Free Write: Week One

T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" are dramatic monologues. While the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is composed by free verse, My Last Duchess follows iambic pentameter. When you read "My Last Duchess" it aloud it does not follow that rhyme. So although it follows the standard form, when read aloud it loses that form. Using iambic pentameter Browning reveals the horrifying story of the murder of the duke's previous wife through the duke's conversation with the agent. The conversation gets interesting when the duke loses control. For example, when he says:
“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.”
He loses control and he notices he told the truth to the agent and he sees that the agent wants to go down stairs so he says “we’ll meet the company below, then.”
The duke’s loss of control is depicted through the rhythm of the poem that is also when the iambic pentameter form of the poem is lost. The enjambment in the poem, reveal the duke’s uneasiness when he tells about his wife’s murder at the end of the poem. The duke's desire for control is made evident by the structure of the poem. He is very manipulative shown by the frequent use of caesura throughout the poem emphasize the duke's control over the conversation. Although the duke was unable to control the duchess when she was alive, he could control after she was dead. I think that that is one aspect that the duke hates and he cannot get over, his duchess was very independent, flirtatious, and prosperous. In a way I believe he hated her outgoing personality. The only way he could have her just for him was by killing her "none puts by the curtain I have drawn for you, but I," revealing that now he is able to control who views the portrait by a curtain covering the portrait.