By Lechi Eke
The novel as a genre was the dominant form of Literature during the Victorian Era. Yet there were great poets writing at the same time who could not be ignored. Such poets as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Arthur Hugh Clough, etc., were plying their trade.
The Victorian poets did not cease to explore other methods of story-telling in their poems. So the period saw the long narrative poems featuring epic poems and the introduction of a poetic style identified as Dramatic Monologue by Robert Browning.
The Dramatic Monologue is “a poem in the form of a speech or narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events.” – culled. This device was first used by Robert Browning in his famous poem, My Last Duchess.
Then there was what’s known as Victorian Compromise used by Victorian writers. This is a code of value that reflects the world as the Victorians wanted it to be, not as it really was. The Victorian world was based on personal duty, hard work, respectability and charity. Respectability was a mixture of morality and hypocrisy; severity and conformity to social standards.
The aspect of Victorian Compromise portrayed in Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess, exposes the Victorians’ Respectability with its morality and hypocrisy; severity and conformity to social standard. We see this social code portrayed as we follow the tirade monologue of the Duke of Ferrara in Browning’s My Last Duchess.
My Last Duchess (1842)
By Robert Browning
FERRARA
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—
E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
The Victorian Compromise of false respectability is glaring in this poem. The duke, who sounds as if he was a respectable man and possesses some moral values, is exposed to be a hypocrite.
The entire poem is a monologue. Written in 1842 England, but set in Renaissance Italy (16th century), it’s a single (one) stanza poem of 56 lines in rhyming couplet (i.e. iambic lines or fully rhyming).
It opens with a speaker obviously showing a guest his prized artworks: paintings, sculptors in his gallery, inside his chateau. The dramatis personae are apparently in front of the portrait of a young beautiful woman who turns out to be a duchess.
So, the speaker is a Duke. As we read on, we deduce that the listener is the servant of a Count. Going further into the poem, we realise the listener is hapless – he seems unable to do anything in the face of the speaker’s tyranny: his arrogance, domineering attitude and commanding tone –
/That’s my last duchess; will it please you, sit and look at her?/
/- nine hundred years old name/
/wilt it please you, rise, we will meet the company below then/
The speaker is bragging about his 900 years old name; he’s bragging about how he gave commands and all smiles stopped! He’s bragging about Neptune and what Neptune considered a great achievement which paled in the face of what /Claus of Innsbruck/ (a sculptor) did for him! – All these reveal to both the listener and the reader what stuff the speaker (the Duke) is made of.
The Duke is trying to persuade the emissary of a Count (his listener) that he is the right suitor for the Count’s daughter, his master.
Pausing in front of his dead wife’s portrait, the duke starts a compulsive monologue about the dead woman. He has authority over an Italian town called Ferrara, and wields power over a large area. This, it turns out, he brings into his domestic affairs.
So we separate three characters in the poem: the speaker, an arrogant aristocrat with a-900 year’s old title, who is also a heartless sadist; then the listener, who’s an emissary from another titled man – a servant to a Count (a lower aristocrat).
The third character is the focal character, the one whom the poem is all about, the one the arrogant Duke speaks about – we can call her the poor duchess! She’s poor in the sense that she has no say in the business of who she marries!
This is why Charlotte Bronte’s character (Jane Eyre) is a feminist woman. She represents the insurgent woman seeking self-esteem. For her, real emancipation and self-realization can only come from her achieving true love.
The dead Duchess of Ferrara had no such luck; neither does the in-coming one being discussed in the poem! Women were possessions in the eyes of men as we saw in the responses to the women issue in the writings of Patrick Bronte and Robert Southey last week.
Patrick Bronte wrote: “The education of female ought, most assuredly, to be competent, in order that she might enjoy herself, and be a fit companion for man. But, believe me, lovely, delicate and sprightly woman, is not formed by nature, to pore over the musty pages of Grecian and Roman Literature, or to plod through the windings of Mathematical problems, nor has Providence assigned for her sphere of action, either the cabinet or the field. Her forte is softness, tenderness and grace.”
Robert Southey who wrote in response to Charlotte Bronte at a certain time said, “Ladies from a good background should be content with an education and a marriage embellished with some decorative talents.”
So, the Duchess of Ferrara is a representative woman – she is what society has forced Victorian women into, to which women like Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin ((1759 -1797) Mary P. B. Shelley’s mother), Charlotte Bronte and other feminist writers were trying to address in the ages during and before the reign of Queen Victoria.
The hapless duchess was married to a sadist of a husband, a man who loves himself and over values his situation in life. A man whose interest in others is as deep as the person’s relational importance both to his ego and his wealth, as well as their appreciation of his status in life which he condescends to share with them!
As the story unfolds, we realise that the duchess might have been murdered! Her sin was that she was ‘too easily impressed’ – /she had a heart soon made glad/. She was a young woman who had no sense of what was valuable or important and what wasn’t. She valued everything equally: her lord’s /favour at her breast/ the dropping of the day light in the west/ the bough of cherries some officious fool broke in the orchard for her/
It is with shock that we realise that this lady’s simplicity and natural sexuality caused her, her life!
Poetry is the most concise written form of expression. In few words, with great dexterity of language, Browning painted the pictures of three characters: two vivid ones and one in the background. The reader reading through the monologue of an arrogant man who thinks, perhaps, that he’s doing a young dead woman a disservice by revealing her shortcomings, ends up undoing himself.
The reader realises that he’s in the face of a male chauvinist, a sexist, a tyrant, a feudal lord who brings into his domestic life, the same iron hand he uses for his properties and the occupiers of his estate.
Browning paints the picture of how men lived in this era telling a very powerful story of power drunkenness, greed and self-indulgence. This was when men exercised control and were in total dominion. They were in charge in relationship, and women were seen as possessions; another property in marriage!
Obviously, Browning was not in praise of this kind of lifestyle.
Done with the raving about the murdered duchess, the Duke eases into the matter of a new duchess, another young woman he intends to bring into his domain, into his control. This next wife’s feeling is not to be considered! And he is greedy. Despite all that he owns, the Duke is bold to make known to the emissary of the Count, his potential in-law, his interest in the young woman’s dowry –
/I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object/
The central idea or the theme of this poem is the evil of unfettered power. In the Victorian age and the Renaissance Italy, the poor, people of low estate were powerless in the face of totalitarian aristocrats.
I believe Browning was pointing out that what people were seeing in the society at that time, was a reflection of what was going on in the home; after all, charity begins at home, and so does evil practices!