Given the setting of the drama and the attitudes during the time it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that death was a release for the Duchess and the ones truly close to her. Instead of being bound by the rules and laws that are present she is able to escape all that. Death does not represent to her an end but rather a beginning. For in the next world she would be able to live freely and as she wishes (granted this would mean that there is a life after death but…this is not the time to argue on that matter). Granted at the time she thought that Antonio and her children were dead, so this furthered her belief that death would enable her to reunite with them. While we as the audience know that this is not the case at the moment, it allows her to face her impending execution with courage and defiance.
Frankly I’m glad that the Duchess was killed. Had she remained alive it would’ve been for no other reason then for Ferdinand to gloat over the so-called power he has over her. With her execution Ferdinand kinda lost what he was trying so hard to keep in the first place. I could imagine the Duchess smiling down from whatever astral plane she is on and remarking on how she won in the end. True her death could have been avoided and maybe something could have happened that might have resulted in a happier ending, but given the circumstances it played out quite well.
There are very few tragedies in which the leading character dies in Act 4, but as Peter’s post suggest, in many ways the Duchess lives on through Act 5. If we don’t quite see her “smiling down from an astral plane,” her presence can be felt and heard.
It feels like the Duchess death is the only possible resolution in the play, not only because she believes her children are dead. It is also the fact that she has broken a social norm of the male dominated and controlled world, and her death does give her the final vindication into the righteous authority that started with her becoming a mother after act 1.
This is an interesting way to see the death of the Duchess. I agree that through the amounts of torture she remained strong ad also knowing that it was unjust to execute her she found the positive side of her death. In a way it makes me feel a little glad that the duchess was executed because it somehow brings a light rather than a dark cloud over the play. She takes her death honorably without her fearing it and maybe the audience found that a respectable action.