Deadly Consequences of Pride in Browning's “My Last Duchess”

Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is a Germanic Monologue that follows the story of a duke and his previous wife, his late wife. The poem shows in multiple instances how the duke’s controlling, prideful, and insecure behaviors led him to finally end his wife’s life. For example, the duke first displays his controlling behavior when he says, “none puts by the curtain I have drawn for you, but I” (9-10). He loves that only he can draw back the curtain, that only he controls whom his wife smiles at in the way he couldn't do when she was alive. Later in his narration, the duke displays his pride and egotism when he ponders telling his wife that he gets jealous and feels bad when she smiles and blushes at other men. He can't do so, for “e’en then would be some stooping; and [he chooses] never to stoop” (42-43). He believes that admitting his feelings to his own wife would make him vulnerable, giving her too much power over him. Even the misogyny of the age in which the story was written doesn't excuse this blatant act of arrogance; he holds himself so far above his wife that he can't bear to talk to her in fear of losing some of his power over her. Finally, the duke shows his insecurity and jealousy. He rants angrily in this monologue: “she thanked men… as if she ranked [his] gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name with anybody's gift” (33-35). Even the duchess's slightest acknowledgment of another man, the simplest show of decorum makes the duke jealous enough that he would go so far as to kill her to make sure she wouldn't even thank another man again. In the end, the duke wins the one-sided battle he’s been fighting with his wife by ending her life. Though it could be argued that her happiness and pleasant temperament caused the duke to feel the way he did. But her faults in his mind were not really faults of hers; there is no doubt that the duke’s blatant and shameless acts of arrogant, insecure, and controlling behavior are what led him to order her death.

Work Cited

Browning, Robert. “My Last Duchess.” 1842.