Porphyria's Lover - Robert Browning

The Feminine Voice and the Feminine Presence in Nineteenth-Century Poetry Melissa E. Buron '05, English 151, Brown University, 2003 The feminine voice in Victorian poetry is often overshadowed by male authors' presences coming through in word choice and scenarios. Although these authors attempt to express the desires and emotions of their female characters, their words often often do not convince and more often then not, produce voices of weak women. Although male authors like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning most often create such enfeebled women, so does Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This fact suggests that the weak, distant feminine voices in nineteenth-century poetry derive from contemporary constraints women rather than from blatant misogyny. This paper will examine the way that male authors describe the female figures in their poems in connection to men. I shall also show how the masculine voice of the author frequently dominates the poems and thus distances the reader from the women in these poems. In Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Marianna," the female voice has a very depressed and melancholy tone. Tennyson depicts a bleak scene in the first stanza of the poem, describing the "blackest moss," "rusted nails," and "broken sheds." Before the reader hears from Marianna, Tennyson establishes a gloomy tone, which prepares the reader for the poem's depressed central figure. The first words that she utters are prefaced by the condition "she only said." This implies that either she does not say very much or that what she does say is not of much consequence to the narrator. If Tennyson had omitted this conditional preface, the words that she speaks would have a much stronger effect. Tennyson thus establishes his male presence in the poem. The reader only knows what Marianna says because Tennyson places himself in the scene to describe her sadness. He is effectively the moderator dissecting her emotions and allowing a glimpse of her world. Without his existence, the reader would not know anything about Marianna and as such, her existence completely depends on his interpretation of her. The fact that few words she says are about a man for whom she is pining for also makes her voice very weak. Throughout the poem she obsessively repeats her concern for her lover's absence: "The night is dreary, he cometh not" (stanza 1, lines 9-10). In the subsequent stanzas, "the night" is replaced with "the day" and "my life." Her sorrow is intimately connected to the absence of an anonymous male figure. The idea that her feelings depend on a man's presence effectively ties her existence to men. She does not have a personality of her own independent of men, but everything that Tennyson has her say and feel is somehow related to a man. Furthermore, since she is not speaking about herself, the reader is given the impression that her words and thoughts would not exist without male presence. Tennyson also removes Marianna from her setting, as the only thing she can focus on is her lover's absence. We the readers are affected by this removal from reality and consequently are distanced from Marianna. Her words are even more unconvincing in lines eleven and twelve when she repeats the anguished lament, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead." Even if the character had such morbid feelings, it is unlikely that she would sit by herself and mutter them aloud. Tennyson also over-dramatizes her emotions. Although she is obviously a melancholy character, it is somewhat of a stretch to imagine an embowered woman pacing her room, repeating again and again, "I am aweary, aweary." This repetition does emphasize her depression but it also is not a believable manner to do so since a variation of her expressions of loneliness would seem more like a woman speaking, rather than a man's voice attempting to speak for her. Another aspect of the poem that draws away from the idea that the woman herself is speaking is the fact that Tennyson romanticizes her setting. It seems more likely that Marianna is an expression of a man's desire to imagine a woman wasting away for the presence of her lover who has abandoned her. The archaic, ballad-form that the poem is written in makes the woman more removed from the reader, which also detracts from a strong female presence. This poem is extremely static and it does not give the reader any indication that Marianna is really expressing her own feelings. The "dreamy house" (stanza 6) that she is described in only adds to her distance from the reader and does not allow for a sense that she is describing her sadness but rather that her sadness is being romanticized by the male author. The romanticized sadness of a female heroine also appears in Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shallot." Tennyson plays with the idea of the embowered woman once again, except that in this poem, the woman is confined because of a mysterious curse rather than a self-imposed isolation. Like "Mariana," the "Lady of Shallot" is defined by the absence of a man: And sometimes thro' the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shallot. [part 2, stanza 3, lines 24-27] She too is placed near a window and waits for her love to rescue her from her despondent existence. The reader never learns the fate of Marianna, but it can be assumed that she her happiness is solely dependant on her lover's return. In contrast, there is no speculation about the Lady of Shallot's fates since it her death is explained as a result of her feeling that she is "half sick of shadows," (part 2, stanza 4, line 35) which can be read as her desire to experience the real world. The Lady of Shallot does not say anything else in the entire poem and by its end she is dead. She dies an anonymous beauty as the people of Camelot gather around her body and question who she is and where she came from: Who is this? and what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they cross'd themselves for fear, All the kights at Camelot: But Lancelot mused a little space; He said she has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shallot. [part 4, stanza 6] The only validation that the Lady of Shallot receives is from Lancelot at the very end of the poem when he comments on her beauty. The reader never even learns her name, only where she is from. The sing-song rhythm and rhyme scheme employed by Tennyson throughout the poem also diminishes the impression that she is speaking for herself. It sounds more like Tennyson fit her words into his rhyme scheme and she had no input in what came out of her mouth. Consequently, the voice of the male author is more perceptible than the voice of the woman who is the central focus of the poem When "Marianna" and "The Lady of Shallot" are read in comparison to Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," the idea of distance between the female in the poem and the reader is repeated. The main difference between the poems is that in Browning's poem, the woman does not ever speak because she is already dead. The poem begins in the middle of a conversation between the Duke and an envoy. The Duke describes his last wife, apparently so the envoy will pass on the Duke's strict standards for his wives. The Duke totally controls access to the late Duchess, who in this poem is only a painting, not a live woman. The reader does not know how she was killed or even what she looked like, only that she was beautiful. The Duke completely controls all that the reader knows about her, which means that everything the Duke says, must be read in the context of his insanity. He tells us more than he should and his obsession is clear when he tells the envoy that "none puts by the curtain I have drawn for you." (lines 9-10) The reader is thus denied access to the Duchess in the sense that the Duke controls who and what can be learned about her and when they can learn such information. Since he strictly contyrols access to his wife, the reader will never know what the Duchess herself actually thought or said. She is completely objectified by the Duke, and the reader only knows about her in the context of her relationship to her husband. This is especially evident in the fact that she is the "Duchess," and we never know her name, just as we never learn the Lady of Shallot's name. Not only that, but the Duke refers to her as "My last Duchess." She is a possession, something the Duke once added to his collection of things to show off. The way that Browning emphasizes the idea of the artist painting her portrait further objectifies her until she is only a figment of the male characters' impressions, just as the figure of Marianna is discussed as a removed and distant figure. The reader is never given the idea that a true understanding of the Duchess is possible because the Duke and the Duke's ideas of his late wife are the barrier