“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Parts I-IV→

Summary

Three young men are walking together to a wedding, when one of them is detained by a grizzled old
sailor. The young Wedding-Guest angrily demands that the Mariner let go of him, and the Mariner
obeys. But the young man is transfixed by the ancient Mariner’s “glittering eye” and can do nothing but
sit on a stone and listen to his strange tale. The Mariner says that he sailed on a ship out of his native
harbor—”below the kirk, below the hill, / Below the lighthouse top”—and into a sunny and cheerful sea.
Hearing bassoon music drifting from the direction of the wedding, the Wedding-Guest imagines that the
bride has entered the hall, but he is still helpless to tear himself from the Mariner’s story. The Mariner
recalls that the voyage quickly darkened, as a giant storm rose up in the sea and chased the ship
southward. Quickly, the ship came to a frigid land “of mist and snow,” where “ice, mast-high, came
floating by”; the ship was hemmed inside this maze of ice. But then the sailors encountered an
Albatross, a great sea bird. As it flew around the ship, the ice cracked and split, and a wind from the
south propelled the ship out of the frigid regions, into a foggy stretch of water. The Albatross followed
behind it, a symbol of good luck to the sailors. A pained look crosses the Mariner’s face, and the
Wedding-Guest asks him, “Why look’st thou so?” The Mariner confesses that he shot and killed the
Albatross with his crossbow.

At first, the other sailors were furious with the Mariner for having killed the bird that made the breezes
blow. But when the fog lifted soon afterward, the sailors decided that the bird had actually brought not
the breezes but the fog; they now congratulated the Mariner on his deed. The wind pushed the ship into
a silent sea where the sailors were quickly stranded; the winds died down, and the ship was “As idle as a
painted ship / Upon a painted ocean.” The ocean thickened, and the men had no water to drink; as if the
sea were rotting, slimy creatures crawled out of it and walked across the surface. At night, the water
burned green, blue, and white with death fire. Some of the sailors dreamed that a spirit, nine fathoms
deep, followed them beneath the ship from the land of mist and snow. The sailors blamed the Mariner
for their plight and hung the corpse of the Albatross around his neck like a cross.

A weary time passed; the sailors became so parched, their mouths so dry, that they were unable to
speak. But one day, gazing westward, the Mariner saw a tiny speck on the horizon. It resolved into a
ship, moving toward them. Too dry-mouthed to speak out and inform the other sailors, the Mariner bit
down on his arm; sucking the blood, he was able to moisten his tongue enough to cry out, “A sail! a
sail!” The sailors smiled, believing they were saved. But as the ship neared, they saw that it was a
ghostly, skeletal hull of a ship and that its crew included two figures: Death and the Night-mare Life-in-
Death, who takes the form of a pale woman with golden locks and red lips, and “thicks man’s blood with
cold.” Death and Life-in-Death began to throw dice, and the woman won, whereupon she whistled three
times, causing the sun to sink to the horizon, the stars to instantly emerge. As the moon rose, chased by
a single star, the sailors dropped dead one by one—all except the Mariner, whom each sailor cursed
“with his eye” before dying. The souls of the dead men leapt from their bodies and rushed by the
Mariner.

The Wedding-Guest declares that he fears the Mariner, with his glittering eye and his skinny hand. The
Mariner reassures the Wedding-Guest that there is no need for dread; he was not among the men who
died, and he is a living man, not a ghost. Alone on the ship, surrounded by two hundred corpses, the
Mariner was surrounded by the slimy sea and the slimy creatures that crawled across its surface. He
tried to pray but was deterred by a “wicked whisper” that made his heart “as dry as dust.” He closed his
eyes, unable to bear the sight of the dead men, each of who glared at him with the malice of their final
curse. For seven days and seven nights the Mariner endured the sight, and yet he was unable to die. At
last the moon rose, casting the great shadow of the ship across the waters; where the ship’s shadow
touched the waters, they burned red. The great water snakes moved through the silvery moonlight,
glittering; blue, green, and black, the snakes coiled and swam and became beautiful in the Mariner’s
eyes. He blessed the beautiful creatures in his heart; at that moment, he found himself able to pray, and
the corpse of the Albatross fell from his neck, sinking “like lead into the sea.”

Form

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is written in loose, short ballad stanzas usually either four or six lines
long but, occasionally, as many as nine lines long. The meter is also somewhat loose, but odd lines are
generally tetrameter, while even lines are generally trimeter. (There are exceptions: In a five-line stanza,
for instance, lines one, three, and four are likely to have four accented syllables—tetrameter—while
lines two and five have three accented syllables.) The rhymes generally alternate in an ABAB or ABABAB
scheme, though again there are many exceptions; the nine-line stanza in Part III, for instance, rhymes
AABCCBDDB. Many stanzas include couplets in this way—five-line stanzas, for example, are rhymed
ABCCB, often with an internal rhyme in the first line, or ABAAB, without the internal rhyme.

Commentary
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is unique among Coleridge’s important works— unique in its
intentionally archaic language (“Eftsoons his hand drops he”), its length, its bizarre moral narrative, its
strange scholarly notes printed in small type in the margins, its thematic ambiguity, and the long Latin
epigraph that begins it, concerning the multitude of unclassifiable “invisible creatures” that inhabit the
world. Its peculiarities make it quite atypical of its era; it has little in common with other Romantic
works. Rather, the scholarly notes, the epigraph, and the archaic language combine to produce the
impression (intended by Coleridge, no doubt) that the “Rime” is a ballad of ancient times (like “Sir
Patrick Spence,” which appears in “Dejection: An Ode”), reprinted with explanatory notes for a new
audience.

But the explanatory notes complicate, rather than clarify, the poem as a whole; while there are times
that they explain some unarticulated action, there are also times that they interpret the material of the
poem in a way that seems at odds with, or irrelevant to, the poem itself. For instance, in Part II, we find
a note regarding the spirit that followed the ship nine fathoms deep: “one of the invisible inhabitants of
this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the
Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted.” What might Coleridge mean by
introducing such figures as “the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus,” into the poem, as
marginalia, and by implying that the verse itself should be interpreted through him?

This is a question that has puzzled scholars since the first publication of the poem in this form.
(Interestingly, the original version of the “Rime,” in the 1797 edition of Lyrical Ballads, did not include
the side notes.) There is certainly an element of humor in Coleridge’s scholarly glosses—a bit of parody
aimed at the writers of serious glosses of this type; such phrases as “Platonic Constantinopolitan” seem
consciously silly. It can be argued that the glosses are simply an amusing irrelevancy designed to make
the poem seem archaic and that the truly important text is the poem itself—in its complicated, often
Christian symbolism, in its moral lesson (that “all creatures great and small” were created by God and
should be loved, from the Albatross to the slimy snakes in the rotting ocean) and in its characters.

If one accepts this argument, one is faced with the task of discovering the key to Coleridge’s symbolism:
what does the Albatross represent, what do the spirits represent, and so forth. Critics have made many
ingenious attempts to do just that and have found in the “Rime” a number of interesting readings,
ranging from Christian parable to political allegory. But these interpretations are dampened by the fact
that none of them (with the possible exception of the Christian reading, much of which is certainly
intended by the poem) seems essential to the story itself. One can accept these interpretations of the
poem only if one disregards the glosses almost completely.
A more interesting, though still questionable, reading of the poem maintains that Coleridge intended it
as a commentary on the ways in which people interpret the lessons of the past and the ways in which
the past is, to a large extent, simply unknowable. By filling his archaic ballad with elaborate symbolism
that cannot be deciphered in any single, definitive way and then framing that symbolism with side notes
that pick at it and offer a highly theoretical spiritual-scientific interpretation of its classifications,
Coleridge creates tension between the ambiguous poem and the unambiguous-but-ridiculous notes,
exposing a gulf between the “old” poem and the “new” attempt to understand it. The message would be
that, though certain moral lessons from the past are still comprehensible—”he liveth best who loveth
best” is not hard to understand— other aspects of its narratives are less easily grasped.

In any event, this first segment of the poem takes the Mariner through the worst of his trials and shows,
in action, the lesson that will be explicitly articulated in the second segment. The Mariner kills the
Albatross in bad faith, subjecting himself to the hostility of the forces that govern the universe (the very
un-Christian-seeming spirit beneath the sea and the horrible Life-in-Death). It is unclear how these
forces are meant to relate to one another—whether the Life-in-Death is in league with the submerged
spirit or whether their simultaneous appearance is simply a coincidence.

After earning his curse, the Mariner is able to gain access to the favor of God—able to regain his ability
to pray—only by realizing that the monsters around him are beautiful in God’s eyes and that he should
love them as he should have loved the Albatross. In the final three books of the poem, the Mariner’s
encounter with a Hermit will spell out this message explicitly, and the reader will learn why the Mariner
has stopped the Wedding-Guest to tell him this story.

