My Last Duchess Essay

Browning's "My Last Duchess" is about an entitled Duke that kills his wife because he was not happy with her on how she treated him. Yet Browning uses this poem to reveal that Victorian men are disabled by their reliance on the authority they have over females. He also utilizes the unusual association among the Duke and the Duchess to show Victorian men's fixation with control, when also displaying that it takes both genders to put an end to the misuse of women during the time when the author wrote the poem and the time when he got his inspiration. Men from the Victorian era and Renaissance era observe their wives only to look for a reflection of themselves instead of viewing them as a person. Browning not only blames both genders but society

Consequently, from this poem, Browning is displaying to the audience that the mistakes among women and men was resulted by the formation of the Victorian culture. Although Victorian men take part in the suppression of the women’s equality movement Victorian women are not innocent for their own oppression. Women feel the need to please not only men but society as well and in result relinquish themselves and their individuality. Victorian men feel threatened if their own wife is smarter or as equally intelligent as they are and as a result demean their spouse so they can easily control them. The Duke had his wife murdered because she viewed him as an equal while he viewed himself as a god. After the Duchess’s murder he then goes to the envoy to find another wife, but this time he is telling the envoy that he wants his next wife to be nothing like his first wife. By killing the Duchess he is making a threat toward the future Duchess to understand that he does not want an equal but an object on the