to his accessing the central figure of the poem, the Duchess. Throughout the poem, the Duke speaks for the late Duchess, and there is no way that she can defend herself against his accusations and descriptions of her because she is not present to speak for herself. Although this might seem like a weak support of the absence of the female voice in poetry, I think that it supports my central argument that the female voice in many Victorian poems is really only a male voice speaking for the female. In this poem in particular, the male voice comes through because the female is physically not included in the poem to defend herself. Therefore, every accusation that the Duke makes might be unsubstantiated, but the reader will never know what the Duchess would have said in response, because Browning omits her from the action in the poem. She is not there when the Duke speaks about her and thus, she cannot defend herself against his description of her. It is in this manner that Browning creates a distance between the reader and the female described in the poem, which completely eliminates the reader's ability to feel any connection to her. Browning similarly objectifies the female character in his poem "Porphyria's Lover." The result of this objectification is the creation of distance between Porphyria and the reader in his poem. In this poem, Browning continues the theme of men trying to possess women, as though these women are objects without souls, personalities or thoughts of their own. Although her name is central in the title, the poem is not about Porphyria. It is concerned with her lover's obsession for her and the tragic end that she meets as a result of his obsession. Browning does not even bother to quote Porphyria in the poem, but rather, he only mentions that she "called" the speaker. Browning does not tell the reader what she called, how she called it or even why she called, he only tells that she did in fact call. Porphyria is thus a mute, ephemeral figure that the reader is essentially distanced from. Since the reader does not understand her motivation, it is difficult to feel connected to her and it is thus difficult to feel any sympathy for her. Although her death by strangulation is certainly shocking, the fact that her voice is not expressed makes the reader much more detached from her. The reader understands that she is a selfless and generous person because of the way she comes into her lover's room and stokes the fire to make sure that he is warm and comfortable. Despite her kindness, the male speaker objectifies her and feels justified in killing her. What is so distressing about the poem is that she is not given the chance to speak. Browning does not even allow her to scream while she is being strangled. Instead, in lines 40-41, the speaker tells the reader "no pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain." How does the speaker know that she felt no pain? He strangles her with her own hair and yet he is sure that she has felt nothing. Porphyria is essentially denied the ability to speak for herself. Even in her death, her male counterpart interprets her emotions for her and tells the reader what she feels as though he can read her mind. Not only does Browning's speaker deny Porphyria the ability to speak for herself, but he also projects all of his anger onto her. This projection further decreases Porphyria's presence in the poem, which increases the reader's distance from her. Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning does not create a more convincing portrayal of women in poetry, even though she is a female poet. Like the women in Robert Browning's poetry, the women in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh are objectified as the author makes extreme stereotypes about women in different classes. This poem can be read as a brilliant feminine work because of its focus on an independent Victorian woman, but it really only addresses the problem of a woman trying to escape male patriarchy. There is no mythic control over the women in this poem such as in "Marianna" or "The Lady of Shallot," but these women are still subjected to men as they are forced to arrange their lives according to the actions of the men around them. Although Barrett Browning tries to liberate Aurora Leigh, she only succeeds in showing how women had no real identity of their own as Aurora Leigh's individuality is only through her separation from a man. The reader learns the most about Aurora Leigh through her relationship to the men in her life. This reinforces the idea that Victorian women did not have their own identities outside of their relationships with these male figures. Early in the poem, Browning writes of Aurora Leigh's attachment to her doting father and how his influence on her does not diminish even as she grows up. Later in her life, Aurora Leigh's existence is defined by her desire to avoid marriage to her cousin Romney and make a living as a poet. Although much time passes during her period as an independent poet, in lines 571-577 of the fifth book, she marks the progress of her life by referring to Romney: For instance, I have not seen Romney Leigh Full eighteen monthsŠadd six, you get two years. They say he's very busy with good works, — Has parted Leigh Hall into almshouses. He made an almshouse of his heart one day, Which ever since is loose upon the latch For those who pull the string. — I never did. This passage shows that even though years have passed between her visits with Romney, she still thinks about him and about the love that she gave up. Her life at this point is accordingly defined by her deliberate reaction against men, which means that her identity is defined against male figures. Additionally, the latter part of the poem when Aurora Leigh is the most independent and separated from men is also the most ambiguous since Barrett Browning does not give a clear explanation of setting details. This expresses the author's self-conscious discomfort about what it meant to be a self-sufficient woman in the nineteenth-century. Women at this point were seldom published authors and it was even more rare for a woman to be a published poet since poetry was considered a higher art form than the novel. Barrett Browning's attempt to describe the life of a female poet is admirable in its effort to emancipate her main character from dependence on men, but despite the poem's female authorship, it objectifies the female characters and defines their existence in comparison to men in the same way that contemporary male poets did. The way that Barrett Browning stereotypes women and only defines them against men is most apparent in lines 457-465 of the first book in which she describes the way men perceive women: The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, To put on when you're weary — or a stool To stumble over and vex you . . . 'curse that stool!' Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean And sleep, and dream of something we are not, But would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, thisŠthat, after all, we are paid The worth of our work, perhaps. Although Aurora Leigh makes a point about her anger regarding the way Victorian women were objectified by men, this statement furthers the idea that women had no identity outside of the men in their lives. Aurora Leigh effectively supports my suggestion that the male voice and male presence is more palpable in many Victorian poems, regardless of the poet's gender. To write a truly feminist poem, Barrett Browning would have had to describe Aurora Leigh solely in terms of her accomplishments as a poet. The constraints of Victorian society would not have allowed a woman to exist as such however. Respectable women in Victorian England were either identified by marriage or by spinsterhood. Either way, their identity depended on the presence or absence of a man. It would have been completely unrealistic for Barrett Browning to have written about Aurora Leigh as a completely autonomous heroine, but the fact that she could not do this supports my suggestion that female figures in Victorian poetry are overshadowed either by the presence of men in the poems or the voice of the poems' male authors. Although many nineteenth-century poets attempted to use the voices of the female characters in their poems in effective ways, the result is usually that the male voice of the author or the presence of men in the poems overshadows the female voice and the female presence. Since women are always defined by their relationship to men, a distance is created between the reader and the female subjects that also makes the female voice and presence in these poems weaker than the presence of the male authors and the male subjects in the poems. The result of this is that women are typically objectified in Victorian poetry since their voices and their actions in the poems are only described according to their relationship with men.

