"My Last Duchess": A Poem about Relationships between the Colonizers and the Colonized

Abstract

When we take into consideration the numerous interpretations of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" poem we notice that most of them present and give ideas about the personalities of the Duke and the Duchess either from a psychological perspective or from a feminist perspective. This paper presents a new way of reading and understanding the poem as concerning the relationship between the colonizers, represented by the Duke, and the colonized, represented by the Duchess, as well as the colonizers’ relationship with art. These ideas came into the researcher's mind because Browning composed the poem in the 19th century, when colonization started, and powerful, rich countries exploited weak, poor nations. These realities were deeply embedded in the poet's subconscious and emerged in the poem in disguise. Readers can speculate that through composing this dramatic monologue, the poet unconsciously denounced the acts of the colonizers.