Duchess

Character Analysis

The Duchess spends most of the play reacting to things that are happening around her. We don't get too much of a chance to see what she's like on her own, because there's always something happening. That said, like the rest of the Duke's family, she's not the most likeable character.

The Duchess has three sons from a previous marriage—Supervacuo, Ambitioso, and Junior. Early in the play, Junior is imprisoned for rape (which can carry the death penalty), and the Duchess is angry that her husband, a.k.a. the Duke, won't free him. While you can understand a mother wanting to spare her child from death, it's less easy to sympathize with her wanting Junior to get off punishment entirely, especially when she says he should get to trample on the law:

One of his single words,
Would quite have freed my youngest, dearest son
From death or durance, and have made him walk
With bold foot upon the thorny law,
Whose prickles should bow under him. (1.2.114-118)

Out of anger with her husband over not letting Junior walk, the Duchess decides to get revenge. The revenge she chooses is a sexual one, and it's pretty intense: Not only will she sleep with someone else, but she chooses her husband's own illegitimate son, Spurio. We get some hints she may have had an incestuous interest in Spurio already (1.2.123-129). So yeah, she's really not the most likeable character.

But at least she doesn't murder anyone. And in this play, that puts her morally well ahead of most of the characters. She does threaten to kill her husband, but she doesn't do it (3.5.220-221), and to this end, the play lets her off lighter than most of the others, with mere banishment instead of death.