"Porphyria's Lover" — Vastly Misunderstood Poetry J. T. Best Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" was initially entitled "Porphyria" when in 1836 it first appeared within the Monthly Repository. It had great appeal to its later Victorian audience who was shocked by the description of Porphyria's death. However, from its onset, the interpretation of the poem began to suffer from obfuscation and misinterpretation as the reason for Porphyria's death became more and more controversial. As is often the case, discourse can surround a work that is misunderstood. That is not to say the literature itself is not enjoyed, for such is not the case. In fact the story about Porphyria's Lover is a highly entertaining read regardless of the motive assigned to the cause of her death. The use of her own golden hair to snuff out her life has been assigned to wanton acts of depravity that range from murder by a selfish madman to a depraved sexuality. I respectfully submit that, early on, a link in the chain of reasoning was somehow missed and the path leading to a proper conclusion regarding that strangulation went undiscovered. Consequently, a commonly accepted analysis regarding the motive behind Porphyria's death has labored under a false image for well over a century. Hopefully, all that will change following this interpretation because there does exist within the poem a detectable truth regarding why "Porphyria's Lover" killed her, a reason that, until now, has gone completely unnoticed. That said, other subtleties of the poem have been, and will always remain subject to a gamut of interpretations ranging from deeply religious connotations that emanate from the last line of the poem to the absurd such as erotic sexual strangulation offered by those who see what they want to see or conceived by the publicity seeker for the popularity that can be gained from the bizarre. How can I be so certain that my take on this great literary work is correct to the extent that nearly two centuries of readers, both expert and layman alike, are wrong as having missed the mark. Well, you be the judge as you follow my logic. The first six lines tell of a dark and stormy night, which is helpful to the extent that it sets the stage for a dismal human mood. The next seven lines tell us Porphyria has been to the cottage many times before and is comfortable building up the existing fire within the fireplace. That is significant because it demonstrates a relationship of some duration. The reason for her forthcoming death first begins to reveal itself within the following three lines, And, last, she sat down by my side And called me. When no voice replied, She put my arm about her waist. That the speaker is in a solemn mood is made apparent when Porphyria speaks to him but he says nothing in reply. So she sits by his side, reaches for his arm and places it around her waist. Speaking is something he cannot or is not willing to do because his mind is preoccupied with what he is about to do. We are next told that he takes sensitive pleasure in bending over to lay and rub his cheek upon her yellow hair, And, stopping, made my cheek lie there, And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair, The mental image is powerful proof of his romantic affection for Porphyria. He is doing more than running his cheek upon her yellow hair; he is literally bathing in her presence. This scene alone does not portend of madness. The logic behind Porphyria's death first begins to reveal itself within line twenty-two where it is stated: Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor, To set its struggling passion free The speaker is letting the reader know that there is something wrong with Porphyria. She loves the speaker and wants to be sexually involved, "to set [her] heart's struggling passion free," but she is too weak to do so.That Porphyria's weakness is of some duration is evident from the fact that, notwithstanding her condition, she still sometimes gave herself to the speaker anyway. This we know from the phrase — "But passion sometimes would prevail" — It is evident that her weakness is caused by an illness because the speaker is jolted to reality with a"A sudden thought of one so pale." That she is "pale" is a fundamental diagnosis regarding an underlying medical condition. The speaker then mentions of his awareness regarding just how much Porphyria loves and worship's him and how the strength of that affection made his love deepen. For love of her, and all in vain: The "love" referred to in this line obviously belongs to the speaker, but why is it "all in vain"? What reason other than Porphyria's failing health could render his love to be "all in vain"? Timing is everything and the fact that it was during this "all in vein" perception that the speaker was debating what to do, is telling. Porphyria worshiped me: surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do. It was during that moment of awareness that he spontaneously conceived the manner of her death, which is described as: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, The fact that he just "found" a thing to do attests to the spontaneity of the act, which ended his debate. He had discovered the means to take her life were at hand; it was obviously an answer for which he had been searching. The word "found" also shouts loudly for the fact that her forthcoming death had, not only been under consideration, it was a foregone conclusion with only the means left remaining to be decided upon. The aftermath corroborates the fact that the taking of Porphyria's life was not done with hate, anger or revenge in mind. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. The speaker has convinced himself that she felt no pain; it was a rationalization that he must make inasmuch as he so deeply loved the woman he just killed that he could not possibly admit to her having suffered. The tragedy continues to build within the aftermath because following her death by virtue of his deeds he has serious trouble letting go, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. He "warily" opened her eyes, they were beautiful blue eyes, beautiful because he still saw the woman he loved and they were "laughing" because they were content with the events that had just transpired. The happiness concept is reinforced because the "eyes" [are] without stain, which means that within the last look cast upon her murderer, her eyes saw no blame. Quite notably the "laughing eyes" are revealed before he releases the tress from around her neck, which is a profoundly significant fact. Important because with the final seconds of her life Porphyria recognized her death was in the making and used her last act of will to put a smile on her face. That can only be because she is pleased about death being on its way. What else could the head of a murder victim be smiling about other than the act of her death being of her own wanting? We all know of the horror seen and said to be on the faces of victims whose peril is at the hands of an evildoer. Thus the smile is telling because the face of fear is far less likely to accompany one meeting a desired end. Remember Porphyria "worshipped" the speaker. If he were a madman, like most suggest, then why would there be a smile upon her face instead of shock or horror? Within the last few seconds of life, which facial expression would more likely erupt from the spontaneous act of being strangled by someone you worship? Shock, of course, certainly not a "smiling rosy little head". Then the speaker kisses her cheek again, a kiss that contains all the love a kiss can possibly possess because it is said to be a "burning kiss". Then he sits for a while with her "smiling rosy little headÓ resting upon his shoulder. This behavior does not portray that of a madman. Not only is the pretty little head smiling, which bespeaks of the final thoughts within Porphyria's mind but the speaker also knows and tells us he knows why the smile when he states, The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, It has its "utmost will"! The head that contains the brain that controls the dying image upon the face reflects having "its utmost will". What