Channels, Spring 2017

Page 6 Werneburg • Encountering the Phantasmagoria Baudelaire, the Pre-Raphaelites, and “My Last Duchess” Browning likely chose the Italian Renaissance as the setting for his poem because of the overlap between Victorian societal norms and the aristocratic culture of Renaissance Italy. In “ Power and Passion in Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Sexual and Political Reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de' Medici,” Nicholas Scott Baker explores the significance of the Italian ladder of love paradigm to the reigns of two dukes, both members of the influential Medici family. In this paradigm, reason is associated with virtue and spirituality, while passion is tied to the body and the animalistic side of human nature. Baker asserts that in the sixteenth century, there was an expanding group of texts on “comportment, manners, and etiquette [that] demanded increasing self-control from the social elite, . . . [while labeling] the anonymous mass of urban laborers and peasants . . . effeminate, . . . [and] closer to the body and its passions” (448). The impeccable restraint and social bearing of these Early Modern Italian dukes is reminiscent of the dandy’s “unshakeable determination not to be moved” (Baudelaire 688). Browning’s duke is driven by the necessity to maintain a composed, dispassionate appearance—he could not tell his duchess exactly what was wrong with her behavior or exactly how she ought to behave because “E’en then would be some stooping” (42). He could not express his feelings to the duchess since any emotional outburst would be perceived as effeminate; additionally, if he spoke to the duchess about her behavior, he would be admitting by his reproach that she had the power to emotionally discompose him. Furthermore, Baker’s note about the connections between “ tyranny, effeminacy, and an overabundance of heteroerotic desire” helps explain the duke’s reticence to speak openly with his duchess, for the duke is clearly repressing his sexual desire while suffering from sexual jealousy (434). Browning’s Victorian audience, conditioned to pick up on any hint of impropriety, certainly would not have missed the sexual overtones running throughout the poem. Victorians would have been discomfited with the duke over “the depth and passion of [the duchess’] earnest glance” and the fact that “twas not / Her husband’s presence only, called that spot / Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek” (8, my emphasis, 13-15). As Mazurek’s research suggests, Browning’s audience would likely have seen Fra Pandolf’s presence as an “invasion of the hearth” (695). They certainly would have been appalled at the implicit prurient interests behind the comments that the duke attributes to Fra Pandolf when, trying to explain the reasons for the Duchess’ passionate aspect in the portrait, the Duke says, perhaps Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat[.] (15-19) We might explain the whole poem by the duke’s sexual insecurity, or even impotence, if not for the next few lines in which the duke maintains that his duchess thought Fra Pandolf’s comments were mere “courtesy, . . . and cause enough / For calling up that spot of joy” (20- 21). The duke seems to believe that the duchess did not transgress sexually in either mind