In the Victorian Web’s article, “The Femme Fetale As Object” by Elizabeth Brown, she describes the portrayal of these Victorian women in artwork. In many paintings, women aren’t shown in their true form, but rather versions of themselves with altered proportions. For example, women would be shown with a more elongated spine or longer legs, so they were not always anatomically correct in their portraits. Through these alterations, these women were reduced to a version of themselves based mostly on “pleasing arrangements of shapes and light.” (Brown). The idea of a woman being dismembered in such a fashion reminded me of Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” The speaker in the poem doesn’t refer to the duchess as an entity, but rather reduces her to her features, and talks specifically about parts of her, but never describes the entire painting. Through the freedom of artists to alter their paintings to idealize proportions, the woman is not only anatomically incorrect, but her value and individuality are diminished.
The first line in “My Last Duchess” that struck me was when the speaker took note specifically of Fra Pandolf’s hands. By switching the subject of the sentence from the artist to his hands, it dehumanizes him and reduces his creativeness to the tools of his creation-his hands. This is consistent with his descriptions of the duchess, as he goes on to describe the way she blushes. He doesn’t say the word blush, however, which connotes charm and modesty. Instead, the word he uses to describe the flush in her cheeks is “spot.” A “spot of joy” was not a positive description to me as a reader. Instead, it made me think of a stain or something unwanted and undesirable. He does not describe the rest of her face or ever discuss the description of her image as a whole, but he does talk about her mouth and her “smiles” that she wears too often in his opinion. He expresses here his distaste in her flirtatious nature, and his jealousy and unpleasant demeanor become evident. The “femme fatale” is often defined as “a very attractive woman who causes trouble or unhappiness for the men who become involved with her,” which is consistent with the description of the duchess and the husband that survived her.
The imagery present in “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning is fragmented and oftentimes focuses only on specific snippets of images. I found the parallel of the style in which Victorian women were painted and the structure of this poem to be really interesting. The idea of using fragmented parts to create a more appealing whole is consistent in both mediums.