can the word "will" possibly be referring to here other than Porphyria's will to die? That Porphyria's death is the result of euthanasia is further manifest from the following lines near the poem's end and which, quite literally, makes my case, Porphyria's love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. It was her "darling one wish" that she die. It was also her wish that she not know how that wish would be fulfilled. The word "darling" punctuates the wish, and renders it a very special wish indeed, a one of a kind type of wish. And since "she" guessed not how, the speaker tells us that it was also her desire to not know when her one wish would be fulfilled. The desire not to know relates back to, and makes sense of, the spontaneity of the act. The speaker's true and massive love for Porphyria is exampled by him sitting with her in his arms, And all night long we have not stirred. He loves her so much that he cannot release her from his grasp. He must and has indeed chosen to sit within the realm of the painful emotion that his act of granting her last wish burdened him with. The last line gives us the speaker's perception that the propriety of the act of killing Porphyria was such a right thing to do that "God has not said a word! The word "God" has been touted by many as a means to attach some religious significant to the poem, which I suggest is not at all the case. The "God" referred to is that of a rhetorical God to emphasize that what the speaker had to do was so morally correct that a God of any sort from any religious denomination would not be critical. Finally, those who disagree with my interpretation rely heavily upon the fact that "Porphyria's Lover" was first published as one of two "Madhouse Cells" which fact is used to postulate that Porphyria's lover was a madman. Such is not the case inasmuch as it was Browning that gave Porphyria her name, thus it is from her that the "madman" concept emanates and, as such, provides the final nail in the coffin of the "madman" argument and here is why: Porphyria is an incurable blood disease that disables and kills thousands every year. Its discovery dates back to the mid-1700s, well before Browning wrote "Porphyria's Lover." It is often referred to as mental illness or the Royal Disease, which, given Porphyria's tidy golden hair, means Porphyria could have been royalty inasmuch as that description would not likely be associated with Victorian lower class. Symptoms of Porphyria's disease are repeatedly described within the poem by Browning, e.g. blood loss ("gone so pale"), muscle weakness ("too weak to set her passion free") and light sensitivity which explains why she arrived at night ("rain set in early tonight") — and so on. Victims of Porphyria's disease suffer a horrible death, thus Porphyria's lover committed the highest act of love; he set his lover free from a grisly death. Related Materials Interpreting "Porphyria's Lover" — A Case study in what counts as evidence and where the ambiguities arise in dramatic monologues? "Porphyria's Lover" — A Response to J. T. Best Porphyria Place (a site about the disease) Scott Mcloud's line-by-line visual interpretation

FORMULATING A MOBULE B RESPONSE- BROWNING USE THE WORDS OF THE QUESTION TO HELP YOU FORMULATE A THESIS STATEMENT BASED UPON THE DISTINCTIVE QUALITIES AND SIGNIFICANCE OF BROWNING’S TEXT AND CONCERNS. Browning’s purpose is to provide a contextual insight into the notion of…Browning concentrates his attention on …His main focus is contemporary…Browning highlights…He invites us to question…Browning gives a realistic snapshot of… Browning challenges… Browning applies a powerful critical lens to the values of…Despite a lukewarm reception in its context of composition, Browning challenges the contemporary values of… ← TEXTUAL INTEGRITY → CONTEXTUALLY SIGNIFICANT CONCERNS Psychology, gender roles, patriarchy, social criticism, religion Develop a topic sentence foregrounding the feature you are discussing. Link it to the Victorian context. Use the sentence stems above to articulate Browning’s intensions DISTINCTIVE QUALITIES- CONTENT Elaborate with details from the poem, integrated with the analysis from the next columnsà DISTINCTIVE QUALITIES-POETIC TECHNIQUES- CONSTRUCTION and LANGUAGE · Dramatic irony · Understatement · 2 other techniques. When selecting these two techniques, consider the crucial elements of the poem that support the concern you are discussing. What techniques are used? This will provide you with a detailed, close study QUOTES TO SUPPORT LINK BACK TO THE CONCERN IN THE TOPIC SENTENCE ENDURING VALUE, SIGNIFICANCE INFORMED BY NOTIONS OF CONTEXT What insights into Victorian society does this poem give you? What, then, is this poem’s significance and enduring value for you? How is it relevant to your world? Personally engage with the concerns of the poem. The disturbed mind of the speaker promotes the reader to question gender roles. The form of dramatic monologue allows Browning to investigate the workings of the speaker’s mind. He is driven mad by his love for Porphyria and his jealousy of her “vainer ties” and wants to capture the moment of her adoration for him. In the poem, Browning uses understatement in “I found a thing to do” to foreground the speaker’s delusional belief that killing Porphyria is a rational solution to eternally capturing her look of ‘worship’. The lover kills Porphyria to gain power as he feels emasculated by her active character. Her independence usurps the lover’s perceived role as the provider and disempowers him, symbolised by her building of the fire which inflames his vexation further. In the Victorian era, strict conformity to social behaviours precluded any extreme passion or action, which was considered to be against social decorum. The insanity of the lover’s mind is a product of the imposing nature of societal values on an unhinged mindset. This poem shocked Victorian society as it challenged social behaviours and prompted Victorians to question their rigid social structure. Today, readers are still shocked at the extreme actions of the lover. Browning’s work thus has enduring value as it continues to promote the questioning of social paradigms concerning gender roles. Like our Victorian counterparts, modern readers still grapple with finding balance in relationships and female strength is still scrutinised as unnatural by insecure males, who seek to dominate. Does the marginalisation of others serve as a rational way to empower the individual? I think not!!

Female Silence and Male Self-Consciousness in Browning’s Poetry Keunjung Cho, English 151, Brown University, 2003 As in “My Last Duchess,” the speaker of Porphyria’s Lover” [text] murders his mistress and reflects upon his act while contemplating the image of her beautiful face. Like the Duke, who states that the painting of his Duchess “stands as if alive” (46-47), Porphyria’s lover suggests that the girl’s death was meant to immortalize her, as well as her feelings for him, rather than to “kill her.” The following passage, which begins after the speaker has finished strangling Porphyria, describes the kind of “immortal” presence that the girl seems to have. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened next the tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before, Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, That all it scorned at once is fled, And I, its love, am gained instead! Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred, And yet God has not said a word! Questions 1. Why is the speaker so “wary” when he opens Porphyria’s eye? What are the implications of her silent, yet “laughing” and "unstained" eyes? 2. Porphyria’s lover waits until the end of the poem to suggest that “God” might be watching. Does this mention of God mark a shift from self-absorption to self-consciousness, or is there another point in the poem which marks this transition? 3. How does the speaker’s self-consciousness enforce the moral ambiguity of the poem? 4. Both the Duke and the speaker here refer to the “smiles” of their women. How does Porphyria’s “smile” compare to that of the Duchess? How are they empowered and/or disempowered by their smiles?

