ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
All American Literature Videos 200 videos
Modernism was the happy, optimistic bandwagon that every writer just had to jump on. Okay, so only half of that statement is true. But we want you...
You might be hearing a chorus of farewells if you recommend A Farewell to Arms as the next read for your Fabulously Feisty Feminist Book Club.
This video summarizes the play A Raisin in the Sun. It discusses the Youngers, members of an African-American family trying to better themselves wh...
My Last Duchess: 19th Century Logic About Women 11972 Views
Share It!
Description:
Hanging your wife's portrait above your fireplace? Romantic. Hanging it up after you've killed her? Not so much.
Transcript
- 00:07
My Last Duchess: Nineteenth Century Logic about Women, a la Shmoop
- 00:11
Ahh, romance.
- 00:13
Girl meets boy…
- 00:15
Boy marries girl…
- 00:16
Girl smiles too much…
Full Transcript
- 00:18
Boy kills girl.
- 00:19
16th century love was so touching. Robert Browning didn’t write My Last Duchess
- 00:24
during the Renaissance…
- 00:25
…instead, he took a creepy old story and gave it new life.
- 00:29
But maybe he didn’t just do it to make us all super uncomfortable.
- 00:33
Maybe he wrote the poem because psychopathic woman-hating still wasn’t out of style by
- 00:37
the 19th century, when he was writing.
- 00:39
The Duke in “My Last Duchess” is really just taking nineteenth century logic about
- 00:44
women… to an extreme. In the poem, he’s introducing his friend,
- 00:48
the Count, to his wife.
- 00:50
Sorry… a painting of his wife.
- 00:52
A painting of his dead wife…
- 00:55
…whom he may or may not have killed for smiling at other men.
- 00:59
But hey, close enough to the real thing, right? He even says: “there she stands as if alive.”
- 01:07
Because now she quote unquote “lives” the way he wants her to… no moving, no talking,
- 01:12
definitely no being nice to other people…
- 01:15
Now that she’s a painting, he can treat her the way he always wanted to: like a thing
- 01:18
he owns.
- 01:20
That’s my last Duchess, he says. You can tell he really sees women as objects…
- 01:25
…because he’s showing off this painting of his dead wife…
- 01:29
… to the Count whose daughter could be the newest Duchess.
- 01:31
So he’s bargaining for a dowry to “buy” his next wife…
- 01:35
…while casually dropping hints that he may have offed the other one for smiling.
- 01:40
Not that what he did was cool or anything…
- 01:44
…but maybe it wasn’t all the Duke’s fault.
- 01:46
Okay, he’s pretty creepy, but it’s not like he’s the only one here who’s bonkers.
- 01:50
We don’t hear the count raising any objections.
- 01:52
He’s there to sell his daughter, period.
- 01:54
He doesn’t much seem to mind that the buyer is …probably a psycho killer.
- 01:59
So if women are objects in the Duke’s culture…
- 02:02
…and in Browning’s culture, too…
- 02:04
…then is the Duke really that crazy to treat them that way?
- 02:09
Shmoop amongst yourselves.
Related Videos
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.
Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...