 INTRO
 THE POEM
 SUMMARY
 ANALYSIS
 Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay
 Form and Meter
 Speaker
 Setting
 Sound Check
 What's Up With the Title?
 Calling Card
 Tough-O-Meter
 Brain Snacks
  Sex Rating
 Shout Outs
 THEMES
 QUOTES
 STUDY QUESTIONS
 BEST OF THE WEB
 HOW TO READ A POEM

WEATHER: THE GOOD, THE BAD,

THE ICY, THE DRY
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Symbol Analysis
In pretty much any poem or novel about life at sea, you can expect quite a lot of attention to be
devoted to the weather. But who could have expected a huge fog near Antarctica, a massive drought
that turns the ocean into a swamp, or a lightning show that gets dead people moving again? Here's
the general trajectory: the Mariner's ship gets driven down south by a bad storm, then the albatross
guides them through fog and ice, then they suffer a truly horrifying, windless drought, the Mariner
sees a massive and supernatural night-time storm, and he finally gets carried by invisible forces
back to the bay.

 Part I.Stanzas 11-12: The storm that drives the ship south is compared metaphorically to
some kind of winged predator on the hunt. The ship is like the animal at ground level that runs
in the "shadow" of the predator to escape it.
 I.15: The ice near Antarctica makes loud cracking noises that sound "like noises in a swound,"
that is, like the sounds a fainting person might hear. The word "like" makes clear that this is a
simile.
 II.25: This stanza, describing the good weather (which lasts all of one stanza) enjoyed by the
crew, features the alliterative repetition of the "f" sound, as in "furrow follow free."
 II.28: When the wind dies and the ship can't move, the scene is compared using simile to a
motionless painting.
 II.29: The ship's shrunken wood boards become central image of the terrible dryness that the
killing of the albatross produces.
  II.33: The crew becomes so thirsty that it's as if their mouths were full of dry "soot," or ashes,
which is a simile.
 V.72-74: Images of a strange meteorological event accompany the rising of the sailor's bodies
from death. A single cloud appears in the distance, lightning falls down perfect line, a wind that
can be heard but not felt makes a ruckus.
 VI.105: Coleridge really likes similes. Here he compares the mysterious wind that blows on
him alone to a spring breeze blowing through a meadow.

OZYMANDIAS SYMBOLISM, IMAGERY, ALLEGORY

ANALYSIS: WHAT'S UP WITH

THE TITLE?


"Ozymandias" is an ancient Greek name for Ramses II of Egypt. It is actually a Greek version of the
Egyptian phrase "User-maat-Re," one of Ramses's Egyptian names. Why not just call the poem
"User-maat-Re," you might ask? Well, this is Shelley, who had studied ancient Greek; it is therefore
no surprise that he chooses to use the Greek name "Ozymandias," rather than the Egyptian name.

Ramses II was one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs, and many of the most famous tourist sites in
Egypt, including the temple of Abu Simbel and the Ramesseum in Thebes, were built or planned
during his incredibly long tenure (he lived until he was 90!). He is known not only for his building
program, but also for several ambitious foreign military campaigns and for his diplomacy, especially
with the Hittites, another important ancient people.
Statues and Sculpting

Because the poem is inspired by a statue of Ramses II, we shouldn't be surprised to find so many
references to this statue and to sculpting more generally. The "colossal" size of the statue is a sy...

Destruction

The statue that inspired the poem was partially destroyed, and the poem frequently reminds us that the
statue is in ruins. The dilapidated state of the statue symbolizes not only the erosive proces...

Life
There is a lot of death in this poem; the figure represented in the statue is dead, along with the
civilization to which he belonged. The statue is destroyed, and so it too is, in some sense, dead....

Passions and Feelings

While most of the poem describes a statue, the traveler makes a point of telling us that Ozymandias's
"passions" still survive: they are "stamp'd" on the statue, giving all those who view the statu...

WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I

MAY CEASE TO BE SUMMARY
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Keats' speaker contemplates all of the things that he wants in life: namely, success, fame, and love.
C'mon, is that too much to ask?

Well, as it turns out, the speaker is pretty sure that it is. See, he doesn't want just any old fame. He
wants Fame. Capital letters and neon lights. (Okay – so they didn't have neon lights in the early 19th
century, but you get our point.) He doesn't want just any old love, either. He wants that soul-
stripping, earth-shaking, sky-tumbling once-in-a-lifetime sort of rapture. To sum it all up, he wants to
be the star of pretty much every romantic movie ever.

Here's the problem: the speaker is also pretty sure that his life will end long before he'll be able to
achieve any of these goals. That's why his description of his desires is so tinged with desperation –
chances are, his life will be over far, far too quickly.

This poem charts both the speaker's desires and his despair (in that order). Come to think of it, the
poem doesn't exactly end on a happy note. But hey, what's a good melodrama without a little
tragedy?
 WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I
MAY CEASE TO BE SYMBOLISM,
IMAGERY, ALLEGORY
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Negative Capability
If there's one thing that you need to know about Keats' poetic philosophy, it's these two little words:
negative capability. Believe us, it'll show up on a test someday soon. For Keats, it was a ph...

Nature
We're cheating a little bit here. See, nature is also part of Keats' whole understanding of negative
capability: looking at a huge, scary mountain or the tumult of a stormy sea are a way to face bi...

Figurative Language
If there's one thing we know about John Keats, it's that he's fond of a good metaphor. Practically
every line in his poem offers up a new form of figurative language. This dense web of metaphors
an...
 ODE TO THE WEST WIND
SYMBOLISM, IMAGERY,
ALLEGORY
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The West Wind

The West Wind is the object of the speaker’s plea in this poem, the powerful force that could deliver
him from his inability to make himself heard or to communicate his ideas to others. Blowi...

Dead Leaves
Dead leaves are referenced no less than five times in this short lyric poem. Dead leaves are the
remnants of the previous season which the wind clears away; they’re also a metaphorical
representa...

Funerals
Although there aren’t any literal funerals in "Ode to the West Wind," there’s plenty of funereal
imagery and symbolism. We’ve got dirges, corpses, the "dying year," a sepulcher, a...

The Æolian Harp

The æolian harp was a common parlor instrument in the nineteenth century. Sort of like a wind
chime, the æolian harp (or "æolian lyre" or "wind harp") was meant to be left in a windy...
Bodies of Water
Although "Ode to the West Wind" is mostly about, well, the wind, the middle of the poem moves
away from the airy breezes and considers a different element: water. This slippage starts to happen
in...

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

SYMBOLISM, IMAGERY,
ALLEGORY
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The Urn
The urn is the star of the show, and it is described in several different ways. In the beginning of the
poem, it’s a married bride (but still virginal). Then the speaker looks more closely at...

The First Scene: Men and Maidens

Of all the scenes on the pot, the speaker gets most jazzed about this one. And we can’t really blame
him. It looks like a wild party with attractive young people. He contrasts the perpetual e...

The Second Scene: A Young Musician

The speaker and the beautiful young musician have a lot in common. They are both solitary artists
trying to produce melodic lines. Their music is directed not at the ears but to the inner "spirit."...
The Third Scene: A Sacrifice
The scene of the priest leading a young female cow to be sacrificed seems to come out of nowhere
after the steamy, agitated third stanza. What purpose does the scene serve? Is it necessary to the
p...

Plants and Trees

It’s practically a jungle in this poem. There are trees, flowers, weeds, and branches all around. It’s a
pastoral poem, so we might expect to see a lot of vegetation. By the end, howeve...

Themes

The Inevitability of Death

Even before his diagnosis of terminal tuberculosis, Keats focused on death and its inevitability in his
work. For Keats, small, slow acts of death occurred every day, and he chronicled these small mortal
occurrences. The end of a lover’s embrace, the images on an ancient urn, the reaping of grain in
autumn—all of these are not only symbols of death, but instances of it. Examples of great beauty
and art also caused Keats to ponder mortality, as in “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” ( 1 8 1 7 ). As a
writer, Keats hoped he would live long enough to achieve his poetic dream of becoming as great as
Shakespeare or John Milton: in “Sleep and Poetry” (1 8 1 7 ), Keats outlined a plan of poetic
achievement that required him to read poetry for a decade in order to understand—and surpass—
the work of his predecessors. Hovering near this dream, however, was a morbid sense that death
might intervene and terminate his projects; he expresses these concerns in the
mournful 1 8 1 8  sonnet “When I have fears that I may cease to be.”

The Contemplation of Beauty

In his poetry, Keats proposed the contemplation of beauty as a way of delaying the inevitability of
death. Although we must die eventually, we can choose to spend our time alive in aesthetic revelry,
looking at beautiful objects and landscapes. Keats’s speakerscontemplate urns (“Ode on a Grecian
Urn”), books (“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” [1 8 1 6 ], “On Sitting Down to Read King
Lear Once Again” [1 8 1 8 ]), birds (“Ode to a Nightingale”), and stars (“Bright star, would I were
stedfast as thou art” [1 8 1 9 ]). Unlike mortal beings, beautiful things will never die but will keep
demonstrating their beauty for all time. Keats explores this idea in the first book of Endymion (1 8 1 8 ).
The speaker in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” envies the immortality of the lute players and trees inscribed
on the ancient vessel because they shall never cease playing their songs, nor will they ever shed
their leaves. He reassures young lovers by telling them that even though they shall never catch their
mistresses, these women shall always stay beautiful. The people on the urn, unlike the speaker,
shall never stop having experiences. They shall remain permanently depicted while the speaker
changes, grows old, and eventually dies.

