Textual analysis

My last duchess

In the present text I'm going to analyze the poem “My last duchess” by Robert Browning. To start with, the title makes the reader think about a noble man who writes a poem to makes people know about his last wife. The author pretends a false writer who is an Italian duke, who writes a poem in honor of his last wife. So, the reader understands that the writer has had more than one wife, that his last one could be died or not and finally that he is a duke, because he called his wife “duchess”. The poem shows also a subtitle that makes the reader conscious of the context in which the poem is written. Ferrara is located in the north of Italy, so the writer is an Italian duke who has decided to write a poem presenting his last duchess. Reading the poem fluidly the reader can observe it has got a definite structure. It presents rhyming couplets so that, reading it, the reader can perceive a sound. Going on analyzing the poem the reader understands that the duke's wife is death because of her painting on the wall. So you can imagine that the duke loved his wife and wants to preserve her memory. Actually, the duke starts telling the reader about the painter who painted his wife portrait alluding that they had a good relationship. The content of the duke seems to be adulating his wife and at the same time tells the reader about his disrespect to him. In fact, the duke presents his wife as a wonderful woman, always smiling. The interesting thing is that, as he says, she smiled at every little thing, at every person, at every man. She was easily surprising, her attention was to everything and she considered precious the most of the attitudes and acts. Her way of behaving seems to annoy her husband because he desired her attention to him despite to the other men. It is interesting that the writer says that adopting a high language, a high style, indirectly. At a first sight, the poem seems to be a gift that the duke made to her wife but actually he adulate her in front of an envoy telling him his intention to marry his boss' daughter. Adopting that strategy, the duke makes clear what kind of man he is and he reveals it indirectly, through making a presentation of his wife. He comes out as a respectable faithful man that, even if he was not respected by his wife, asked a talented painter to make her portrait, preserving his memory.