Porphyria’s Lover

Robert Browning was a Victorian-era poet that lived between the years 1812 and 1889. He utilized the dramatic monologue in his poems and according to Eggenschwiler catching the moment of love’s respectability and fear are two major themes in Browning’s poems. Browning’s intense interest of human dynamics might have pushed him to write “Porphyria’s Lover". Even though a lot of people ignore the sick part of love, Browning exposes it vividly. As mentioned in the class, the atmosphere is heavy. It is windy, raining and one can feel that nothing good is going to happen. In my opinion, the storm outside of the cabin could be a symbol of the unsteadiness of love; no matter how much you love somebody, there is always going to be some kind of turbulence in the relationship. This could be the first indication that Browning is trying to show the reader that love actually is not a stable thing.

When Porphyria comes in, she lights the fireplace and the room warms up. This could depict the warm feeling when someone loves you. She is the core source of the persona’s warmth. Porphyria takes off her damp clothing, showing that she is willing to bear the storm to get to the persona. The lines “And called me. When no voice replied,” and “While I debated what to do.” are clear indications that the persona does not know how to act when he is around Porphyria. This could indicate that the persona does not have high social skills or a healthy mind. As talked about in the class, Porphyria tries to seduce him by undressing but the persona is still not responsive. In the next lines, one can understand that Porphyria is rich, she left a feast to come see the persona. Keeping this in mind and the line “murmuring how she loved me” could be showing that she is trying to hide the relationship. The persona might be feeling inferior to Porphyria and he might be thinking that she is not sure of her love. The next lines describe how the persona strangles Porphyria with her own hair.

According to Ingersoll, this strangulation is an act of ritualistic sacrifice. In my opinion, there is an important symbolism here. Love and relationships involve two people willingly coming together. Porphyria being strangled with her own hair depicts how she was the one who willingly involved herself with the persona and lead herself to her demise. After the persona strangles her, he claims that she did not feel any pain; just like how the persona did not feel sad that he strangled her. The entirety of the “murder scene” is a total act of a behavior ridden with mental illness. Love is a disease because being lovers Porphyria must have felt extremely safe around the persona, this can be understood by how quickly she adapted to the environment of the cottage and started to get her clothes off, and did not expect anything bad to happen to her, that is why she made the first move on physical touch. Being vulnerable with a loved one is an expected thing in safe relationships. But what Porphyria ended up with was her lover killing her just to “preserve” the moment of the so-called peak of their love, when she worshipped the persona. After the crime, the persona mingled with Porphyria’s dead body; he opened her eyelids, kissed her, propped up her head, and spend the night with her. Rather than love being a hypothetical sickness here, it is a literal sickness. In the end, the persona thinks that he finally gained Porphyria’s love and somehow fulfilled her last wish which would mean that Porphyria wanted this to happen. She wanted to die at the peak of their love and preserve it forever. From my point of view, the majority of the people would agree that this is the sickest part of the poem. To conclude, the Porphyria’s Lover” talks about the persona who killed his lover to “preserve” the love and Browning paints a clear and vivid picture of the bad side of love.