Motifs

Departures and Reveries

In many of Keats’s poems, the speaker leaves the real world to explore a transcendent, mythical, or
aesthetic realm. At the end of the poem, the speaker returns to his ordinary life transformed in some
way and armed with a new understanding. Often the appearance or contemplation of a beautiful
object makes the departure possible. The ability to get lost in a reverie, to depart conscious life for
imaginative life without wondering about plausibility or rationality, is part of Keats’s concept of
negative capability. In “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art,” the speaker imagines a state of
“sweet unrest” (1 2 ) in which he will remain half-conscious on his lover’s breast forever. As speakers
depart this world for an imaginative world, they have experiences and insights that they can then
impart into poetry once they’ve returned to conscious life. Keats explored the relationship between
visions and poetry in “Ode to Psyche” and “Ode to a Nightingale.”

The Five Senses and Art

Keats imagined that the five senses loosely corresponded to and connected with various types of
art. The speaker in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” describes the pictures depicted on the urn, including
lovers chasing one another, musicians playing instruments, and a virginal maiden holding still. All the
figures remain motionless, held fast and permanent by their depiction on the sides of the urn, and
they cannot touch one another, even though we can touch them by holding the vessel. Although the
poem associates sight and sound, because we see the musicians playing, we cannot hear the
music. Similarly, the speaker in “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” compares hearing
Homer’s words to “pure serene” (7 ) air so that reading, or seeing, becomes associating with
breathing, or smelling. In “Ode to a Nightingale,” the speaker longs for a drink of crystal-clear water
or wine so that he might adequately describe the sounds of the bird singing nearby. Each of the five
senses must be involved in worthwhile experiences, which, in turn, lead to the production of
worthwhile art.

The Disappearance of the Poet and the Speaker

In Keats’s theory of negative capability, the poet disappears from the work—that is, the work itself
chronicles an experience in such a way that the reader recognizes and responds to the experience
without requiring the intervention or explanation of the poet. Keats’s speakers become so enraptured
with an object that they erase themselves and their thoughts from their depiction of that object. In
essence, the speaker/poet becomes melded to and indistinguishable from the object being
described. For instance, the speaker of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” describes the scenes on the urn for
several stanzas until the famous conclusion about beauty and truth, which is enclosed in quotation
marks. Since the poem’s publication in 1 8 2 0 , critics have theorized about who speaks these lines,
whether the poet, the speaker, the urn, or one or all the figures on the urn. The erasure of the
speaker and the poet is so complete in this particular poem that the quoted lines are jarring and
troubling.

Symbols

Music and Musicians

Music and musicians appear throughout Keats’s work as symbols of poetry and poets. In “Ode on a
Grecian Urn,” for instance, the speaker describes musicians playing their pipes. Although we cannot
literally hear their music, by using our imaginations, we can imagine and thus hear music. The
speaker of “To Autumn” reassures us that the season of fall, like spring, has songs to sing. Fall, the
season of changing leaves and decay, is as worthy of poetry as spring, the season of flowers and
rejuvenation. “Ode to a Nightingale” uses the bird’s music to contrast the mortality of humans with
the immortality of art. Caught up in beautiful birdsong, the speaker imagines himself capable of using
poetry to join the bird in the forest. The beauty of the bird’s music represents the ecstatic,
imaginative possibilities of poetry. As mortal beings who will eventually die, we can delay death
through the timelessness of music, poetry, and other types of art.

Nature
Like his fellow romantic poets, Keats found in nature endless sources of poetic inspiration, and he
described the natural world with precision and care. Observing elements of nature allowed Keats,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, among others, to create extended meditations and thoughtful
odes about aspects of the human condition. For example, in “Ode to a Nightingale,” hearing the
bird’s song causes the speaker to ruminate on the immortality of art and the mortality of humans.
The speaker of “Ode on Melancholy” compares a bout of depression to a “weeping cloud” ( 1 2 ), then
goes on to list specific flowers that are linked to sadness. He finds in nature apt images for his
psychological state. In “Ode to Psyche,” the speaker mines the night sky to find ways to worship the
Roman goddess Psyche as a muse: a star becomes an “amorous glow-worm” ( 2 7 ), and the moon
rests amid a background of dark blue. Keats not only uses nature as a springboard from which to
ponder, but he also discovers in nature similes, symbols, and metaphors for the spiritual and
emotional states he seeks to describe.

The Ancient World

Keats had an enduring interest in antiquity and the ancient world. His longer poems, such as The
Fall of Hyperion or Lamia, often take place in a mythical world not unlike that of classical antiquity.
He borrowed figures from ancient mythology to populate poems, such as “Ode to Psyche” and “To
Homer” (1 8 1 8 ). For Keats, ancient myth and antique objects, such as the Grecian urn, have a
permanence and solidity that contrasts with the fleeting, temporary nature of life. In ancient cultures,
Keats saw the possibility of permanent artistic achievement: if an urn still spoke to someone several
centuries after its creation, there was hope that a poem or artistic object from Keats’s time might
continue to speak to readers or observers after the death of Keats or another writer or creator. This
achievement was one of Keats’s great hopes. In an 1 8 1 8  letter to his brother George, Keats quietly
prophesied: “I think I shall be among the English poets after my death.”