"Porphyria's Lover" — A Case study in what counts as evidence and where the ambiguities arise in dramatic monologues George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University The Problems a First-Person Speaker Creates for Interpretation J. T. Best's ingenious reading of "Porphyria's Lover" raises central questions about interpreting the dramatic monologue, that quintessentially Victorian poetic genre or form developed by Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 1830s and '40s. Victorian poetry, which often displays radical experimentation with poetic form, presented numerous problems for contemporary readers, but the fundamental difficulties associated with interpreting dramatic monologues derive from three closely associated facts: These poems have a first-person speaker. This first-person speaker may or may not voice the opinions of the poet. First-person narration (or presentation) provides no sure way of authenticating the speaker's statements. These defining characteristics of this poetic form created major problems for early Victorian readers, who had little idea how to read such poems because they were accustomed to assuming that all poems spoken in the first person represented either the poet or an idealized version or persona of the poet. Readers tend strongly to identify with — that is, give their credence to — the speakers of first-person narration, and as Wayne C. Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction demonstrated a half century ago, the main problem with first-person narration appears in its either/or nature: either one takes the speaker to be a completely reliable narrator, accepting everything that he or she says as true, or, less frequently, one understands the speaker to be completely unreliable and takes everything he or she says with a grain of salt or outright disbelief, such as occurs as soon as the reader realizes that the speaker in Swift's "A Modest Proposal" does not represent the author; many readers, especially students new to satire, in fact never do come to this realization. First-person narration, in others words, allows little room for subtlety about the narrator or speaker. But as Booth further pointed out, first-person speakers create another fundamental problem for interpreting the texts in which they appear — the reader has no sure way of getting outside the speaker's statements to determine whether they are true! The Critical History of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw Booth makes these points in the midst of a discussion of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which has had an interesting critical history: at the time the novella appeared in print, readers assumed that James had written a suitably creepy ghost story and nothing more. As the years passed James's reputation as a prose master rose in the literary academy, in large part because of his supposed combination of high seriousness, complex analyses of personal motives, and sophisticated, often difficult, modes of narration in which irony played a large role. As Vivian in Oscar Wilde's "The Decay of Lying" put it satirically, Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty, and wastes upon mean motives and imperceptible 'points of view' his neat literary style, his felicitous phrases, his swift and caustic satire. Mid-twentieth-century readers of James, however, couldn't get enough of these qualities, which came to define his greatness. Soon enough academic critics decided that such a master of prose would not, could not, stoop to write a mere ghost story, a pop form, and since these were also the decades in which Freud's writings became far widely accepted than they have been recently, some ingenious critics read The Turn of the Screw as a sophisticated pyscho-sexual case study in which the governess who narrates the tale, driven by her sexual needs, herself kills her young charge. This interpretation, which soon dominated the way the novella was taught, had the several great advantages: It perfectly matched contemporary fashion, it served to make James, the great canonical author, appear even more sophisticated and wise in the ways of the human psyche, and it also permitted the critics who made this interpretation to seem very smart, certainly more intelligent than James's contemporaries. Only one problem: looking at James's notebooks shows that he thought he was writing . . . a ghost story. The critical history of The Turn of the Screw has several important implications for the interpretation of dramatic monologues, which like the James novella, have a first-person speaker: (1) Since such texts provide no evidence other than that provided by the speaker, any reading that seems consistent with this evidence will appear plausible. (2) Readers tend to choose interpretations that match popular intellectual fashions, their own deep beliefs, or self-interest. (3) Going outside the poem for external evidence, such as the writer's own public or private remarks, may provide the only convincing way to resolve alternate self-consistent readings, though not everyone may be willing to be convinced: a reader could counter the evidence of James's own notebooks with the claim that he may have began with sole intention of writing a ghost story but somewhere along the way he changed his mind and did not feel it necessary to record that decision in his notebooks (what kind of evidence would make this claim more or less likely? at what would you have to look?) The Critical History of Tennyson's "Ulysses" Tennyson's poem (text) has an even more complex history with not two but four possible — that is more or less self-consistent — interpretations. By far the most popular reading of the poem matches the popular Victorian one, builds to the famous final line: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." According to this reading, "Ulysses" embodies the Victorian stiff-upper lip, the need to endure when things get difficult and unpleasant. Going outside the poem, we recall that Tennyson stated he wrote it shortly after learning of Arthur Henry Hallam's death, so "Ulysses" turns out to be — along with "Tithonus" and "Morte d'Arthur" — in some sense a reaction to the traumatic death of his closest friend. "Tithonus," like the Struldbugs in the third book of Gulliver's Travels, argues for the necessity of death just as Bedivere in the "Morte d'Arthur" dramatizes the necessity, if difficulty, of having faith, keeping faith, and carrying on after the death of a loved one. According to the usual reading of "Ulysses," then, the poem's final line fits perfectly with the poet's situation as a mourner. As I have pointed out elsewhere in VW, Victorians tended to read this poem pretty straightforwardly, as an avowal of faith in the necessity of striving ever onward. They were supported by Tennyson's own statement that this poem "gave my feeling about Hallam's death perhaps more simply than anything in In Memoriam," his great elegaic lament. But modern critics have found "Ulysses" anything but simple. Perhaps more than any other single poem, how you read it depends upon your theoretical assumptions about the nature of poetry. In 1954 E. J. Chiasson called the accepted reading of the poem into question when he pointed out the speaker's marital and social irresponsibility, pursuit of sensation, and adoration of the naked intellect, [which] is thoroughly opposed to In Memoriam's glorification of the marriage bond as symptomatic of and contributory to social solidarity. . . . It is especially surprising that the pivotal doctrine of In Memoriam, namely the belief in immortality, the belief which serves as sanction for all other beliefs, and without which life becomes mere rutting and social disintegration, should become in 'Ulysses' at best a subject for the display of a kind of jovial agnosticism. [171] According to Chiasson, then, the poem, which so many take to be an uplifting call to courageous perseverance, is in fact a form of intellectual satire, which "can be read as the dramatic presentation of a man who has faith neither in the gods nor consequently in the necessity of preserving order in his kingdom or in his own life" (172), and thus, like Tithonus and the mariners in "The Lotus-Eaters" dramatizes an intellectual position that the poet wishes to explore but not accept. Chiasson's reading depends upon two points, the first of which is the speaker's apparently scornful treatment of his wife, son, and people — so unlike the protagonist of The Odyssey. Second, Chaisson assumes that Tennyson speaker is the Ulysses of Dante's Inferno, which condemns him to hell for overreaching pride, rather than the main character of the Homeric epic. The justification for making this assumption was the statement by the poet's son that his father referred to Dante's, not Homer's, Ulysses. To the standard reading of Ulysses character and Chiasson's more sharply negative one with their consequent effects upon the meaning of the poem, I offer a third possibility: Like Browning's "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's," "Ulysses" is a deathbed poem, which treats death as the last great adventure into the unknown — a reading that fits perfectly with Tennyson's statements about the occasion on which he wrote the poem as well as the other poems the explore the nature of death. According to this interpretation, Tennyson's speaker is the character who appears in Homer rather than Dante, and I would justify this assertion with the argument that unlike so many statements in the poet's memoirs edited by his son, Hallam Tennyson, not his father, asserts that "Ulysses" refers to Dante's version. (Quite frankly, this is the weakest point in the argument for my interpretation.) In this reading of the poem, the mariners Ulysses addresses are the ghosts of his crew from the The Odyssey, all of whom perish. Considering all three readings, one can argue that Chiasson's and mine have the advantage over the more popular one that they are self-consistent; that is, they fit the text of the poem. Nonetheless, it is difficult proving which one might be correct because both arguments appeal to contradictory external evidence. James Kincaid, who has written perhaps the finest book-length study of Tennyson, follows Robert Langbaum and takes yet another tack, arguing that in the dramatic monologue the removal of context makes it extremely difficult not only to know how to judge but to be sure if one should judge at all. Certainly, the creation of a solid position from which one can observe how the speaker "contradicts himself" or is subject to the poet's satire is a critical fiction, a convenience that distorts the effects of the poem. Robert Langbaum's The Poetry of Experience, a brilliant discussion of the problem of perspective in the dramatic monologue, uses a very open appeal to our experience in the poem to demonstrate that an overtly satiric reading of a dramatic monologue is a possible, but rather crude and uninteresting response. To see that Ulysses's comments on Telemachus are contemptuous is one thing; to argue that this contempt acts to condemn Ulysses is something else. 