My Last Duchess 2

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only man to receive a smile from his wife.
Another aspect of the duke’s character addressed in the poem is his condescending attitude. Two times in the poem the duke needlessly told the names of the artists who created the masterpieces that he owned (lines 3 & 56). He felt superiority over the emissary he was speaking to by dropping these names. The duke addressed the emissary as a “never read stranger” (line 6). Not only was it patronizing for the duke to call him a stranger, but he called him unintelligent too.
The third character trait of the duke is his controlling behavior. In lines nine and ten he told the emissary that no one “puts by the curtain” that he had drawn for him but the duke himself. He felt the need to control who ever looked at the painting of the duchess. The main evidence of his dominating behavior is in line 46. The line reads, “…then all smiles stopped together.” The line is ambiguous, but the most ...

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