FRANKENSTEIN
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein follows Victor Frankenstein's triumph as he reanimates a dead body, and
then his guilt for creating such a thing. When the "Frankenstein monster" realizes how
he came to be and is rejected by mankind, he seeks revenge on his creator's family to
avenge his own sorrow. Mary Shelley first wrote Frankenstein as a short story after the
poet Lord Byron suggested his friends each write a ghost story. The story so frightened
Byron that he ran shrieking from the room.
Written by: Mary Shelley
Type of Work: novel
Genres: Gothic Literature; Romantic Movement
First Published: In 1818
Setting: Narration begins in Russia then transitions to Geneva, Switzerland where the
events surrounding Victor Frankenstein and the Monster are chronicled. The setting
switches often, but the majority is set in Europe.
Main Characters: Victor Frankenstein; The Monster; Elizabeth Lavenza; Justine
Moritz; William Frankenstein; Henry Clerval; Margaret Saville; De Lacey Family; Robert
Walton
Major Thematic Topics: treatment of the poor and uneducated; use of knowledge for
good or evil purposes; invasion of technology into modern life; the restorative powers
of nature in the face of unnatural events
Motifs: danger of knowledge; allusion to Goethe's Faust; obsession; revenge
Major Symbols: the monster; electricity; lightning; weather
Movie Version(s): Frankenstein (1931); Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
The three most important aspects of Frankenstein:
 Although Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is compelling in and of itself, it also
functions on a symbolic level or levels, with Frankenstein's monster standing in
for the coming of industrialization to Europe — and the death and destruction that
the monster wreaks symbolizing the ruination that Shelley feared industrialization
would eventually cause.
 The novel contains a number of "framing devices," which are stories that surround
other stories, setting them up in one way or another. Robert Walton's letters to
his sister frame the story that Victor Frankenstein tells to Walton, and
Frankenstein's story surrounds the story that the monster tells, which in turn
frames the story of the De Lacey family.
 Frankenstein is a gothic novel. Gothic novels focus on the mysterious or
supernatural; take place in dark, often exotic, settings; and yield unease if not
terror in their readers. The double is a frequent feature of the Gothic novel, and in
a sense Frankenstein and his monster are doubles. Some literary historians also
consider Frankenstein the first science fiction novel.
 The novel begins with explorer Robert Walton looking for a new passage from
Russia to the Pacific Ocean via the Arctic Ocean. After weeks as sea, the crew of
Walton's ship finds an emaciated man, Victor Frankenstein, floating on an ice
flow near death. In Walton's series of letters to his sister in England, he retells
Victor's tragic story.
 Growing up in Geneva, Switzerland, Victor is a precocious child, quick to learn all
new subjects. He is raised withElizabeth, an orphan adopted by his family. Victor
delights in the sciences and vows to someday study science. Victor prepares to
leave for his studies at the University of Ingolstadt, when his mother and
 Elizabeth become ill with scarlet fever. Caroline dies from the disease, and
Elizabeth is nursed back to health.
 At the university, Victor meets his professors M. Krempe and M. Waldman. For
two years, Victor becomes very involved with his studies, even impressing his
teachers and fellow students. He devises a plan to re-create and reanimate a
dead body. He uses a combination of chemistry, alchemy, and electricity to make
his ambition a reality.
 After bringing the creature to life, Victor feels guilty that he has brought a new
life into the world with no provisions for taking care of the "monster." He runs
away in fear and disgust from his creation and his conscience. The monster
wanders the countryside while Victor seeks solace in a tavern near the
university. Henry Clerval appears to save Victor and restore him to health.
 Alphonse writes to Victor telling him to come home immediately since an
unknown assailant murdered his youngest brother, William, by
strangulation. Justine Moritz, their housekeeper, is falsely accused of the murder
of William, and she goes to the gallows willingly. Victor knows who the killer is
but cannot tell his family or the police. He journeys out of Geneva to refresh his
tortured soul and visits Mount Montanvert when he sees the monster coming to
confront his maker with a proposition — "make me a mate of my own." Victor
refuses, and the monster asks that his part of the story be heard. The pair
retreats to a small hut on the mountain where the monster tells his story.
 The monster has taught himself to read and understand language so that he can
follow the lives of his "adopted" family, the De Laceys. While the monster
wanders the woods, he comes upon a jacket with a notebook and letters that
were lost by Victor. From the notes, the monster learns of his creation. He has
endured rejection by mankind, but he has not retaliated upon mankind in
general for his misfortune. Instead, he has decided to take revenge on his
creator's family to avenge the injury and sorrow he endures from others.
 Victor refuses to make a second monster, but is convinced when the monster
assures Victor that he will leave Europe and move to South America. Victor
agrees to begin work on a second creation and makes plans to go to England and
Scotland, with Henry Clerval, to begin his secret work. Before he leaves Geneva,
Victor agrees to marry Elizabeth immediately upon his return from the British
Isles. Victor takes up residence in the Orkney Islands, off the coast of Scotland.
Victor destroys his project and goes out to sea to dispose of the remains. The
monster vows revenge on Victor not upholding his end of their bargain.
 While at sea, Victor's boat is blown off course by a sudden storm, and he ends
up in Ireland. Henry Clerval's body has washed up on the shores of Ireland, and
Victor is set to stand trial for murder. Fortunately, Mr. Kirwin, a local magistrate,
intercedes on Victor's behalf and pleads his case before a court, which then finds
Victor innocent of the crime. Victor is miserable knowing he has caused the
 deaths of so many, but recovers enough to finalize the plans for his marriage to
Elizabeth.
 With a wedding date set, Victor torments himself with the thought of the
monster's threat to be with him on his wedding night. The wedding goes off as
planned. While Victor makes sure he covers all possible entrances that the
monster could use to get into the wedding chamber, the monster steals into
Elizabeth's room and strangles her.
 Victor now wants revenge and chases the monster through Europe and Russia.
Victor nearly catches the monster near the Arctic Circle when Robert Walton
discovers him. Victor, now near death, is taken aboard Walton's ship to recover
from exhaustion and exposure.
 The monster appears out of the mists and ice to visit his foe one last time. The
monster enters the cabin of the ship and tells Walton his side of the story. Victor
dies, and the monster tells Walton that he will burn his own funeral pyre. The
monster then disappears in the waves and darkness, never to be seen again.
 Frankenstein is a unique novel in the canon of English literature. The novel seeks
to find the answers to questions that no doubt perplexed Mary Shelley and the
readers of her time.
 Shelley presents a unique character in Victor Frankenstein and his creation,
the monster. It is as though there are two distinct halves to one character. Each
half competes for attention from the other and for the chance to be the ruler of
the other half. In the end, this competition reduces both men to ruins.
 Shelley also is keenly aware of the concern that technology was advancing at a
rate that dizzied the mind of early eighteenth century readers. Perhaps this novel
is addressing that issue of advances created by men, but which fly in the face of
"natural" elements and divine plans.
 Mary Shelley crafts her exquisite novel in a way to direct attention to the
treatment of the poor and uneducated as a major theme throughout the book.
She would have learned these precepts from her father William Godwin, a noted
writer and philosopher. (Refer to the "Life and Background" section.) But the
beginnings of the historical background go back much further than Shelley's own
time.
 To understand Shelley's time period, one must delve into the period that
preceded Shelley's. Mary was born in 1797, after the American and French
Revolutions. Europe was a tense place for fear of potential political revolutions
during much of the period from 1770-1800. The English upper class feared that
the French Revolution might spill over to their own country. Many felt that
change was necessary to ensure equality among the masses. The wars that
Napoleon waged, begun in 1805, essentially quashed any real hope of building a
better Europe. However, the seeds of discord were sown for the dissolution of
social and class barriers in England and mainland Europe. The cries of "liberty,
 fraternity, and equality," were left on the impressionable minds of men
everywhere. It was thought that man could achieve greater personal liberty,
without the threat of overbearing governments. Men also reasoned that
brotherhood in a common cause — whether it be social, class, or academic —
would lead to a better country and a better government.

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Themes, Motifs & Symbols

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Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Dangerous Knowledge

The pursuit of knowledge is at the heart of Frankenstein, as Victor attempts to surge beyond
accepted human limits and access the secret of life. Likewise, Robert Walton attempts to surpass
previous human explorations by endeavoring to reach the North Pole. This ruthless pursuit of
knowledge, of the light (see “Light and Fire”), proves dangerous, as Victor’s act of creation
eventually results in the destruction of everyone dear to him, and Walton finds himself perilously
trapped between sheets of ice. Whereas Victor’s obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to his
death, Walton ultimately pulls back from his treacherous mission, having learned from Victor’s
example how destructive the thirst for knowledge can be.

Sublime Nature

The sublime natural world, embraced by Romanticism (late eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth
century) as a source of unrestrained emotional experience for the individual, initially offers
characters the possibility of spiritual renewal. Mired in depression and remorse after the deaths of
William and Justine, for which he feels responsible, Victor heads to the mountains to lift his spirits.
Likewise, after a hellish winter of cold and abandonment, the monster feels his heart lighten as
spring arrives. The influence of nature on mood is evident throughout the novel, but for Victor, the
natural world’s power to console him wanes when he realizes that the monster will haunt him no
matter where he goes. By the end, as Victor chases the monster obsessively, nature, in the form of
the Arctic desert, functions simply as the symbolic backdrop for his primal struggle against the
monster.

Monstrosity

Obviously, this theme pervades the entire novel, as the monster lies at the center of the action. Eight
feet tall and hideously ugly, the monster is rejected by society. However, his monstrosity results not
only from his grotesque appearance but also from the unnatural manner of his creation, which
involves the secretive animation of a mix of stolen body parts and strange chemicals. He is a product
not of collaborative scientific effort but of dark, supernatural workings.

The monster is only the most literal of a number of monstrous entities in the novel, including the
knowledge that Victor used to create the monster (see “Dangerous Knowledge”). One can argue that
Victor himself is a kind of monster, as his ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from
human society. Ordinary on the outside, he may be the true “monster” inside, as he is eventually
consumed by an obsessive hatred of his creation. Finally, many critics have described the novel
itself as monstrous, a stitched-together combination of different voices, texts, and tenses
(see T E X T S ).

Secrecy

Victor conceives of science as a mystery to be probed; its secrets, once discovered, must be
jealously guarded. He considers M. Krempe, the natural philosopher he meets at Ingolstadt, a model
scientist: “an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science.” Victor’s entire
obsession with creating life is shrouded in secrecy, and his obsession with destroying the monster
remains equally secret until Walton hears his tale.

Whereas Victor continues in his secrecy out of shame and guilt, the monster is forced into seclusion
by his grotesque appearance. Walton serves as the final confessor for both, and their tragic
relationship becomes immortalized in Walton’s letters. In confessing all just before he dies, Victor
escapes the stifling secrecy that has ruined his life; likewise, the monster takes advantage of
Walton’s presence to forge a human connection, hoping desperately that at last someone will
understand, and empathize with, his miserable existence.
Texts

Frankenstein is overflowing with texts: letters, notes, journals, inscriptions, and books fill the novel,
sometimes nestled inside each other, other times simply alluded to or quoted. Walton’s letters
envelop the entire tale; Victor’s story fits inside Walton’s letters; the monster’s story fits inside
Victor’s; and the love story of Felix and Safie and references to Paradise Lost fit inside the monster’s
story. This profusion of texts is an important aspect of the narrative structure, as the various writings
serve as concrete manifestations of characters’ attitudes and emotions.

Language plays an enormous role in the monster’s development. By hearing and watching the
peasants, the monster learns to speak and read, which enables him to understand the manner of his
creation, as described in Victor’s journal. He later leaves notes for Victor along the chase into the
northern ice, inscribing words in trees and on rocks, turning nature itself into a writing surface.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the text’s major themes.

Passive Women

For a novel written by the daughter of an important feminist, Frankenstein is strikingly devoid of

strong female characters. The novel is littered with passive women who suffer calmly and then
expire: Caroline Beaufort is a self-sacrificing mother who dies taking care of her adopted daughter;
Justine is executed for murder, despite her innocence; the creation of the female monster is aborted
by Victor because he fears being unable to control her actions once she is animated; Elizabeth
waits, impatient but helpless, for Victor to return to her, and she is eventually murdered by the
monster. One can argue that Shelley renders her female characters so passive and subjects them to
such ill treatment in order to call attention to the obsessive and destructive behavior that Victor and
the monster exhibit.

