My Last Duchess Essay

After reading your poem “My Last Duchess”, I found the dramatic monologue to be very engaging and intriguing, on both a psychological and intellectual level. The effect and style of the dramatic monologue had me raising questions throughout the poem, in order to piece the full story together. It had me enquiring questions like, “Did he kill her?” or “What rationale could possibly explain his actions?”. The style of this poem allowed the me to be involved,coming up with deeper inferences and rationale. Despite my praise of this poem, I found the Duke’s character to be alarming. His viewership on his wife is quite frankly, archaic and primitive. His power hunger demeanor attributes his wife’s friendly and loving personality to being unfaithful. The line where the Duke

In modern day standards, one can view his relationship between him and his wife to be abusive, as the Duke views his “Duchess” is nothing more than a possession. He expects his wife to be exclusive to him in every aspect of her life. Given the contextual information, I understand that at that time, it was common for women to be viewed as lesser than men. However, as we became more evolved, it is clear to see that women are equal to men, and that the morality of that time resembles the primitive age and the dehumanization of women. This poem allowed me to see the magnitude of women degradation and exclusion in a new perspective. Given the history of the world, only now women are being seen as equal to men. Women during the archaic times were completely degraded as human beings, and I cannot even think of the atrocities they had to go through. Living in the 21st century may have desensitize the importance of historical context of female equality and the push for human equality. This poem shows the historical degradation of men over women, merely on the basis of their gender and it had shown me the gravity of what women went through during that