Patriarchal Control

The central theme of the poem is a critique of the status of women in society. Browning offers a tacit, but forceful, criticism of misogyny, taking the idea of treating women like objects in order to appreciate their beauty or preserve their chastity to its logical extreme: violence and murder. The poem achieves this critique through implication and ambiguity, as the duke never explicitly states that he had his late wife killed. instead, Browning uses the duke as a mouthpiece for a patriarchal sense of control that culminates, presumably, in violence.

In Victorian England, women were expected to remain confined to the domestic sphere, to focus their attention on having and raising children. The duke alludes to this expectation when he complains about his wife riding “round the terrace” (29). Although she is still on his property, she is not actually inside the home, and is...