SEXIST BIAS AS FOUND IN ROBERT BROWNING’S MY LAST DUCHESS
Arockia Anto Anita S.
Asst. Professor in English,
Loyola College, Chennai.
The existence of bias between genders is not a novel theme for Indian literature
readers. The readers have fully understood the consciousness of voice between sexes
since they are the real victims of it. The literary readers also have witnessed the false
ideology of the patriarchal society against women. The stereotypic roles and rules set out
for women to be exercised also not a surprising factor to Indian society. But it is really an
astonishing fact that the gender bias is not an exempted one to the society of the West to
not to have experienced. From the genesis of the world, the sexist bias has been exsisting
not only with the lives of common people but also with Monarchs. This article tentatively
analyses the sexist bias between the two main characters the Duke and the Duchess in
Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess.
Having known the power practiced by men traditionally on women, Robert
Browning a Pre-Raphaelite poet and an Italian Renaissance painter has tried to portray
the real life situation of a Duchess, who herself the representation of all subaltern
voiceless women in the patriarchal universe. Browning has employed Dramatic
Monologue, as an effective technique not only to describe the suffering of the Duchess
but also to show the Duke’s incapable megalomaniac pride. It is quite surprising that the
author of the poem has inhabited and populated this technique, though he has not
invented it.
Browning in his poem “My Last Duchess”, introduces an arrogant, autocratic
Duke, who develops misogyny against his “last” wife, the Duchess. Although the
atrocious Duke, is an original invention of Browning in many aspects, the poet has drawn
the idea to create such a person from the powerful history of Este family, who ruled
Ferrara, a Duchy in Northern Italy. It shows how Browning has got an interest towards “a
world of History more than a world of myth (or) literary legend” (Taylor in Peterson,
pp 58,61).
The Duke appears in this poem, presumably the duke of Ferrara Alfonsa II,
marries Lucrezia Medici, who belongs to the royal family with lots of prospects, is at last
murdered by the Duke himself as happened in the history. History says that the year after
her marriage, during the age of 17 she is died. And it is really ambiguous even today how
she has been killed. Here in this poem, Browning has skillfully used the character Duke
the cause for the death of the Duchess, to narrate what bitter things happened in her
lifetime. Though the duke uses sophisticated, cultivated rhetoric of the aristocratic
speech, his actions lead to power dynamics based on gender. From the beginning to the
concluding line of the verse, the Duke is dominating both the other characters namely the
Duchess and the envoy and the audience as well with his male supremacy.
The suffering of the Duchess in this poem, is not only the suffering of the self, but
also the incessant conflict of all women in male dominant world. Browning’s last
Duchess reflects the behavioural codes of women in the Victorian era. It is quite notable
that the Victorian women have not got freedom rather they have suppressed by the men
in the society all the more. Literature of this era has also shown women as fragile or
weaker creatures as the Duke mentions his wife as “such a one”(37). And women are
portrayed as if they always in need of their husbands. The contemporary society of
Browning has not considered the dignity of women in to account. Alfred Lord Tennyson,
the contemporary writer of his era also calls his wife as “unmatched…aged wife”(3)
The Victorian society has expected women to be morally good, embodying,
“sensitivity, self-sacrifice, and innate purity” (Salisbury and Kersten). As all these
traits have exhibited by the Duchess, critics assume that she is allowed to marry a creep
in order to please her family, which is considered as an act of self- sacrifice. Victorian
husbands also have preferred an immaculate, virginal bride with their physical and
mental fitness. In its lack, men can lead their life with as many wives as possible, not
harming their wives unlike the duke in the poem murders his unqualified wife.
Gayathri chakravorthy spivak in her essay Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing
Historiography says: “Speech is a direct and immediate representation of voice
consciousness….” (351). But the female character in “My Last Duchess” does not utter a
word at all. The duke has not allowed her to speak both in her short span of life and even
after her death in the dramatic presentation of the poem. The monologue of the speaker
and the presence of the passive listener have also rejected the voice of the lady, since it
has become the one-man show. As the voice of the duke is more predominant in the
poem, the readers tend to forget the importance of the voice and the space of the Duchess,
which apparently gives strength to the male character.