'there is no way we can find within the poem a morality that allows for such certain judgments. By removing rhetorical securities, the dramatic monologue does, as Langbaum insists, force us to experience the speaker himself, not a meaning which is external to him. Still, the tendency of this form to find the extreme case, in fact to be generally effective in direct proportion to the outrageousness of its argument and the distance of the speaker and action from conventional moral and social norms, means that our instinct to make judgments is very strongly activated. . . . Contrary to what I take to be the implications of Langbaum's argument, judgment is not an attendant or superficial response but an immediate and powerful one. But it is also given no place to rest, no terms with which to deal, and this very fact accounts for the ironic rhetoric. We are asked to respond simultaneously on two contradictory levels: that of distant critical judgment and that of absorbed, direct experience. We must and we cannot do both; and we realize, therefore, the tension between the now disjoined meaning and experience. [complete text] Such an essentially agnostic approach to interpreting those dramatic monologues that treat the speaker ironically certainly has appeal, if only because of its ingenious novelty. But for me such interpretations of "Ulysses" and similar dramatic monologues has one fatal flaw: it takes for granted the not very credible assumption that Tennyson writes this kind of themeless poetry — dramatic monologues in which he does not make any points about the subjects that most concern him — only in those poems that we have difficulty interpreting. The conclusion seems a bit too convenient. Certainly, this fundamental difficulty of interpretation does not exist in poems in which the speaker more or less speaks for or in place of the author. In Browning's case we have the example of speakers whom the author treats unironically, such as Abt Vogler, Rabbi ben Ezra, and the Pope in The Ring and the Book. One could of course argue that this new kind of themeless poetry occurs only when the author of the dramatic monologue treats the speaker critically or ironically, but that doesn't work either, for plenty of examples of dramatic monologues come to mind in which both Tennyson and Browning treat their speakers ironically and yet their points of view appear quite clearly in the resulting intellectual satires: Tennyson's "Tithonus" and "The Lotos Eaters," Browning's "Andrea del Sarto," "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's," and "Cleon." What Evidence Can One Use in Interpreting a Dramatic Monologue? The dramatic monologue is a literary genre, and like all genres it relies upon certain techniques that signal the reader how to read it. Browning, Tennyson, and other authors or use this form use some or all of the following means of helping readers interpret the words of the fictional speaker who is unreliable: having a character's actions or own words contradict his assertions ("Porphyria's Lover") appeal to a common morality, belief system, or set of assumptions that authors believe, correctly or not, that they and their readers share ("Porphyria's Lover," "My Last Duchess," Hopkins's "A Soliloquy of one of the Spies left in the Wilderness") . use of epigraphs and allusions that position the poem (Hopkins's "The Windhover") titles ("The Windhover," "An Epistle Concerning the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician"") placement of poem in a particular section or category in a book ("Porphyria's Lover" as a "Madhouse Cell") a character's use or misuse of material, such as the symbolic interpretation of well-known biblical passages, that serve to define the character's moral status. For example, Guido in The Ring and the Book thinks he's presenting himself as a Christ-figure when in fact he continually uses images that refer to Satan, and the speaker misuses commonplace symbols of heaven in "The Bishop orders His Tomb at St Praxed's." Hopkins uses this methode in his early "A Soliloquy of one of the Spies left in the Wilderness") "Porphyria's Lover" Considering both internal and external evidence, one might think that the speaker of "Porphyria's Lover" exemplifies the most unambiguous and easily understood of all unreliable speakers in dramatic monologues: first, the poem was originally published as one of two "Madhouse Cells," clearly and unabiguously pointing to the fact that the words of the insane speaker are not to be trusted; second, every assertion or judgment the speaker makes is quickly disproved by his own words: Using what Ruskin termed the pathetic fallacy to show how the speaker falsifies nature, Browning has him project his own feelings upon the wind and rain, which is, of course, not "sullen" or full of "spite." The speaker falsely asserts that his "love of her . . . [is] all in vain," but in fact she does think of him and she does come! He claims that's she's proud, but she gives no sign of being so, and he admits that he is proud of what he's done. He claims she neglects him, but the first thing she does, even before removing her wet outer clothing, is to light a fire and comfort him. Then there's the central fact of the poem, the chief source of its power — this madman, who today would be labelled a paranoid schizophrenic, strangles his beloved, asserts on the basis of no evidence that she felt no pain, and sits all night with the dead body wondering why God hasn't spoken to him in praise for his act. When discussing this poem in class, the first question I ask students is, "At what point in the poem did you begin to distrust the speaker?" For almost all of us that point comes with the great shock of reading that he has strangled the beloved with her own hair. At that point (or upon completing the poem) one can go back through the poem and note all the previously missed hints of what was to come. The sensationalism of the poem is enough to tempt one to take it at first as a poem without much more of a point than that young women should probably not date homicidal maniacs, but on reflection it soon becomes clear that Porphyria's lover is another one of those Browning male characters who objectify, use, and abuse woman by projecting their wishes upon them — the Duke of Ferrara and Count Guido Franceschini being the most obvious examples. Related Materials Text of the poem Representations of the Female Voice in Victorian Poetry Female Silence and Male Self-Consciousness in Browning's Poetry "Porphyria's Lover" — Vastly Misunderstood Poetry Scott Mcloud's line-by-line visual interpretation References and Suggested Readings Chiasson, E. J. "Tennyson's 'Ulysses' — a Re-Interpretation." (Originally published 1954) Critical essays on the Poetry of Tennyson. Ed. John Killham. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967. Pp. 164-74. Fowler, Alastair. Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982. Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982. Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974. Kincaid, James. Tennyson's Major Poems: The Comic and Ironic Patterns. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. [full text]

"Porphyria's Lover" — A Response to J. T. Best Dick Sullivan r Best's thesis is that the young woman is mortally ill and the narrator kills her to end her suffering. Porphyria is the name of a rare disease, of course, which might substantiate the idea, if Browning knew of this meaning. Yet here is an alternative reading. The young woman and the narrator are both of the so-called gentle classes — that is, a lady and a gentleman. Their speech suggests this, to begin with (though I'm not sure if Browning ever tried to imitate lower class speech?) Her hair seems to be clean, something not generally associated with Victorian lower class girls (no fault of their own, just no facilities.) They meet in a cottage which suggests something is wrong with the man; seemingly they can't meet openly or socially. If he were severely mentally ill, the chances are he'd be cared for by his family — either in an institution or, if they had a big enough house, in rooms at home. He is therefore more likely to be a gentleman who has gone to the bad. He certainly seems to be shiftless: sitting in a cold cottage without lighting a fire. Sons of the gentry who went wrong most usually became remittance men, packed off overseas (often to the colonies) and paid a regular allowance as long as they stayed out of England. Somerset Maugham has a story about one such man in the Dutch East Indies. A man who'd gone off the rails might also join the Army, in the ranks. Kipling's "gentlemen-rankers out on a spree" are examples. Kipling tells us the troopers sometimes called them 'sir' out of a habit of deference to men of higher class who would be