Abortion

The motif of abortion recurs as both Victor and the monster express their sense of the monster’s
hideousness. About first seeing his creation, Victor says: “When I thought of him, I gnashed my
teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so
thoughtlessly made.” The monster feels a similar disgust for himself: “I, the miserable and the
abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.” Both lament the
monster’s existence and wish that Victor had never engaged in his act of creation.

The motif appears also in regard to Victor’s other pursuits. When Victor destroys his work on a
female monster, he literally aborts his act of creation, preventing the female monster from coming
alive. Figurative abortion materializes in Victor’s description of natural philosophy: “I at once gave up
my former occupations; set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive
creation; and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science, which could never even step
within the threshold of real knowledge.” As with the monster, Victor becomes dissatisfied with natural
philosophy and shuns it not only as unhelpful but also as intellectually grotesque.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Light and Fire

“What could not be expected in the country of eternal light?” asks Walton, displaying a faith in, and
optimism about, science. In Frankenstein, light symbolizes knowledge, discovery, and
enlightenment. The natural world is a place of dark secrets, hidden passages, and unknown
mechanisms; the goal of the scientist is then to reach light. The dangerous and more powerful
cousin of light is fire. The monster’s first experience with a still-smoldering flame reveals the dual
nature of fire: he discovers excitedly that it creates light in the darkness of the night, but also that it
harms him when he touches it.

The presence of fire in the text also brings to mind the full title of Shelley’s novel,Frankenstein: or,
The Modern Prometheus. The Greek god Prometheus gave the knowledge of fire to humanity and
was then severely punished for it. Victor, attempting to become a modern Prometheus, is certainly
punished, but unlike fire, his “gift” to humanity—knowledge of the secret of life—remains a secret.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Jane Austen

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Themes, Motifs & Symbols

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Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Love

Pride and Prejudice contains one of the most cherished love stories in English literature: the
courtship between Darcy and Elizabeth. As in any good love story, the lovers must elude and
overcome numerous stumbling blocks, beginning with the tensions caused by the lovers’ own
personal qualities. Elizabeth’s pride makes her misjudge Darcy on the basis of a poor first
impression, while Darcy’s prejudice against Elizabeth’s poor social standing blinds him, for a time, to
her many virtues. (Of course, one could also say that Elizabeth is guilty of prejudice and Darcy of
pride—the title cuts both ways.) Austen, meanwhile, poses countless smaller obstacles to the
realization of the love between Elizabeth and Darcy, including Lady Catherine’s attempt to control
her nephew, Miss Bingley’s snobbery, Mrs. Bennet’s idiocy, and Wickham’s deceit. In each case,
anxieties about social connections, or the desire for better social connections, interfere with the
workings of love. Darcy and Elizabeth’s realization of a mutual and tender love seems to imply that
Austen views love as something independent of these social forces, as something that can be
captured if only an individual is able to escape the warping effects of hierarchical society. Austen
does sound some more realist (or, one could say, cynical) notes about love, using the character of
Charlotte Lucas, who marries the buffoon Mr. Collins for his money, to demonstrate that the heart
does not always dictate marriage. Yet with her central characters, Austen suggests that true love is a
force separate from society and one that can conquer even the most difficult of circumstances.
Reputation

Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a woman’s reputation is of the utmost importance. A
woman is expected to behave in certain ways. Stepping outside the social norms makes her
vulnerable to ostracism. This theme appears in the novel, when Elizabeth walks to Netherfield and
arrives with muddy skirts, to the shock of the reputation-conscious Miss Bingley and her friends. At
other points, the ill-mannered, ridiculous behavior of Mrs. Bennet gives her a bad reputation with the
more refined (and snobbish) Darcys and Bingleys. Austen pokes gentle fun at the snobs in these
examples, but later in the novel, when Lydia elopes with Wickham and lives with him out of wedlock,
the author treats reputation as a very serious matter. By becoming Wickham’s lover without benefit
of marriage, Lydia clearly places herself outside the social pale, and her disgrace threatens the
entire Bennet family. The fact that Lydia’s judgment, however terrible, would likely have condemned
the other Bennet sisters to marriageless lives seems grossly unfair. Why should Elizabeth’s
reputation suffer along with Lydia’s? Darcy’s intervention on the Bennets’ behalf thus becomes all
the more generous, but some readers might resent that such an intervention was necessary at all. If
Darcy’s money had failed to convince Wickham to marry Lydia, would Darcy have still married
Elizabeth? Does his transcendence of prejudice extend that far? The happy ending of Pride and
Prejudice is certainly emotionally satisfying, but in many ways it leaves the theme of reputation, and
the importance placed on reputation, unexplored. One can ask of Pride and Prejudice, to what extent
does it critique social structures, and to what extent does it simply accept their inevitability?

Class

The theme of class is related to reputation, in that both reflect the strictly regimented nature of life for
the middle and upper classes in Regency England. The lines of class are strictly drawn. While the
Bennets, who are middle class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingleys and Darcys, they are
clearly their social inferiors and are treated as such. Austen satirizes this kind of class-
consciousness, particularly in the character of Mr. Collins, who spends most of his time toadying to
his upper-class patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though Mr. Collins offers an extreme example,
he is not the only one to hold such views. His conception of the importance of class is shared,
among others, by Mr. Darcy, who believes in the dignity of his lineage; Miss Bingley, who dislikes
anyone not as socially accepted as she is; and Wickham, who will do anything he can to get enough
money to raise himself into a higher station. Mr. Collins’s views are merely the most extreme and
obvious. The satire directed at Mr. Collins is therefore also more subtly directed at the entire social
hierarchy and the conception of all those within it at its correctness, in complete disregard of other,
more worthy virtues. Through the Darcy-Elizabeth and Bingley-Jane marriages, Austen shows the
power of love and happiness to overcome class boundaries and prejudices, thereby implying that
such prejudices are hollow, unfeeling, and unproductive. Of course, this whole discussion of class
must be made with the understanding that Austen herself is often criticized as being a classist: she
doesn’t really represent anyone from the lower classes; those servants she does portray are
generally happy with their lot. Austen does criticize class structure but only a limited slice of that
structure.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the text’s major themes.

Courtship

In a sense, Pride and Prejudice is the story of two courtships—those between Darcy and Elizabeth
and between Bingley and Jane. Within this broad structure appear other, smaller courtships: Mr.
Collins’s aborted wooing of Elizabeth, followed by his successful wooing of Charlotte Lucas; Miss
Bingley’s unsuccessful attempt to attract Darcy; Wickham’s pursuit first of Elizabeth, then of the
never-seen Miss King, and finally of Lydia. Courtship therefore takes on a profound, if often
unspoken, importance in the novel. Marriage is the ultimate goal, courtship constitutes the real
working-out of love. Courtship becomes a sort of forge of a person’s personality, and each courtship
becomes a microcosm for different sorts of love (or different ways to abuse love as a means to
social advancement).

Journeys

Nearly every scene in Pride and Prejudice takes place indoors, and the action centers around the
Bennet home in the small village of Longbourn. Nevertheless, journeys—even short ones—function
repeatedly as catalysts for change in the novel. Elizabeth’s first journey, by which she intends simply
to visit Charlotte and Mr. Collins, brings her into contact with Mr. Darcy, and leads to his first
proposal. Her second journey takes her to Derby and Pemberley, where she fans the growing flame
of her affection for Darcy. The third journey, meanwhile, sends various people in pursuit of Wickham
and Lydia, and the journey ends with Darcy tracking them down and saving the Bennet family honor,
in the process demonstrating his continued devotion to Elizabeth.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Pemberley

Pride and Prejudice is remarkably free of explicit symbolism, which perhaps has something to do
with the novel’s reliance on dialogue over description. Nevertheless, Pemberley, Darcy’s estate, sits
at the center of the novel, literally and figuratively, as a geographic symbol of the man who owns it.
Elizabeth visits it at a time when her feelings toward Darcy are beginning to warm; she is enchanted
by its beauty and charm, and by the picturesque countryside, just as she will be charmed,
increasingly, by the gifts of its owner. Austen makes the connection explicit when she describes the
stream that flows beside the mansion. “In front,” she writes, “a stream of some natural importance
was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance.” Darcy possesses a “natural
importance” that is “swelled” by his arrogance, but which coexists with a genuine honesty and lack of
“artificial appearance.” Like the stream, he is neither “formal, nor falsely adorned.” Pemberley even
offers a symbol-within-a-symbol for their budding romance: when Elizabeth encounters Darcy on the
estate, she is crossing a small bridge, suggesting the broad gulf of misunderstanding and class
prejudice that lies between them—and the bridge that their love will build across it.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Jane Austen

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Chapters 1–4

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Summary: Chapters 1–2

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in
want of a wife.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

The news that a wealthy young gentleman named Charles Bingley has rented the manor known as
Netherfield Park causes a great stir in the neighboring village of Longbourn, especially in the Bennet
household. The Bennets have five unmarried daughters, and Mrs. Bennet, a foolish and fussy
gossip, is the sort who agrees with the novel’s opening words: “It is a truth universally
acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” She
sees Bingley’s arrival as an opportunity for one of the girls to obtain a wealthy spouse, and she
therefore insists that her husband call on the new arrival immediately. Mr. Bennet torments his family
by pretending to have no interest in doing so, but he eventually meets with Mr. Bingley without their
knowing. When he reveals to Mrs. Bennet and his daughters that he has made their new neighbor’s
acquaintance, they are overjoyed and excited.

