Revised Paragraph

This is a revised version of my first paragraph. I made very few changes because I thought that I argued my point well. However, I was a bit verbose so I tried to make the paragraph more concise. My topic and concluding sentences match well with each other but are not extremely relevant to the argument presented. I had trouble creating a topic sentence that was both broad and pertinent to the topic. I attempted to change this in my revised paragraph but ended up leaving it. This might work for a paragraph by itself but certainly not a body paragraph of an essay. I did not relate some of my points back to my main argument so in the revised paragraph I added how the points furthered my thesis. Overall, the paragraph has the same ideas but is more focused in thought.

Historically, women were expected to be little more than servants to their husbands. Women who strayed from this social norm often faced dire consequences. In Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess,” the Duke of Ferrara speaks of his first wife and the devotion and obedience he expected from her. Despite some evidence to the contrary it becomes obvious, through certain hints from Ferrara that her unwillingness to bend to his will resulted in her death. The Duke is not shy in telling the emissary details about his relationship with his first wife. The Duke was upset that she was, “too soon made glad, / Too easily impressed…” suggesting that she was disloyal. Ferrara continues to mention those things that angered him about his wife: her discontent at being married to someone with such a valued bloodline, her pleasure at others’ gifts, and even her happiness. These are all hints at the frustration that he felt during their relationship. He concludes this by saying, “I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together,” which makes it obvious to the reader that the Duke has played some part in her demise, whether he killed her or had her killed. Moreover, the Duke has moved on and is courting another mistress hoping to find one that is more obedient. Also, instead of him showing the sorrow and hurt one would expect from seeing a painting of the wife he lost, he focuses on her faults, not hesitating to list them to a perfect stranger. The Duke acts as though he is not sad about the loss of his wife and more or less confesses to having her murdered. The justification he has for this is that she does not act as a wife should--submissive and docile. Like many men of the era, he thinks of women as a lesser gender that should play their role in society by obeying men.