My Last Duchess

The speaker in “My Last Duchess” is a very narcissistic man. He rants and raves about his last Duchess “as if she were alive” (line 2), but he is merely talking up his painting and the fact that some well know artist has painted it. He is more proud of his painting than of his beloved dead wife. He is a controlling man, and an even more controlling husband. He states that his wife had “A heart – to soon made glad” (line 22), this represents his self centeredness. This man saw his wife as an object and not a woman who was just a naturally happy person. She seemed to like everybody and this drove him insane. He also appears to be of a higher social status, as he clearly lets whomever he is talking to know. He makes sure to let them know that he gets only the finest things in life, and that he is the one calling all the shots. The more he talks about his late wife the more he sounds like a self centered little man; he doesn’t have any confidence in his wife or himself. He thinks because he is giving her his “nine-hundred-years-old-name” (line 33) she should just succumb to the life being his eye candy. His grossness is proven when he has his wife killed; he obviously is more concerned with his social standing than finding true love.

Barbie Doll

If this poem were to be written from the perspective of this man, it would probably be a protest against the emasculating post-feminism mindset wrought in corporate America. I would probably call the poem "Neo-Masculine" , or even "Nice Guy." There are pressures on man to conform by society, but none as strong as the threat of androgyny. It's as if women are being asked to be more masculine and men, more feminine. I have seldom been condoned in attending a corporate meeting while donning a beard, much less, an untrimmed beard. It is sad that a natural beard is seen as unsterile and threatening to the impotent environment that is the corporate boardroom. The untrimmed beard is likened to an unwashed body. We are asked to be politically correct, and generally accepting of all things we inherently would like to fight, but are discouraged by society from doing so. We want to hire men we can relate to, but our frivolously judicial society threatens that if we don't hire enough women, we will have no rebuttal in corporate sexual harassment cases. We are then discouraged from bravery, as our society tells our men that they need to act like their women. When our banks get robbed, our men lose their jobs for being men, and fighting threats to our women and our friends. Men want to self-sacrifice, but we are told that we can only fight for what the company wants us to fight for. Our safe society has killed chivalry and caused the repression of our natural masculine aggression. Stigmas and labels have been placed on aggression, as if it were all negative. Our reality has been constructed for us by the all-powerful media, controlled by the big corporations, who finance their political candidates. There is no fight left in man, no chance of protection against tyranny, we all do as we are told. The repression of aggression, as caused the only manifestations to be unnatural, when they explode to the surface, only reinforcing the negative stigmas surrounding this and other defining male characteristics. These are the ideas that I would like to convey. Through working, I would attempt to paint the picture of a figuratively neutered man, who has to fight who he is all of his life, in order to be considered acceptable... to be considered a "nice guy."

My Last Duchess

The speaker in "My Last Duchess" is a Duke who thinks quite highly of himself. The Duke may not necessarily think of himself as chronically unique in greatness, but he certainly believes that his family name is something that she be revered. The Duke believes that his late Duchess may have "ranked my gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name with anybody's gift." (Browning, 32-34) The Duke is a man of his time and a product of his upbringing. The Duke could have confronted the Duchess about her lack of appreciation for this gift, but there is no evidence of this. There is also no evidence of wrongdoing on her part either. It would seem that the Duke believed that his "munificence" (Browning, 49) should warrant the Duchess's affection alone. The Duke has been raised to believe nothing else, but status and name, bring affection and praise. He didn't want to mention his contention as claims it would require stooping (to her level), and he "choose(s) never to stoop." (Browning, 42-43) He believes that she should have come to him properly trained and so he is trying to express to the company of a possible suitor, what is required of his name. He wants to convey that the woman should treat him with special regard, and her, a piece of property. The poem ends sounding as if the Duke has moved on to his next piece of art nonchalantly.

The only previous experience I have with poetry would be when I was in high school. I enjoy it because each individual one is so different. It had been a long time since I had read poems so I was not sure what to expect. I think my beliefs about poetry did not change at all. It was very interesting learning more about the smaller details of poetry.