the Duke's chauvinistic opinions as outdated. In an age where progress and industry ruled the time, the idea that social attitudes toward women had not progressed since the Renaissance undoubtedly got the people's attention, much to Browning's credit.

The first thing that stuck out to me was the style of the poem. Traces of Edgar Allen Poe and other gothic pieces of literature invade the space of the poem. The idea of an indifferent and jealous Duke who possesses total dominion over his household and who happens to kill off his sweet Duchess without showing any remorse is eerily melancholy...yet it sticks with you. The first readers of the poem must have had a similar reaction. Perhaps they even experienced an epiphany of sorts at the realization that their own attitude's toward their wives resembled that of the domestic tyrant of the poem. It goes without saying that Browning successfully stirred the pot a little with "My Last Duchess."

I personally love Browning's work because there is almost no trace of "Him" in the poems. Unlike Poe, Browning seemed to be a loving, doting and optimistic husband who even saved his own wife from her horrendously jealous father when they eloped to Italy. His characters are purely inventions of his imagination or perhaps representations of the troubled people around him. Whichever the case, "My Last Duchess" leaves a clear impression in our minds and serves as a kind of wake up call to anyone who forgets the importance of kindness and compassion towards women.

Here is a link to the poem: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15701