Jealousy can be a very bad feeling. It can poison many ways of seeing some situations which else is normally harmless for both parts. Sometimes it makes a person deeply mad, and it can result in some rash actions. The Duke in My Last Duchess is influenced by the jealousy. He cannot be happy on his wife’s ways, and it results in the Duchess’s awful fate.
The poem is about a duke whose first wife is dead. The duke wants to marry a new woman, so an almost invisible character hears about the first duchess while he is looking at a huge portrait of the Duchess on the wall. The duke tells the character who is an emissary from the father of the woman, he wants to marry. The emissary hears about how the duchess was when she lived, and he gives a little clue to how the duchess may have died. The poem has only one long verse. In the end of almost every line, there are rhymes in pair, and this make a rhythm in the poem. We can already see it in the two first lines, “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall”, line 1 and in the next line, “Looking as if she were alive. I call”. In this example the rhyme is wall and call. The poet uses a linguistic means when he writes, “as if she were alive”. Normally is, “were”, only used in plural but in this context, it means that it may be true or may be not true. The first three sentences are also a good example of run-on-lines; it means that the sentences continue from one line to another, so the rhymes fit together. The rhythm is iambic pentameter because each line consists of five stresses. The duke is characterized as a person who not possesses the skills to speak. He does not try to have one single conversation with the duchess where he should express what he really feels. She may not know that she does so many things that the duke hates. The duke does even not give her the chance to say what she feels, and when they did not talk about the things, the relationship could not develop to a better relationship. The duke is a person with much money. He gives the duchess expensive gifts but it irritates him that she enjoys the cheaper and the expensive presents equally. She did not need jewellery to be excited and happy. The duchess appreciated even the smallest things in live despite the fact that the duke gave her the most expensive presents. When the duke cannot see that the duchess is glad for all the presents he gives her, it can be the jealousy which plays with the duke’s mind. He says that she is, “Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere”, line 23. When he writes that her looks went everywhere, it is possible that he thinks that the duchess is unfaithful. “She thanked men, - good; but thanked somehow – I know not how-..”, line 31. This quotation shows again he thinks that duchess thanks all the men in an unimaginably way. It is one of the reasons why he is so mad.She smiles every time she passes the duke, but he says that she did with everyone. He is sick and tired of her, and he cannot deal with it anymore, “I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together”, line 45. He gives the order to kill the duchess. He cannot deal with the thought of the fact that he is equal with all the men she smiles to. The duke feels that he is better than many of the other men, so the duke may have felt that the duchess in a way humiliates him. He has given her a nine-hundred-years old name, a very respectful family, and he does not want her to thwart the good name of the family by being a harlot. He is to proud of his own person and family that all what he stands for is too valuable to throw away. Therefore the duchess should not thwart his good name. The duke has much power, and he enjoys showing his greatness to all people around him. He does it in a way where he shows that he has economic affluence. The big portrait of his first wife is very expensive, and it has a curtain before it, and only the duke is allowed to show the beautiful picture’s secret to other persons. He shows also his economic affluence by giving great gifts. He likes the way people shows that they are excited and think that he is a fantastic man.The duke can tell all this to the emissary because he is so powerful. It is an honour to marry such a wealthy duke, and it will be a ticket to a life where everything is possible and you will never miss anything because you can afford everything. The duke can almost choose, by himself, who he wants as his next wife. The duke’s next wife has to be more thoughtful of her actions. She must try to comply with his indirect demands of how she has to behave. The next duchess has to behave as she is from the upper-class like the duke does. She must have a facade which, perhaps, must hide her real personality, if she has a personality which matches to the first duchess’ personality. It is important that she is an almost perfect wife for the duke, so they can fit perfectly together and she can perhaps keep her life, a little longer than the first duchess...
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