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Why is the Duke in Browning's "My Last Duchess" labeled as "witless" despite his apparent cunning?

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The Duke in Browning's "My Last Duchess" is labeled as "witless" due to his unrealistic expectations of his late wife's behavior and his failure to appreciate her joyful, simple nature. Despite his cunning, his arrogance blinds him to the consequences of his actions and words, particularly when revealing incriminating details to a marriage negotiator. This lack of self-awareness and understanding of his own fortune makes him appear witless, despite his manipulative tendencies.

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The Duke could easily be seen as a clueless or witless narcissist in the completely unrealistic demands for exclusive adoration that he put upon his now-dead wife. What human being could possibly be completely unresponsive to compliments and conversation from other people? How could she possibly control the involuntary response of a spot of color coming into her cheek as someone spoke to her?

Further, the Duke comes across as witless for not understanding how lucky he was to have married someone he presents, if unwittingly, as loving, generous, kind, and easily pleased. She was delighted with a bough of cherries. She loved riding around the terrace on a mule. She was full of joy and happiness; she seemed to enjoy the simplest pleasures and to demand very little. She was also apparently beautiful. What more could this man want? She sounds like an ideal partner who could have made...

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him very happy.

The Duke appears witless, too, in how much he reveals about himself. He is entertaining a man who is negotiating a marriage for the Count's daughter; even so, the Duke divulges telling details about himself and the circumstances of the Duchess's death. If he has any conscience at all, wouldn't the man be apt to warn the Count not to marry his daughter to a dangerous sociopath?

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I think that there are two ways we can examine the character of the Duke in this poem. You can either view him as a very Machiavellilan figure who is able to use and abuse his power to manipulate others and send very clear messages about his power and supremacy, or you can argue that he is a figure who is so blinded by his arrogance and his position in the world that he is actually witless and is not aware of the possible ramifications of what he says and does.

Clearly, how we view the Duke revolves around our attitude towards what he says concerning his last wife and how she met her end. The way in which the Duke mentions her fate in an unspecific way could be viewed as either a very strong hint towards his companion about the kind of obedience and flattery he expects from his wife, or we could interpret it as a power-crazed comment from a Duke who is obsessed with his own importance and does not think of the consequences of his words. This, I think, is how the Duke could be viewed as being "witless," though my own reading of this poem leads me to the conclusion that he is much more cunning and Machiavellian than he ever could be considered witless.

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