Porphyria's Lover

Briana DuRocher

Prof. Hague

ENGL 370

November 1, 2013

Paper One: Porphyria’s Lover

The poem is called “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning in 1842. Porphyria’s Lover is about the speaker; a man who is waiting in a cottage for a lover to appear. Along comes a woman names Porphyria who he begins to love and desire. The speaker who is unnamed decides he want Porphyria as his possession. Porphyria and the speaker come from very different socioeconomic statuses however. The speaker is a man living in a cottage while she is very vain and prideful. The speaker has a difficult time understanding Porphyria but then he starts to realize that she “worships” him. Once he realizes this, he is afraid that she may move on and no longer “worship” him. The speaker has a huge doubt that Porphyria’s will stay with him and continue to love him. In order for the speaker to make this feeling of being loved and “worshiped” by Porphyria last forever he decides to kill her by strangling her with her own hair.

Robert Browning is a poet who often times cause complications in the poems he is writing. When Porphyria comes over to the speaker’s cottage for the first time the imagery of the poem turns in a more sexual direction. Robert Browning wrote this poem in a time when sexual content was not as explicit as this was and because of this, the readers of this poem could very quickly assume that Porphyria was the darker character since she was not married and acting the way she was. Robert Browning makes a twist in the poem however by changing the readers opinions on the darker character in the poem. He does this when he reveals that the speaker is actually crazy because Porphyria is then is victimized when she gets strangles and killed by the speaker.  

Something that is very interesting throughout this poem is the hints throughout it that show that the speaker is crazy. The first four lines of the poem don’t even mention anything about the speaker since it is simply just discussing the weather but in line five the speaker is mentioned the first time. Line five is the first hint that the speaker is not exactly stable and a bit crazy. “I listened with heart fit to break” is the line and it makes the reader question and wonder why a storm could cause his heart to break and whether or not it is just the storm or the storm at all that is making him feel this way. The end of the poem when the speaker kills Porphyria is the part of the poem that most clearly justifies that he is in fact crazy. Not only through his actions of killing her but because he does not feel any guilt or sadness for strangling her.

Robert Browning writes using dramatic monologue and because of this his poem does not seem to be overwhelmed by nursery type rhyming. The poem uses rhyming couplets which makes the poem not seem as song-like. The rhymes throughout Porphyria’s Lover are consistent as far as rhyme scheme is concerned. Three examples of Robert Browning’s use of rhyming are lines one through four and lines five through ten.

Lines one through four are as follows:

“The rain set early in to-night,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

And did its worst to vex the lake:”

The rhyme schemes in these four lines are ABAB since night and spite rhyme

and awake and lake rhyme.

Lines five through ten are as follows:

“I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

Which done, she rose, and from her form”

The rhyme schemes in these lines are BBCBCC which is clearly not the same rhyme scheme as the previous four lines were. The rhyme scheme is BBCBCC because break, straight, and grate rhyme as well as storm, warm and form. This rhyme scheme continues in lines eleven through fifteen.

“Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl

And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

Her hat and let the damp hair fall,

And, last, she sat down by my side

And called me. When no voice replied,”

The rhyme scheme in lines eleven through fifteen is DEDEE. This repetition of rhyme scheme is carried on throughout the entire poem.

The poem does contain some figures of speech like personification. The first four lines that I had mentioned earlier contain personification. “The sullen wind was soon awake,” the description that he uses makes the storm seem human-like almost as if it is choosing to act the way it is. Personification lightens the mood of “Porphyria’s Lover.” Another example of personification is in line 45, “Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.”

Throughout the poem there is a lot of imagery. One of the most brutal parts of imagery in this poem is when the speaker strangles Porphyria.

“That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

In one long yellow string I wound

Three times her little throat around,

And strangles her.”

This was the moment when the speaker realized he was being worshiped that’s why he believed he was hers. To the speaker this moment was so perfect, and for me as a reader I believed it was until I read just a few more lines and saw the speaker as the insane person I suspected him to be all along. In order for the speaker to hold onto this moment of perfectness that he believed and I believed as a reader, he needed to make sure it would stay that way. To do this the speaker decides that if he kills Porphyria that she would not be given the chance to ruin the moment and she would not be given the opportunity to no longer worship him. By killing Porphyria he could now possess her.

Robert Browning does a well job changing the ending of this poem from the predictable one it could have been. Throughout the poem he uses a rhyme scheme that allows for flow throughout it without the poem sounding like a song. I really enjoyed the darkness of the poem, I loved how it took it away from the predictable love story it could have been. The theme of the poem in my opinion is focused on love. Love hurts and can make people do insane things like the speaker did to Porphyria. Although I strongly believe through evidence of the text that the speaker suffers from insanity, that however was not the belief of some during the Victorian Era when this was written. Is the speaker truly insane or am I wrong in thinking that?

Browning, Robert, James F. Loucks, and Andrew M. Stauffer. Robert Browning's

Poetry. New York:  W.W. Norton, 2006. Print.