When the Duke Alfonsa II pardons himself to a foreign envoy for having done
away with his first wife, the readers are awakened by his guilt. The poet proves the guilt
when the duke is reluctant to look at her face during the description about her painting on
the wall. Duke’s un-appreciative nature comprehends the guilty perception and the low
esteem of his pride. The readers are also able to scrutinize his oily diplomacy in this
regard at the same time as speculating about the psychological fissures his language
might entail too. The self-qualifying usages of the Duke, “how shall I say?”(22) And “I
know not how”(32) betray his nerves or propagand his lack of them.
The duke in the poem is of high social status. But the way he keeps emphasizing
phrases deal with power that makes him look ironically less powerful. When he describes
his last name as his, “gift of a nine-hundred years-old name (59) actually he uses his
ancestral pride. The more he uses the ancestral pride, the more he becomes dependent
which disproves his power. The reason for his denial to accept the voice of the Duchess is
nothing but his fear for the lady, who has actually got the power by herself in the form of
prospects. So the duke deliberately dismisses her authority as a powerful duchess by not
allowing her to voice out. William Clyde Devane a literary scholar observes, “Browning
alarmed his Victorian readers with psychological and sometimes psychopathic-realism,
wild formal experiments, and harsh-sounding language…”
Love is a beautiful ornament that will be revealed through actions and received by
our senses. Simone De Beauvoir in her book The Second Sex says, “Through the love
she inspires and shares, is the only possible salvation for each man” (236). The Duchess
in “My Last Duchess” as a born -creature to love everything she looks at. The generosity
in showing and sparing her love towards everyone without partial make the Duke to
misunderstand her virginity.
The Duke viciously says,
“…Too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er she looked on,
And her looks went everywhere….
… the boughs of cherries some official fool….
…the white mule”(22-29)
But the Duchess brilliantly weakens the Duke’s un-appreciate nature through her smile
and her appreciation on everything she comes across.
The Duke attempts to escape by showing himself as a possessive type of person
for having found fault with the lady’s lovable nature. Breton contrarily opines on the
love of a woman quoted by Simone De Beauvoir in her text The Second Sex, “Woman
has no vocation other than love; this does not make her inferior since man’s vocation is
also love. (237) The Duke’s possessiveness is the outcome of his jealousy. Though he
starts his narration as “My last Duchess”(1) possessively, the parenthesis “behind the
curtain”(10) and his unbearable expression “the spot of joy” informing how he is
jealous on the lady. He does conceit that her blush in the portrait is not happened
naturally because of his presence rather the Friar Pandolf should have created it as he has
commented,
“Her mantle laps over my lady’s
Wrist too much”(16-17).
The duke of Ferrara is seem to be a less passionate human being, wants in collecting
more objects, is highlighted through the portrait in the arst gallery, and during the time he
negotiates the envoy “for dowry”(52) that he can receive from the next bride and at last
when he shows the listener the statue of “Neptune… taming a sea-horse”(55-56). His
possession of material things will lead the society to view him as an imperialistic force
encroaching on their lives. This is why he looks at the Duchess too as an object. He has
not treated but handled her as an “object”(54) and given “commands”(46) that stopped
her smile permanently. When she is alive. The worse part is that the beautiful Duchess
has been reduced into an object d’art (art object) in the palace even before her death.
There are different types of domestic violence enlisted by the feminists. The duke is
tormenting the duchess psychologically. There is no voice and the space to expose her
identity. Contrasting this, in a dramatic monologue “A Woman To her Lover”, Christina
Walsh portrays an assertive woman who refuses his lover and rejects inequality. She
talks as if she is a liberated woman who has got the freedom of choice to act. The woman
says, “Go-I am no doll to dress or sit for feeble worship”.
Browning actually has aspired for the equality of gender, though he has written the poem
of this kind. He has led the unbiased life with her wife that can be the evident of his great
regard for women. So let us all foresee for the sexist unbiased society, which can give
solace to the entire women hood.
Bibliography:
Browning, Robert. English Verse-Vol V. Longfellow to Rubert Brooke. London: Oxford
University Press, 1974.
Beauvoir, De, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1989.
Spivak, Chakravorty, Gayatri. Subaltern Studies IV: Writings on South Asian History and
Society. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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