instantly recognised through accent, vocabulary, and general body language [www.daypoems.net/poems/1803.html] (One even became a navvy, cut off forever from his home.) Mr Best suggests the young woman is pale because of illness, but the line isn't end-stopped and it runs on: Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain A sudden thought of one so pale For love of her. This suggests there was a rival suitor, surely? But suddenly the narrator realises he is the only one the woman loves. He is pretty unlovable, shunned by his own family, and has perhaps never been loved before. For the first time a woman loves him and, not only that, she also prefers him to another man who wants her. What can he do with such knowledge: how can he keep her? To keep her, he kills her. Now he will possess her forever where alone it matters: in his mind. And the dead woman, he believes, is now contented too: the man she scorned is gone and she has the man she loves. That was her only wish, he tells himself, though she never guessed in what way it would be fulfilled. God doesn't seem to object either, is perhaps the meaning of the last line. Or, again, there is no God to care might be more in keeping with the man's character. On the other hand, Occam's Razor might suggest that the poem is a parable about the human capacity for evil, how we casually and wantonly destroy things of great value for no real reason. The narrator is not in his right mind, but he represents undiluted wickedness rather than sickness. Related Materials Interpreting "Porphyria's Lover" — A Case study in what counts as evidence and where the ambiguities arise in dramatic monologues? Scott Mcloudd's line-by-line visual interpretation

"Porphyria's Lover" Considering both internal and external evidence, one might think that the speaker of "Porphyria's Lover" exemplifies the most unambiguous and easily understood of all unreliable speakers in dramatic monologues: first, the poem was originally published as one of two "Madhouse Cells," clearly and unabiguously pointing to the fact that the words of the insane speaker are not to be trusted; second, every assertion or judgment the speaker makes is quickly disproved by his own words: Using what Ruskin termed the pathetic fallacy to show how the speaker falsifies nature, Browning has him project his own feelings upon the wind and rain, which is, of course, not "sullen" or full of "spite." The speaker falsely asserts that his "love of her . . . [is] all in vain," but in fact she does think of him and she does come! He claims that's she's proud, but she gives no sign of being so, and he admits that he is proud of what he's done. He claims she neglects him, but the first thing she does, even before removing her wet outer clothing, is to light a fire and comfort him. Then there's the central fact of the poem, the chief source of its power — this madman, who today would be labelled a paranoid schizophrenic, strangles his beloved, asserts on the basis of no evidence that she felt no pain, and sits all night with the dead body wondering why God hasn't spoken to him in praise for his act. When discussing this poem in class, the first question I ask students is, "At what point in the poem did you begin to distrust the speaker?" For almost all of us that point comes with the great shock of reading that he has strangled the beloved with her own hair. At that point (or upon completing the poem) one can go back through the poem and note all the previously missed hints of what was to come. The sensationalism of the poem is enough to tempt one to take it at first as a poem without much more of a point than that young women should probably not date homicidal maniacs, but on reflection it soon becomes clear that Porphyria's lover is another one of those Browning male characters who objectify, use, and abuse woman by projecting their wishes upon them — the Duke of Ferrara and Count Guido Franceschini being the most obvious examples.

Summary The narrator of "Porphyria's Lover" is a man who has murdered his lover, Porphyria. He begins by describing the tumultuous weather of the night that has just passed. It has been rainy and windy, and the weather has put the speaker in a melancholy mood as he waits in his remote cabin for Porphyria to arrive. Finally, she does, having left a society party and transcended her class expectations to visit him. Wet and cold, she tends to the fire and then leans against the narrator, professing quietly her love and assuring him she was not deterred by the storm. He looks up into her face and realizes that she "worshipp'd" him in this moment, but that she would ultimately return to the embrace of social expectation. Taken by the purity of the moment, he does what comes naturally: he takes her hair and strangles her to death with it. He assures his listener that she died painlessly. After she dies, he unwinds her hair and lays her corpse out in a graceful pose with her eyes opened and her lifeless head on his shoulder.As he speaks, they sit together in that position, and he is certain he has granted her greatest wish by allowing them to be together without any worries. He ends by remarking that God "has not yet said a word" against him. Analysis "Porphyria's Lover," published in 1836, is one of Browning's first forays into the dramatic monologue form (though he wouldn't use that term for a while). The basic form of his dramatic monologues is a first person narrator who presents a highly subjective perspective on a story, with Browning's message coming out not through the text but through the ironic disconnect of what the speaker justifies and what is obvious to the audience.In this poem, the irony is abundantly clear: the speaker has committed an atrocious act and yet justifies it as not only acceptable, but as noble. Throughout the poem, the imagery and ideas suggest an overarching conflict of order vs. chaos, with the most obvious manifestation being the way the speaker presents his beastly murder as an act of rationality and love.The clearest example of the disconnect between order and chaos comes in the poetic form. The poetry follows an extremely regular meter of iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet per line), with a regular rhyme scheme. In other words, Browning, always a precise and meticulous poet, has made certain not to reflect madness or chaos in the rhyme scheme, but instead to mirror the speaker's belief that what he does is rational. Indeed, the order that the speaker brings to such a chaotic act is explained with rather romantic rationale. Porphyria, it is implied, is a rich lady of high social standing, while the speaker, out in his remote cabin, is not. She has chosen on this night to leave the social order of the world and retreat into the chaos of the storm to quell her tumultuous feelings for this narrator. Thus there is some indication of the theme of class, though it is far less pervasive in the poem than are the large questions of human nature. When the speaker realizes that Porphyria ultimately will choose to return to the order of society, while simultaneously believing that she wishes to be with him – she "worshipp'd" him, after all – he chooses to immortalize this moment by removing her ability to leave.In this line of thought lies the key to understanding much of Browning's poetry: his sense of subjective truth. Unlike most poets, whose messages, even when obtuse, are fully formed, Browning believes humans to be full of contradictions and malleable personalities that shift constantly, sometimes moment to moment. Even if we assume the speaker understands the situation correctly when he identifies Porphyria as purely devoted to him at the moment of the murder, we are also to believe that she will soon retreat to a different contradictory personality, one that prizes social acceptance. So what the speaker undertakes is in some ways a fallacious yet heroic goal: to save Porphyria from the tumultuous contradictions of human nature, to preserve her in a moment of pure happiness and contentment with existing in chaos.It is also interesting how Browning uses so much stock, melodramatic imagery to set his poem up. While the storm certainly suits his ideas as a symbol of chaos (as opposed to the order of society), it is akin to the 'dark and stormy night' setups of traditional stories. However, once Porphyria enters, the poem moves to a more explicitly sexual place – notice the imagery as she undresses and dries herself – that suddenly equates those natural forces with the human forces of sexuality. The speaker, who had "listen'd with heart fit to break" to the storm, seems to recognize in both of these parallel forces the existence of the uncontrollable. Considering the Victorian period in which Browning wrote, this sense of sexual freedom could be expected to prompt a judgment from his audience on Porphyria as an unwed sexual woman, a judgment that is quickly reversed when she becomes the victim of an even darker human impulse than sexuality (though one most certainly tied in with it). It is worth mentioning that the speaker does not take any sexual license with her dead body, but instead tries to maintain a sense of the purity he had glimpsed in her, creating a tableaux with her head on his shoulder that evokes childish affection rather than adult depravity. As with all things, Browning complicates rather than simplifies.The overarching message of the poem is thus that humans are full of contradictions. We are drawn to both the things we love and the things we hate, and we are eminently capable of rationalizing either choice. Through such measured and considered language, we are invited to approve of the murder even as it disgusts us, and in the murder itself we are to forgive the woman for what we (at least if we were Victorian) might have otherwise judged her. Humans are creatures of transience and chaos, even as we belabor the attempt to convince ourselves that we are rational and that our choices are sound.

