My Last Colony A postcolonial approach to Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”

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The duke’s desire to control the duchess can be seen in the monologue’s meter and form: iambic pentameter in rhymed couplets. The poem’s structure leads to an allegory of the duke as a British colonizer. Being the only one speaking and thus having the power of what the visitor and the reader learn about the last duchess illustrates the control the duke imposes over the latter. The duke forms his speech into iambic pentameters. The number of five plays an important role in the British expansion in the 19th century. The British were present in five continents: Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania (Reinhard 74, 146f, 175, 214, 261). The entire monologue is set in iambic pentameters which create a natural speech effect (Tarlinskaja 56). This regular rhythm as well as the tidy form (rhymed couplets) indicate that the duke intends to control everything, even his speech. The sentences, however, do not finish at the end of the line: There is an enjambment between most lines. This proves that the duke cannot control everything: Even if he shapes his speech into iambic pentameters and rhymed couplets, his thoughts clash with human values. Using a refined language, the duke tries to qualify himself as well educated by alluding to Greek mythology (54) and as decent by only hinting at the duchess’s death (45f). At first, his statement that the last duchess had “skill / in speech” that he does not have (35f) appears to be paradoxical. This obviously being a lie (I illustrated how carefully constructed the monologue is), the duke’s dishonesty is revealed. Through this unreliability of speech another parallel to the colonizers who produced an inaccurate image of the East (Hamadi 39f) can be drawn.

I elaborated an allegorical reading of Browning’s “My Last Duchess” with the powerful duke as a colonial master and the ‘savage’ dead duchess as a colony. I explained that the duke tries to control the mysterious duchess and forces her into a subaltern role by continually ‘othering’ her. This can be interpreted as an act of colonization. The poem’s meter suggests that the duke is a British colonial master during the 19th century. Ulrich Pallua states that:

If colonised people are irrational, Europeans are rational; if the former are barbaric, sensual and lazy, Europe is civilisation itself, with its sexual appetites under control and its dominant ethic that of hard work; […] the Orient has to be feminine so that Europe can be masculine. (28)

I laid out how this opposition between colonizers and colonies equals the opposition between the controlled duke and the passionate, impetuous duchess. The allegory, based on postcolonial theory, proves the timeless significance of Browning’s poem: Written almost two hundred years ago, it reveals human values and norms that are influential until today. A critical postcolonial approach to literature is vital not only in order to learn about past oppression of cultures and their still highly noticeable implications. Orientalism persists as an act of ‘othering’ for instance in advertisements for exotic holiday places. Additionally, colonialism has to be newly interpreted towards the future as the expansion of western power continues for example by land grabbing. Whilst postcolonial theory is interdisciplinary, I claim that it is especially effective in literature. Analyzing and comparing the multiple facets of texts written by different cultures give insight into people’s feelings and thoughts in respect of global phenomena.

[1590 words]

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Works Cited

Primary text:

Browning, Robert. “My Last Duchess.“ The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Ed. Meyer Howard Abrams et al. 6th edition. Vol. 2. New York, London: Norton, 1993. 1190-1192. Print.

Secondary sources:

Abrams, Meyer Howard, and Geofforey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 11th edition. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2015. Print.

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2009. Print.

Hamadi, Lufti. “Edward Said: The Postcolonial Theory and the Literature of Decolonization.” European Scientific Journal Special edition Vol. 2 (2014): 39-46. Print.

“Orientalism.” A Dictionary of Human Geography. Ed. Noel Castree, Rob Kitchin, and Alisdair Rogers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Web. 3 December 2016. .

Pallua, Ulrich. Eurocentrism, Racism, Colonialism in the Victorian and Edwardian Age. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2006. Print.

Purchase, Sean. Key Concepts in Victorian Literature. Hampshire, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Print.

Reinhard, Wolfgang. A Short History of Colonialism. Trans. Kate Sturge. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. Print.

Said, Edward Wadie. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Print.

Tarlinskaja, Marina. “What is ‘metricality’? English iambic pentameter.” Formal Approaches to Poetry: Recent Developments in Metrics. Ed. Bezalel Elan Dresher, and Nila Friedberg. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2008. 53-74. Print.

Watson, John Richards. “Robert Browning: ‘My Last Duchess’.” Critical Survey 6.1 (1973): 69-75. Print.

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Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman. “Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: An Introduction.” Introduction. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams, and Laura Chrisman. Harlow: Longman, 2006. 1-20. Print.