Summary: Chapters 3–4

She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

Eager to learn more, Mrs. Bennet and the girls question Mr. Bennet incessantly. A few days later,
Mr. Bingley returns the visit, though he does not meet Mr. Bennet’s daughters. The Bennets invite
him to dinner shortly afterward, but he is called away to London. Soon, however, he returns to
Netherfield Park with his two sisters, his brother-in-law, and a friend named Darcy.

Mr. Bingley and his guests go to a ball in the nearby town of Meryton. The Bennet sisters attend the
ball with their mother. The eldest daughter, Jane, dances twice with Bingley. Within Elizabeth’s
hearing, Bingley exclaims to Darcy that Jane is “the most beautiful creature” he has ever beheld.
Bingley suggests that Darcy dance with Elizabeth, but Darcy refuses, saying, “she is tolerable, but
not handsome enough to tempt me.” He proceeds to declare that he has no interest in women who
are “slighted by other men.” Elizabeth takes an immediate and understandable disliking to Darcy.
Because of Darcy’s comments and refusal to dance with anyone not rich and well bred, the
neighborhood takes a similar dislike; it declares Bingley, on the other hand, to be quite “amiable.”

At the end of the evening, the Bennet women return to their house, where Mrs. Bennet regales her
husband with stories from the evening until he insists that she be silent. Upstairs, Jane relates to
Elizabeth her surprise that Bingley danced with her twice, and Elizabeth replies that Jane is unaware
of her own beauty. Both girls agree that Bingley’s sisters are not well-mannered, but whereas Jane
insists that they are charming in close conversation, Elizabeth continues to harbor a dislike for them.

The narrator then provides the reader with Bingley’s background: he inherited a hundred thousand
pounds from his father, but for now, in spite of his sisters’ complaints, he lives as a tenant. His
friendship with Darcy is “steady,” despite the contrast in their characters, illustrated in their
respective reactions to the Meryton ball. Bingley, cheerful and sociable, has an excellent time and is
taken with Jane; Darcy, more clever but less tactful, finds the people dull and even criticizes Jane for
smiling too often (Bingley’s sisters, on the other hand, find Jane to be “a sweet girl,” and Bingley
therefore feels secure in his good opinion of her).

Analysis: Chapters 1–4

The opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice—“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single
man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”—establishes the centrality of
advantageous marriage, a fundamental social value of Regency England. The arrival of Mr. Bingley
(and news of his fortune) is the event that sets the novel in motion. He delivers the prospect of a
marriage of wealth and good connections for the eager Bennet girls. The opening sentence has a
subtle, unstated significance. In its declarative and hopeful claim that a wealthy man must be looking
for a wife, it hides beneath its surface the truth of such matters: a single woman must be in want of a
husband, especially a wealthy one.

The first chapter consists almost entirely of dialogue, a typical instance of Austen’s technique of
using the manner in which characters express themselves to reveal their traits and attitudes. Its last
paragraph, in which the narrator describes Mr. Bennet as a “mixture of quick parts, sarcastic
humour, reserve, and caprice,” and his wife as “a woman of mean understanding, little information,
and uncertain temper,” simply confirms the character assessments that the reader has already made
based on their conversation: Mrs. Bennett embodies ill breeding and is prone to monotone hysteria;
Mr. Bennet is a wit who retreats from his wife’s overly serious demeanor. There is little physical
description of the characters in Pride and Prejudice, so the reader’s perception of them is shaped
largely by their words. Darcy makes the importance of the verbal explicit at the end of the novel
when he tells Elizabeth that he was first attracted to her by “the liveliness of [her] mind.”
The ball at Meryton is important to the structure of the novel since it brings the two couples—Darcy
and Elizabeth, Bingley and Jane—together for the first time. Austen’s original title for the novel
was First Impressions, and these individuals’ first impressions at the ball initiate the contrasting
patterns of the two principal male-female relationships. The relative effortlessness with which
Bingley and Jane interact is indicative of their easygoing natures; the obstacles that the novel places
in the way of their happiness are in no way caused by Jane or Bingley themselves. Indeed, their
feelings for one another seem to change little after the initial attraction—there is no development of
their love, only the delay of its consummation. Darcy’s bad behavior, on the other hand, immediately
betrays the pride and sense of social superiority that will most hinder him from finding his way to
Elizabeth. His snub of her creates a mutual dislike, in contrast to the mutual attraction between Jane
and Bingley. Further, while Darcy’s opinion of Elizabeth changes within a few chapters, her (and the
reader’s) sense of him as self-important and arrogant remains unaltered until midway through the
novel.

ULYSSES
James Joyce

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Themes, Motifs & Symbols

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Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Quest for Paternity

At its most basic level, Ulysses is a book about Stephen’s search for a symbolic father and Bloom’s
search for a son. In this respect, the plot of Ulysses parallels Telemachus’s search for Odysseus,
and vice versa, in The Odyssey. Bloom’s search for a son stems at least in part from his need to
reinforce his identity and heritage through progeny. Stephen already has a biological father, Simon
Dedalus, but considers him a father only in “flesh.” Stephen feels that his own ability to mature and
become a father himself (of art or children) is restricted by Simon’s criticism and lack of
understanding. Thus Stephen’s search involves finding a symbolic father who will, in turn, allow
Stephen himself to be a father. Both men, in truth, are searching for paternity as a way to reinforce
their own identities.

Stephen is more conscious of his quest for paternity than Bloom, and he mentally recurs to several
important motifs with which to understand paternity. Stephen’s thinking about the Holy Trinity
involves, on the one hand, Church doctrines that uphold the unity of the Father and the Son and, on
the other hand, the writings of heretics that challenge this doctrine by arguing that God created the
rest of the Trinity, concluding that each subsequent creation is inherently different. Stephen’s second
motif involves his Hamlet theory, which seeks to prove that Shakespeare represented himself
through the ghost-father in Hamlet, but also—through his translation of his life into art—became the
father of his own father, of his life, and “of all his race.” The Holy Trinity and Hamlet motifs reinforce
our sense of Stephen’s and Bloom’s parallel quests for paternity. These quests seem to end in
Bloom’s kitchen, with Bloom recognizing “the future” in Stephen and Stephen recognizing “the past”
in Bloom. Though united as father and son in this moment, the men will soon part ways, and their
paternity quests will undoubtedly continue, for Ulysses demonstrates that the quest for paternity is a
search for a lasting manifestation of self.

The Remorse of Conscience

The phrase agenbite of inwit, a religious term meaning “remorse of conscience,” comes to Stephen’s
mind again and again in Ulysses. Stephen associates the phrase with his guilt over his mother’s
death—he suspects that he may have killed her by refusing to kneel and pray at her sickbed when
she asked. The theme of remorse runs through Ulysses to address the feelings associated with
modern breaks with family and tradition. Bloom, too, has guilty feelings about his father because he
no longer observes certain traditions his father observed, such as keeping kosher. Episode Fifteen,
“Circe,” dramatizes this remorse as Bloom’s “Sins of the Past” rise up and confront him one by
one. Ulysses juxtaposes characters who experience remorse with characters who do not, such as
Buck Mulligan, who shamelessly refers to Stephen’s mother as “beastly dead,” and Simon Dedalus,
who mourns his late wife but does not regret his treatment of her. Though remorse of conscience
can have a repressive, paralyzing effect, as in Stephen’s case, it is also vaguely positive. A self-
conscious awareness of the past, even the sins of the past, helps constitute an individual as an
ethical being in the present.

Compassion as Heroic

In nearly all senses, the notion of Leopold Bloom as an epic hero is laughable—his job, talents,
family relations, public relations, and private actions all suggest his utter ordinariness. It is only
Bloom’s extraordinary capacity for sympathy and compassion that allows him an unironic heroism in
the course of the novel. Bloom’s fluid ability to empathize with such a wide variety of beings—cats,
birds, dogs, dead men, vicious men, blind men, old ladies, a woman in labor, the poor, and so on—is
the modern-day equivalent to Odysseus’s capacity to adapt to a wide variety of challenges. Bloom’s
compassion often dictates the course of his day and the novel, as when he stops at the river Liffey to
feed the gulls or at the hospital to check on Mrs. Purefoy. There is a network of symbols
in Ulysses that present Bloom as Ireland’s savior, and his message is, at a basic level, to “love.” He
is juxtaposed with Stephen, who would also be Ireland’s savior but is lacking in compassion. Bloom
returns home, faces evidence of his cuckold status, and slays his competition—not with arrows, but
with a refocused perspective that is available only through his fluid capacity for empathy.

