Duchess Violante

One encounters the Duchess threefold within the story: through her portrait, through Bernini’s statue of her and in the old man’s tale. Each offer different insight into both her outer appearance and her character.

Her portrait, as seen by the first person narrator and the old man, gives the reader a first glimpse of her beauty: “Such a face it was, with a flicker of laughter over it like the wind on a June meadow, and a singular tender pliancy of mien, as though one of Tiepolo’s lenient goddesses had been busked into the stiff sheath of a seventeenth century dress!”[1] Apparently, however, she was even more compelling and breath-taking in the flesh, as later on the old man remarks: “but to hear my grandmother, sir, it [the portrait] no more approached her than a weed comes up to a rose.”[2]

Upon approaching the kneeling statue of the Duchess, her face is not visible at first, remaining hidden while the first person narrator walks around it. Impatiently the first person narrator seeks to see her countenance, assuming it will be a masterful rendering of her. “I followed my guide down the tribune steps, impatient to see what mystic version of such terrestrial graces the ingenious artist had found—the Cavaliere was master of such arts. The Duchess’s attitude was one of transport, as though heavenly airs fluttered her laces and the love-locks escaping from her coif. I saw how admirably the sculptor had caught the poise of her head, the tender slope of the shoulder; then I crossed over and looked into her face—it was a frozen horror. Never have hate, revolt and agony so possessed a human countenance. . .”[3] Here the reader finds her face twisted in an expression of horror - a strong juxtaposition to her portrait previously.

The Duchess is introduced through her beauty. Throughout the story her physical attractiveness is often mentioned or remarked upon by others.

In the old man’s tale, the Duchess’s character is also commented upon. Lively and cheerful, “[...] she was all for music, play-acting and young company”[4] and “[...] the Duchess was always laughing.”[5]

Upon first arriving in Vicenza, she goes about beautifying the place and filling it with life. She has good taste when it comes to “laying out the gardens, designing grottoes, planting groves and planning all manner of agreeable surprises […]”[6] but also tires of working at these things quickly[7]. In an effort to satisfy her curiosity, hunger for worldliness and whimsy and, above all, company, she invites a diverse and ever-changing crowd of people to the manor: “[...] why, she would have strolling players from Vicenza, mountebanks and fortune-tellers from the market-place, travelling doctors and astrologers and all manner of trained animals.”[8]

She quickly tires of the tedium and insular quality of life in manor at Vicenza and it begins to show. She grows lonely. Her waiting women and maids and the chaplain are her only steady company, seeing as the Duke is rarely present, and she pines for more.[9] The reader may assume then that she is a person who, while being full of life themselves, is also dependent of diverting and inspiring input, especially considering her life in Venice before she married the Duke[10].

It comes as no surprise that she then latches on to Ascanio the way she does. Starved for attention, adventure and someone who understands her, she welcomes him into her life: “youth will have youth, and laughter turns to laughter; and the two matched each other like the candle sticks on an altar.”[11]

In her supposed lover, Cavaliere Ascanio, she inspires poetic inspiration and adoration. This is not exclusive to him, however, as the old man’s grandmother and others also make note of her beauty. “The Cavaliere, indeed, as became a poet, paragoned her in his song to all the pagan goddesses of antiquity; and doubtless these were finer to look at than mere women; but so, it seemed, was she; for, to believe my grandmother, she made other women look no more than the big French fashion-doll that used to be shown on Ascension days in the Piazza. She was one, at any rate, that needed no outlandish finery to beautify her; whatever dress she wore became her as feathers fit the bird; and her hair didn’t get its color by bleaching on the house-top. It glittered of itself like the threads in an Easter chasuble, and her skin was whiter than fine wheaten bread and her mouth as sweet as a ripe fig. . .”[12]

Aside from her fun-loving nature she has a selfish and indifferent streak shown most prominently when she turns down the chaplain’s plea for funds for books. “I’ve no money for trifles"[13] she remarks upon his careful request, the first and last request he puts to the Duchess. She has no empathy for his love of literature and knowledge and thinks only of herself. “Holy Mother of God, must I have more books about me? I was nearly smothered with them in the first year of my marriage.”[14] She welcomes him to buy the books if he can come up with the money, entreating him to pray to Saint Blandina to appeal to the Duke for funds instead. The Duchess is oblivious of her faux pas and even later does not suspect that the chaplain might bare her ill will because of it, even though it is obvious to others (her maid Nencia, namely)[15], suggesting an ill-fated obliviousness to the social implications of her actions. Similarly, when the Duchess begins to suspect that the Duke knows of Ascanio’s whereabouts, she seems entirely surprised that he learned of her adulterous behavior in the first place[16].

The Duchess does as she pleases and is not accustomed to being reprimanded or reigned in. Her whims and decisions are not always easy for others to understand and she seems to often divert from the path of logical actions: “[...] to talk reason to the Duchess was of no more use than praying for rain in a drought.”[17] These actions seem often to be based in emotion and/or boredom.

The scene of between-the-lines confrontation about her supposed infidelity calls her moral compass into question. She does not admit to adultery and by way of appealing to the Duke or admitting her (supposed) wrong-doings, she allows the statue to be placed to entomb her lover.

Complexities of her actual thoughts and feelings as well as her mental state remain a matter of speculation. Her body and spirit seem to collide[18] and come together at different points of the narration, perhaps illustrating her invisible inner struggle. Because the story told by the old man is pieced together from different sources and is being told so many years later, the Duchess's inner workings and motives are only touched upon. In the same vein questions concerning Duchess Violante's motivations as well as her innocence or guilt remain inevitably unclear and a matter of conjecture only.

[1] Wharton 1901, p. 3

[2] Wharton 1901, p. 8/9

[3] Wharton 1901, p. 4

[4] Wharton 1901, p. 8

[5] Wharton 1901, p. 8

[6] Wharton 1901, p. 8

[7] Wharton 1901, p. 8

[8] Wharton 1901, p. 8

[9] Wharton 1901, p. 8

[10] Wharton 1901, p. 7

[11] Wharton 1901, p. 8

[12] Wharton 1901, p. 9

[13] Wharton 1901, p. 10

[14] Wharton 1901, p. 10

[15] Wharton 1901, p. 11

[16] Wharton 1901, p. 14-16

[17] Wharton 1901, p. 11

[18] see Elbert 1994, p. 19/20