Context Robert Browning (1812-1889) was a Victorian poet, who is particularly famous for his dramatic monologues in verse form. Browning was born in London, to a family who relished literature, and he grew up surrounded by books. He wrote his first book of poems before he was 12 – but destroyed them as an adult to make sure no-one could publish them!Browning devoted himself to poetry, and initially had to live at home and be supported by his parents to do so. He married another poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was rather more popular and successful than him. They were able to live together on her inherited wealth.Browning’s dramatic monologues are often narrated by very sinister characters, and the reader must piece together what the truth of the story is. My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover both fall into this category. Porphyria’s Lover was the first short dramatic monologue that Browning wrote, and was one of the first of his poems to feature a character with psychosis.The woman in the poem is named after a disease called Porphyria. It is a rare type of disease, which can result in madness of some kind. This has led some people to interpret the poem as a metaphor for dealing with this disease. It was first identified a few years before the poem was written. Subject matter The poem is a narrative of a murder, told calmly and callously. On a stormy night the apparently depressed narrator is sitting alone in a cold and dark cottage. Out of the storm the girl he loves, Porphyria, arrives and makes up the fire. She sits beside him but he won’t speak. She tells him she loves him and rests her head on his shoulder, arranging his arm around her waist. He was "so pale/For love of her" and thought she didn’t love him. He is delighted to discover that she loves him. In that perfect moment he decides to kill her, strangling her with her own hair. When she is dead he props her up on his shoulder in the same position as before. There they sit for the whole night. Form and structure Porphyria’s Lover is a dramatic monologue written in the first person. The regular rhyme scheme follows an ABABB pattern throughout, and the poem is written in one long section. Some critics have suggested the regular rhyme scheme reflects a calm heartbeat. It has also been suggested that the asymmetrical rhyme scheme reflects the unbalanced character of the narrator. Certainly the complete regularity of it reflects the narrator’s calmness in his violence.There is a mirrored structure to the events in the poem. In the first half, Porphyria arranges the narrator’s physical form, putting his "arm about her waist". After he has killed her, he arranges her back in the position in which she had been sitting. This might reflect the paradox, that he loves her but he kills her. Language and Imagery The word "and" is used repeatedly throughout the poem, creating a sense of the events of the poem happening one after the other, almost as if they are inevitable once Porphyria has arrived. Imagery The poem opens with a strong sense of pathetic fallacy: the personified "sullen wind" tearing down the trees, and the rain battering down. Initially it seems as if this reflects only the mood of the narrator, but later it may take on greater significance. When Porphyria arrives, she makes up the fire and warms the cottage, transforming the "cheerless grate", which seems as if it would reflect the love of the pair. Her arrival "shut the cold out"; this seems true on a literal and a metaphorical level – it is the storm and his unhappiness that she shuts out.Porphyria’s "yellow hair" is a recurring image in the poem, as she spreads it over the narrator’s shoulder as she sits next to him. In the first section of the poem her hair is mentioned three times in the space of eight lines, emphasising its importance to the poem’s narrator. It is hardly surprising when he uses it as "one long yellow string" to strangle her. It is a sensual image, particularly in contrast to her bare shoulder.When she is alive, Porphyria is pale, with her "smooth white shoulder bare". Once he had killed her, her cheek "blushed bright" on her "smiling rosy little head". This seems in line with the narrator’s belief that he has given Porphyria what she wanted by killing her. Similarly her dead eyelid becomes "as a shut bud that holds a bee". The use of a natural simile seems to make her seem still alive – and indeed her eyes still "laughed" when he pries open her eyelids. This seems to contradict what we might expect, and adds to the rather sinister cheerfulness of the end of the poem. The narrator appears to think that he has given Porphyria her heart’s desire, her "darling one wish". Sound The regularity of the rhyme complements the cold calm attitude of the narrator, and both contrast with the horribleness of the crime. Attitudes, themes and ideas There is a certain sensuality in the presentation of Porphyria – her bare shoulder and long hair, for example. It also seems that her love might be transgressing against her position in society, since to be with her lover, she must struggle to set her "passion free/from pride". Is her death a punishment for this offence? In some Victorian literature that might be the case, but it doesn’t seem as if Browning is trying to convey a moral in this poem; the narrator simply seems insane. The mirroring of the structure might extend a mirroring between her sensuality as she removes her wet clothes, and his violence as he kills her. The poet might perhaps be making a point about what was seen as fit to be written about in Victorian England: the poem is extremely sensational, despite its deadpan delivery.The final line is also an interesting one: "And yet God has not said a word!" The narrator may be suggesting that what he has done is not a sin, because God has not objected. This might be just another indication of madness, with delusions of grandeur because God should speak to him. Some critics have interpreted it as a promotion of atheism.Assuming that the narrator does love Porphyria, why would he kill her? He seems to want to hold her in a perfect moment, so that they can be "happy" together. He had thought that she did not return his love, that it was "in vain", but he discovered she "worshipped me". The repetition that in "that moment she was mine, mine" emphasises why he would want to keep her in that perfect instant. It is not sane, but it has a twisted logic. The idea of Porphyria being the narrator’s possession suggests something about the way in which he regards women.