Porphyria’s Lover Introduction

Learning Intentions To understand the background of Porphyria’s Lover To understand the plot of Porphyria’s Lover

Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax n 1846 Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, and went to live in Italy. By the time of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women. The collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed, and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation today rests largely on the poetry he wrote in this middle period. When Browning died in 1889, he was regarded as a sage and philosopher-poet who through his writing had made contributions to Victorian social and political discourse. Unusually for a poet, societies for the study of his work were founded while he was still alive. Such Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th century.

Dramatic Monologue Dramatic monologue refers to a type of poetry. These poems are dramatic in the sense that they have a theatrical quality; that is, the poem is meant to be read to an audience. To say that the poem is a monologue means that these are the words of one solitary speaker with no dialogue coming from any other characters. Think of one person standing alone on a stage speaking to an audience. Certainly, you are part of that audience, but the poem usually implies that the speaker is mainly talking to a specific person(s). The reason poets choose to write poems like this is to express a point of view through the words of a character. However, the tricky part is that often the opinions stated by that character are not the same as the views of the poet. Most of the time, the speaker is trying to convince someone of something, and may or may not be telling the whole truth. Sometimes what the speaker doesn't say is just as revealing and interesting as what he or she does say in the poem.

When trying to understand a dramatic monologue, ask yourself these questions: What is the situation? Who is the speaker talking to and why? What tactics is the speaker using to make his case? Does the speaker seem to change his mind during the poem? What do you think about this character and what he has to say?

Porphyria’s Lover 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.