Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” typifies the concept of the femme fatale in several ways. Elizabeth Lee states that the femme fatale in artwork occasioned scopophilia in two ways, of “the artist upon his nude or clothed model” and also of “the viewer upon the art object” (“The Femme Fatale as Object”). In this poem, the last duchess becomes this art object. We see the first instance of scopophilia in the depiction of Frà Pandolf, and the second in the speaker’s continued obsession over the painting.
That the artist gains some pleasure from painting the speaker’s late wife is evidenced by the speaker’s imagined exchange between the painter and his subject: “‘Paint / ‘Must never hope to reproduce the faint / ‘Half-flush that dies along her throat:’ such stuff / Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough / For calling up that spot of joy” (17-21). Lee observes that the depiction of female subjects as the femme fatale “not only objectified the woman, but also dismembered her body and her identity” (“Femme Fatale”). The femme fatale thus becomes formulaic, reduced to her womanly characteristics. This is perhaps most obviously demonstrated by Rossetti in “In An Artist’s Studio,” where the subject is recreated over and over again in paintings that all hold the same meaning. However, in “My Last Duchess” we also get a similar sense that this woman is one in a progression of many. The title itself, “My Last Duchess” perhaps suggests that the woman depicted in the painting was not the first to have married the speaker and met this fate, but perhaps just the “last” one to have done so. Furthermore, the speaker tells his companion that the Count’s “fair daughter’s self, as I avowed / At starting, is my object” (52-53). The proximity of this line to “Notice Neptune…thought a rarity” shows that the speaker is a collector of the beautiful, and that the “last duchess” depicted in the painting is just one of a collection of “rarities” (54-55).
Lee also asserts that the femme fatale held “a certain amount of power over the viewer, who is enthralled with fascination” (“Femme Fatale”). In the poem, though we suspect that the speaker exaggerates much about the woman’s behavior, it is suggested that she was admired by many and was generous with her affections. The speaker tells us she thanked other men “as if she ranked / My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name / With anybody’s gift” (32-34). This “fascination” that many seemed to have with her further solidifies the woman’s position as femme fatale, and we can see the effect of the female gaze.
Thus, if we apply Lee’s thoughts on the femme fatale to Browning’s poem, we can see that the “last duchess” has many of the features of a femme fatale, and her preservation in artwork and the pleasure that others take from viewing her demonstrates the scopophilia that Lee defines. Lastly, we see that because the speaker retains this painting of the duchess, his “attempts to conquer” the femme fatale have failed (“Femme Fatale”).