Student Question
How do "My Last Duchess" and "A Suttee" represent the ideological position?
Quick answer:
"My Last Duchess" and "A Suttee" both critique the subjugation and objectification of women in patriarchal societies. "A Suttee" highlights the horrific practice of widow immolation, underscoring the idea that a woman's life is worthless without her husband. "My Last Duchess" portrays a Duke who objectifies and controls his wife, reflecting male dominance and gendered stereotypes. Both poems are heavily gendered, exposing the deadly consequences of patriarchal ideologies.
Both poems suggest an ideological condition of the subjugation and objectification of women. "A Suttee" describes the practice of a bride immolating (burning) herself on her husband's funeral pyre. This is an ancient practice which has been almost universally banned. Unfortunately, it does still occur, with cases cited in India. The practice suggests that women are not fit to live without their husbands, as if it is unchaste or as if they are just unable to cope with the loss. The practice of suttee has not been equal in terms of gender; in the documented cases of sati (suttee), there are little to no examples of male suttee. Clearly, this is a horrific double standard.
"My Last Duchess " is obviously less violent, but the Duke literally objectifies his wife with the painting on the wall. Not there to defend herself, the Duke, having no respect for his dead...
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wife, implies she was promiscuous ("she liked whate'er/ She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.") Then he literally tells the man, whose master's daughter he is about to marry, that she is his object.
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting is my object.
In "A Suttee," the majority of the poem describes the bride's beauty, again as if she is nothing more than a pretty object. The poem ends on a morbidly ironic note. That they will be united, "no more to part" almost sounds romantic, but that romanticization is part of this deplorable ideology of the woman being subservient to the man in body and spirit.
How are the stories in "My Last Duchess" and "A Suttee" gendered?
To clarify your question somewhat, what you are asking is to what degree these poems are or are not gendered: heavily gendered or lightly gendered. Asking about "each poem" separately from the "story" of each is a bit ambiguous. One might say each poem is heavily gendered because each author discusses a heavily gendered theme. In "Suttee" Landon talks about the act of a widow's death on her husband's funeral fire. In "Duchess" Browning talks about the idea of a woman's male dependence. The gendering Browning exposes might be said to be a protest against the idea of a woman's male dependence. In this sense, each poem is heavily gendered.
If you separate the stories told from the poetic form that houses them, then each story is also heavily gendered. Browning's is the story of a Duke and Duchess. The Duke is so disgusted that her looks and joy are not confined to him alone that he commands she find joy in only him and smile at only him. She dies at his command (though Browning gives no clear hint of the Duke having any direct responsibility in her death).
This story is heavily gendered as it expresses the patriarchal female stereotype of the mindless, emotional and irrational woman who has no moral character nor any noble virtue. Browning's satiric wit and a tone of disdain debunk (ridicule) this gendered idea as the Duke puts the Duchess's death, his next dowry (price received for taking the bride), and a "sea-horse" all in one breath, so to speak:
There she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? ...
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
[...]
Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, ...
Landon's story is the story of a bride and widow. The beginning of the lady's story encompasses the end. The lady, celebrated in her right, becomes the bride whose identity becomes subsumed by (meshed with, buried by) the identity of the male, and she will end, though living, when he ends.
And yet the crowd that gather at her side
Are pale, and every gazer holds his breath.
... for the bride ...
She gives [away] the gems that she will wear no more; ...The red pile blazes--let the bride ascend, ...
The heavy gender bias is revealed in the title "A Suttee," an act of sacrifice so a woman whose husband has died will not become a scorned widow who has failed in her duties. The story is gender biased toward the patriarchal male presumptions about the life of woman: it is worthless without the sanction of a man's life giving it his worth. The bias can be summarized like this: She exists for his pleasure and when he can no longer receive pleasure from her in death, she will cease existing on his funeral pyre ("the red pile blazes").
Both stories are heavily gender biased. Both give a similar message that male dominance based on patriarchal presuppositions is deadly: deadly for the woman and deadly wrong.