Parallax, or the Need for Multiple Perspectives

Parallax is an astronomical term that Bloom encounters in his reading and that arises repeatedly
through the course of the novel. It refers to the difference of position of one object when seen from
two different vantage points. These differing viewpoints can be collated to better approximate the
position of the object. As a novel, Ulysses uses a similar tactic. Three main characters—Stephen,
Bloom, and Molly—and a subset of narrative techniques that affect our perception of events and
characters combine to demonstrate the fallibility of one single perspective. Our understanding of
particular characters and events must be continually revised as we consider further perspectives.
The most obvious example is Molly’s past love life. Though we can construct a judgment of Molly as
a loose woman from the testimonies of various characters in the novel—Bloom, Lenehan, Dixon,
and so on—this judgment must be revised with the integration of Molly’s own final testimony.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
text’s major themes.

Lightness and Darkness

The traditional associations of light with good and dark with bad are upended inUlysses, in which the
two protagonists are dressed in mourning black, and the more menacing characters are associated
with light and brightness. This reversal arises in part as a reaction to Mr. Deasy’s anti-Semitic
judgment that Jews have “sinned against the light.” Deasy himself is associated with the brightness
of coins, representing wealth without spirituality. “Blazes” Boylan, Bloom’s nemesis, is associated
with brightness through his name and his flashy behavior, again suggesting surface without
substance. Bloom’s and Stephen’s dark colors suggest a variety of associations: Jewishness,
anarchy, outsider/wanderer status. Furthermore, Throwaway, the “dark horse,” wins the Gold Cup
Horserace.

The Home Usurped

While Odysseus is away from Ithaca in The Odyssey, his household is usurped by would-be suitors
of his wife, Penelope. This motif translates directly to Ulysses and provides a connection between
Stephen and Bloom. Stephen pays the rent for the Martello tower, where he, Buck, and Haines are
staying. Buck’s demand of the house key is thus a usurpation of Stephen’s household rights, and
Stephen recognizes this and refuses to return to the tower. Stephen mentally dramatizes this
usurpation as a replay of Claudius’s usurpation of Gertrude and the throne in Hamlet. Meanwhile,
Bloom’s home has been usurped by Blazes Boylan, who comes and goes at will and has sex with
Molly in Bloom’s absence. Stephen’s and Bloom’s lack of house keys
throughout Ulysses symbolizes these usurpations.

The East

The motif of the East appears mainly in Bloom’s thoughts. For Bloom, the East is a place of
exoticism, representing the promise of a paradisiacal existence. Bloom’s hazy conception of this
faraway land arises from a network of connections: the planter’s companies (such as Agendeth
Netaim), which suggest newly fertile and potentially profitable homes; Zionist movements for a
homeland; Molly and her childhood in Gibraltar; narcotics; and erotics. For Bloom and the reader,
the East becomes the imaginative space where hopes can be realized. The only place where Molly,
Stephen, and Bloom all meet is in their parallel dreams of each other the night before, dreams that
seem to be set in an Eastern locale.
Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Plumtree’s Potted Meat

In Episode Five, Bloom reads an ad in his newspaper: “What is home without / Plumtree’s Potted
Meat? / Incomplete. / With it an abode of bliss.” Bloom’s conscious reaction is his belief that the ad is
poorly placed—directly below the obituaries, suggesting an infelicitous relation between dead bodies
and “potted meat.” On a subconscious level, however, the figure of Plumtree’s Potted Meat comes to
stand for Bloom’s anxieties about Boylan’s usurpation of his wife and home. The image of meat
inside a pot crudely suggests the sexual relation between Boylan and Molly. The wording of the ad
further suggests, less concretely, Bloom’s masculine anxieties—he worries that he is not the head of
an “abode of bliss” but rather a servant in a home “incomplete.” The connection between Plumtree’s
meat and Bloom’s anxieties about Molly’s unhappiness and infidelity is driven home when Bloom
finds crumbs of the potted meat that Boylan and Molly shared earlier in his own bed.

The Gold Cup Horserace

The afternoon’s Gold Cup Horserace and the bets placed on it provide much of the public drama
in Ulysses, though it happens offstage. In Episode Five, Bantam Lyons mistakenly thinks that Bloom
has tipped him off to the horse “Throwaway,” the dark horse with a long-shot chance. “Throwaway”
does end up winning the race, notably ousting “Sceptre,” the horse with the phallic name, on which
Lenehan and Boylan have bet. This underdog victory represents Bloom’s eventual unshowy triumph
over Boylan, to win the “Gold Cup” of Molly’s heart.

Stephen’s Latin Quarter Hat

Stephen deliberately conceives of his Latin Quarter hat as a symbol. The Latin Quarter is a student
district in Paris, and Stephen hopes to suggest his exiled, anti-establishment status while back in
Ireland. He also refers to the hat as his “Hamlet hat,” tipping us off to the intentional brooding and
artistic connotations of the head gear. Yet Stephen cannot always control his own hat as a symbol,
especially in the eyes of others. Through the eyes of others, it comes to signify Stephen’s mock
priest-liness and provinciality.

Bloom’s Potato Talisman

In Episode Fifteen, Bloom’s potato functions like Odysseus’s use of “moly” in Circe’s den—it serves
to protect him from enchantment, enchantments to which Bloom succumbs when he briefly gives it
over to Zoe Higgins. The potato, old and shriveled now, is an heirloom from Bloom’s mother, Ellen.
As an organic product that is both fruit and root but is now shriveled, it gestures toward Bloom’s
anxieties about fertility and his family line. Most important, however, is the potato’s connection to
Ireland—Bloom’s potato talisman stands for his frequently overlooked maternal Irish heritage.

My Last Duchess 
By Robert Browning 
A Study Guide

Cummings Guides Home..|..Contact This Site  

.
Setting and The Portrait: a
Type of Work Publication
Background Fresco

Rhyme: Heroic Rhyme: Heroic

Meter Summary
Couplets Couplets

Annotated Text of the

Themes Study Questions Essay Topics
Poem

Type of Work
......."My Last Duchess" is a dramaticmonologue, a poem with a character who presents an account
centering on a particular topic. This character speaks all the words in the poem. During his discourse, the
speaker intentionally or unintentionally reveals information about one or more of the following: his
personality, his state of mind, hisattitude toward his topic, and his response or reaction to developments
relating to his topic . The main focus of a dramatic monologue is this personalinformation, not the topic
which the speaker happens to be discussing. The word monologue is derived from a Greek word meaning
to speak alone.

Publication
.......Browning first published poem under the title "I. Italy" in 1842 inDramatic Lyrics, a collection of
sixteenBrowning poems. Brown changed the title of the poem to "My Last Duchess" before republishing it
in 1849 in another collection, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.

Setting and Background

.......The setting of "My Last Duchess," a highly acclaimed 1842 poem by Robert Browning, is the palace
of the Duke of Ferrara on a day in October 1564. Ferrara is in northern Italy, between Bologna and
Padua, on a branch of the Po River. The city was the seat of an important principality ruled by the
House of Este from 1208 to 1598. The Este family constructed an imposing castle in Ferrara beginning in
1385 and, over the years, made Ferrara an important center of arts and learning. Two members of the
family, Beatrice and Isabella, supported the work of such painters as Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael.  
.......In Browning’s poem, the Duke of Ferrara is modeled after Alfonso II, the fifth and last duke of the
principality, who ruled Ferrara from 1559 to 1597 but in three marriages fathered no heir to succeed him.
The deceased duchess in the poem was his first wife, Lucrezia de’ Medici, a daughter of Cosimo de’
Medici (1519-1574), Duke of Florence from 1537 to 1574 and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1569 to 1574.
Lucrezia died in 1561 at age 17. In 1598, Ferrara became part of the Papal States.

Characters
Speaker (or Narrator): The speaker is the Duke of Ferrara. Browning appears to have modeled him after
Alfonso II, who ruled Ferrara from 1559 to 1597. Alfonso was married three times but had no children.
The poem reveals him as a proud, possessive, and selfish man and a lover of the arts. He regarded his
late wife as a mere object who existed only to please him and do his bidding. He likes the portrait of her
(the subject of his monologue) because, unlike the duchesswhen she was alive, it reveals only her beauty
and none of the qualities in her that annoyed the duke when she was alive. Morever, he now has
complete control of the portrait as a pretty art object that he can show to visitors.  
Duchess: The late wife of the duke. Browning appears to have modeled her after Lucrezia de’
Medici, a daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici (1519-1574), Duke of Florence from 1537 to 1574 and
Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1569 to 1574. The duke says the duchess enjoyed the company of
other men and implies that she was unfaithful. Whether his accusation is a fabrication is uncertain. The
duchess died under suspicious circumstances on April 21, 1561, just two years after he married her. She
may have been poisoned. 
Emissary of the Count of Tyrol: The emissary has no speaking role; he simply listens as the Duke of
Ferrara tells him about the late Duchess of Ferrara and the fresco of her on the wall. Historically, the
emissary is identified with Nikolaus Madruz, of Innsbruck, Austria.  
Count of Tyrol: The father of the duke's bride-to-be. The duke mentions him in connection with a dowry
the count is expected to provide. 
Daughter of the Count of Tyrol: The duke's bride-to-be is the daughter of the count but appears to be
modeled historically on the count's niece, Barbara.  
Frà Pandolph: The duke mentions him as the artist who painted the fresco. No one has identified a real-
life counterpart on whom he was based. He may have been a fictional creation ofBrowning. Frà was a title
of Italian friars of the Roman Catholic Church.  
Claus of Innsbruck: The duke mentions him as the artist who created "Neptune Taming a Sea-Horse."
Like Pandolph, he may have been a fictional creation.

