3. The Duke eliminated (divorced? sent to a convent? had executed or poisoned?) his last duchess because (he felt) she undervalued him and treated him much as she treated other men. Which trivial incidents in particular seem to have produced this response in the Duke?
The Duke is a cold and controlling man who, if the object is not up to his standards, he sees it as worthless and must be removed. He similarly treated his last Duchess as an object, and because she undervalued him, he eliminated her. The incident in particular that created the particular response was her treating him the same as everyone else, when “she smiled…Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile?” The Duke was treated the same as her other male admirers- men who “broke in the orchard for her” were the same as the man who gave her the “gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name”. His love for the Duchess was unrequited, so he “gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together”. The Duchess was finally eliminated, because the Duke felt that no smiles were better than the generic ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for commenting! Don't forget to sign your name. Inappropriate, irrelevant, rude, and silly comments will be deleted.