ffjosue4t的部落格

Browning's My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue, a poem in which only one person speaks to one person or more present who respond not through words, but by physical motions and gestures. It discloses the entire character of the speaker at a significant moment.

The Duke of Ferrara, a widower, is negotiating with a Count's envoy on his proposed marriage with the Count's daughter. The Duke here recounts what he regards as the faults of his last duchess. The poem is a study in the cold systematic torture of a sunny innocent girl-wife by her tyrant-husband.

The duke tells the envoy that his last duchess was light-hearted, not living up to her husband's nine-hundred- year old name and pedigree, and bestowing thanks and blushes on all alike. But the evident truth is that that he had a satanic nature and was coldly egotistical.

His jealousy was so possessive that he would allow only a monk Fra Pandolf to paint her portrait, and that too all in one day.

His pride is shown by the fact that that although her expansive nature displeased him, his patrician ego would never stoop to make any protest.

His cruelty is shown by the fact that he coldly repressed her little enthusiasm and finally got rid of her.

We are led to believe that she must have been a charming girl, warm-hearted, vibrant and of a cheerful and open nature. She loved to watch the sunset from the terrace, she loved to pet the white mule, and she was delighted when someone brought her a gift of cherries. But all her expressions of delight in life, her lively talk at dinner, the return from a ride flushed and eager, invariably met his icy stare of silent contempt. She smiled too much

I gave commands

Then all smiles stopped together.

She was probably murdered or kept confined in a convent.

In his expecting ample dowry we see that the Duke is also avaricious, though he tells that the woman herself is his real object.

If you dear readers can please give a "rating" for this interpretation, I'll be most thankful.