The Portrait of the Duchess
.......The portrait of the late Duchess of Ferrara is a fresco, a type of work painted in watercolors directly
on a plaster wall. The portrait symbolizes the duke's possessive and controlling nature inasmuch as
the duchess has become an art object which he owns and controls.

Meter
......."My Last Duchess" is in iambic pentameter, which has ten syllables, or five feet, per line. The ten
syllables consist of five pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables. Lines 1 and 2 of the poem
demonstrate the iambic-pentameter pattern.

.......1.................2..................3.................4...............5  
That's MY..|..last DUCH..|..ess PAINT..|..ed ON..|..the WALL,

.......1.............2...............3.................4...............5  
 Look ING..|..as IF..|..she WERE..|..a ALIVE..|..I CALL

Rhyme: Heroic Couplets

.......Line 1 rhymes with line 2, line 3 with 4, line 5 with 6, and so on. Pairs of rhyming lines are called
couplets. When the lines are written in iambic pentameter, as are the lines of "My LastDuchess," the
rhyming pairs are called heroic couplets.

Internal Rhyme

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not 

Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss  

Or there exceed the mark"–and if she let(lines 38-39)

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse (line 41)

Summary and Commentary

.......Upstairs at his palace in October of 1564, the Duke of Ferrara–a city in northeast Italy on abranch
of the Po River–shows a portrait of his late wife, who died in 1561, to a representative of the Count of
Tyrol, an Austrian nobleman. The duke plans to marry the count’s daughter after he negotiates for a
handsome dowry from the count.  
.......While discussing the portrait, the duke also discusses his relationship with the late countess,
revealing himself–wittingly or unwittingly–as a domineering husband who regarded his beautiful wife as a
mere object, a possession whose sole mission was to please him. His comments are sometimes
straightforward and frank and sometimes subtle and ambiguous. Several remarks hint that he may have
murdered his wife, just a teenager at the time of her death two years after she married him, but the
oblique and roundabout language in which he couches these remarks falls short of an open confession.  
.......The duke tells the Austrian emissary that he admires the portrait of the duchess but was exasperated
with his wife while she was alive, for she devoted as much attention to trivialities–and other men–as she
did to him. He even implies that she had affairs. In response to these affairs, he says, “I gave
commands; / “Then all [of her] smiles stopped together.”  
.......Does commands mean that he ordered someone to kill her? 
.......Does it mean he reprimanded her? 
.......Does it mean he ordered some other action?  
.......The poem does not provide enough information to answer these questions. Nor does it provide
enough information to determine whether the duke is lying about his wife or exaggerating her faults.
Whatever the case, research into her life has resulted in speculation that she was
poisoned. Browning himself says the duke either ordered her murdered or sent her off to a convent.  
.......That the duke regarded his wife as a mere object, a possession, is clear. For example, in lines 2 and
3, while he and the emissary are looking at the painting, he says, “I call that piece a wonder,
now.” Piece explicitly refers to the portrait but implicitly refers to the duchess when she was alive. Now is
a telling word in his statement: It reveals that the duchess is a wonder in theportrait, because of the
charming pose she strikes, but implies that she was far less than a wonder when she was alive.  
.......Of course, the engaging pose the duchess strikes is not the only reason the duke prizes theportrait.
He prizes it also because the duchess is under his full control as an image on the wall. She cannot play
the coquette; she cannot protest or disobey his commands; she cannot do anything except smile out at
the duke and to anyone else the duke allows to view the portrait.  
.......As the duke and the emissary turn to go downstairs, the duke points out another art object–a bronze
art object showing Neptune taming a sea horse. The emissary might well have wondered whether the
duke regarded himself as Neptune and the sea horse as the duchess.  
.......What the emissary plans to tell the count about the duke is open to question. But in real life, the duke
did marry the woman he discussed with the emissary. 

.
My Last Duchess 
By Robert Browning

Text of the Poem
. .
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's
hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I
said.............................5
"Frà Pandolf" by design: for never read
Strangers like you that picturedcountenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance, that he did not like the countess herself.
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but
I)................................10
And seemed as they would ask me, if
theydurst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the
first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called thatspot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek:
perhaps...............................15
.
Annotations
painted. . . wall: Reference to a fresco, a
painting executed on wet plaster.
I . . . now: He refers not only to the painting but
also to his wife as she
 was in life, a mere object (that
piece). Nowindicates he regards his
wife as a wonder in the painting but something
less when she lived.
you: emissary from the Count of Tyrol.
Frà Pandolf: The painter; by design: on
purpose.
countenance: face. The duke likes the
painting, but he later reveals
none. . . curtain: No one opens the curtain
except me
but I: Forgivable grammatical error. The
pronoun should be me, not I,
but I rhymes with by (previous line). durst:
archaic form of dare
such a glance: The painting really flatters her.
spot. . . joy: Enjambment, in which the sense
of one line of verse
carries over to the next line without a pause
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantlelaps mantle: Cloak or cape.
lines 17-19 ("Pain . . . throat): Frà Pandolf
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
believes the color of the "half-flush"
on her throat is too subtle to capture accurately
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
on canvas.
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause
enough.......................20
lines 21-30: The duchess annoyed the duke
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
because she was
just as pleased with a sunset, some cherries,
A heart–how shall I say?–too soon made glad,
or a ride on a mule as
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er she was with him.
She looked on, and her looks went
everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her
favour: A small gift.
breast,...............................25
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
bough . . . her: Apparently a double-entendre,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
the second meaning a
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule sexual one.
She rode with round the terrace–all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving
speech,.....................30
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,–good! but
thanked
Somehow–I know not how–as if she ranked
My . . . name: The duke comes from an old
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
aristocratic family
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame named Este.
This sort of trifling? Even had you
skill....................................35
In speech–(which I have not)–to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"–and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly
be lessoned: Be instructed.
set....................................40
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, forsooth: in truth (archaic).
E'en then would be some stooping: and I
choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no Oh . . .grew: The Duchess smiled at all men
doubt, and, according to the
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed
duke, did more than smile at some men.
without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave I gave . . .together: He reprimanded her. Then
commands;........45 she ceased her
Then all smiles stopped together. There she flirtation. Or, he gave commands to kill her,
 stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's knownmunificence
Is ample warrant that no just
pretence................................50
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a
rarity,...................................55
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for
me!
and then "all smiles stopped
together."
munificence: Great generosity.
warrant: Guarantee; no just . . . disallowed:
The duke will demand
a considerable dowry from the count.
daughter: In real life, she was the count's
niece.
my object: The duke again refers to a woman
as an object.
Neptune: Roman name for Poseidon, god of
the sea in Greek mythology.
Taming a sea-horse: To the duke, the sea
horse is a symbol of the
women.
Claus of Innsbruck: Another artist.

Themes
Arrogance

.......The theme is the arrogant, authoritarian mindset of a proud Renaissance duke, who says, "I choose /
Never to stoop" (lines 42-43). In this respect, the more important portrait in the poem is the one the duke
"paints" of himself with his words.

Women as Mere Objects

.......Several lines in the poem suggest that the duke had treated his wife as a mere object. He expected
her to be beautiful to look at, but little more. But the duchess was human; she had faults. When the duke
became annoyed by them and by her smiling face, he "gave commands" that ended her smiling. In other
words, he apparently ordered her to be killed. The word last in the title suggests that the young woman in
the portrait was not the duke's first wife. One wonders whether his previous wife (or wives) met the same
fate and whether his next duchess will end up like his "last duchess."

Enjambment
.......In his poetry, Browning occasionally uses enjambment, a literary device in which the sense of one
line of verse is carried over to the next line without a pause. Here is an example:

Looking as if she were alive. I call 

That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands

Her husband's presence only, called that spot 

 Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps

Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint 

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Notice that scarcely belongs with the words that follow it, not with the words that precede it.
Consequently, no pause occurs after it.

Study Questions and Essay Topics

1. Do you believe the speaker murdered his last duchess? Explain your answer.  
2. Write a short psychological profile of the duke. Use information from the poem, as well as Internet and
library research, to support your thesis. 
3. In your opinion, what is the meaning of these lines: "[S]he liked whate'er / She looked on, and her looks
went everywhere" (lines 23-24). 
4. Does the duke plan to marry the count's daughter for the dowry he will receive?