Divorcing the Duchess

"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." ('My Last Duchess'-Robert Browning)

The speaker, being a duke, seems to have some personal problems with his marriage to his wife, who is a duchess. He divorced his duchess because he presumed she did not love him as her husband; treated him like any other man she met. He thought that she treated their marriage as if nothing but a promise, yet she had broken it. It seemed she loved all men equally to her husband and he didn't think this was righteous.


"Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; 

Then all smiles stopped together [...]

The Count you master's known munifence

Is ample warrant that no just pretence

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;" ('My Last Duchess'-Robert Browning)

Of course the duke loved his wife, but if she did not handle the reins of their marriage with every ounce of her blood from her heart and within her, he had no choice but to divorce her if things weren't working out.
He was afraid she wasn't happy with him; he wants nothing but for her to be happy, so he thought it best they split the reins of their marriage in the midst of her appeal to other men in relations to him. The duke had questioned her authority and who her heart belongs to, and it seemed that he had judged his last duchess wrong. She loved him, but he was blinded and overly jealous by how she had treated other men in that sense. She was not happy when they had divorced, and in the hands of fate she had died in misery. The duke felt empathy for his wife in her death, and wished he had not divorced her knowing she had actually loved him more than any man. He would give up all his possessions for her happiness and in the face of the trivial incidents he assumed would end their marriage and make her happy, but it didn't.