My Last Duchess by Robert Browning Essay -- Last Duchess Robert Browni

My Last Duchess by Robert BrowningIn his numbers My Last Duchess, Robert Browning gives his readers a complex picture of his two primary(prenominal) characters. The Duke, who narrates the poem, is the most immediately present barely Browning sets him up to last lose the readers trust. The Duchess be executes the sympathetic character, a victim of exit play. It is through the various representations of the Duchess within the poem that we come to know some(prenominal) characters. The representations of the Duchess, which focus on her ever-present smile and easily satisfied nature, come in sharp contrast with the desperate, sputtering language of the Duke as he tries to secure their story on his own terms. This contrast is a reflexion of the Dukes frustration with his inability to control the Duchess and her nonchalant scarce near-total control everyplace him.The Duchess is first introduced as a moving-picture show hanging in the Dukes gallery. The very form in which we meet her gives us an indication of both her passivity and her ability to persist, unchanged, in one mode of behavior. A painting has very little living communicative power, relying on the expressiveness of its subject at the time of painting. It is notable that no mention is made of any terra firma or accompanying objects in the paintingoften in delineation these elements are relied upon to convey key ideas about the subject. It seems that the Duchess relied solely upon herself and the painter to tell her own story. flat if other objects are in the painting, they are terrene enough that neither Duke nor poet feels compelled to mention them. From a literary standpoint, this means that the poet entangle that we needed no other initial information about the Duchess. Even at the level of chara... ...haunts him, and by placing it both first and last he drives it home very strongly. He cant help but repeat that phrase when confronted with the Duchess who is both still smiling and as if alive(predicate)he is driven mad by the idea that he couldnt even succeed in killing her. His actions, too, are driven by the Duchess. Since she is still smiling and life-like, despite his best efforts to the contrary, he is driven to the wild extreme of covering the painting and ensuring that none puts by the curtainbut himself (9-10) His extraordinary desire to control the Duchess leave him vulnerable to her imperviousness. By stay unaffected by the Dukes strenuous efforts to alter her behavior, the Duchess forces the Duke to take more and more drastic measureslike killing her and hiding her paintingand have away at his ability to even keep control of himself.