Browning's porphyria's lover

his crime, for "God has not said a word!"(41,51,60). But there are several details in Browning's poem that arenot necessarily explained by the insane-murderer reading: The narratortell us twice he is certain Porphyria felt no pain; in addition to this,he describes opening her eyes after he strangles her and seeing that"again / Laughed the blue eyes without a stain" (44-45). Equallyperplexing are his reports that after he "untightened" Porphyria'stresses from around her neck, "her cheek once more / Blushed brightbeneath my burning lips" (46-48) and that, while her head drooped uponhis shoulder, it was also "smiling," "rosy," and "glad" (52-53).Finally, in Browning's account, instead of describing the lover aswatching over a reclining dead woman, he says that he and Porphyria sat"together" all through the night.Browning's poems, as Isobel Armstrong has aptly remarked, "often have adouble movement of seriousness and mockery or puzzlement" (283). Inaddition to this, Armstrong has commented that poems such as "Pophryia'sLover" seem to have been "written deliberately to challenge, shock andtest the responses of the unthinking reader" (288). So it is reasonableto double back in reading "Porphyria's Lover" to consider thepossibility that Browning has folded into this poem the suggestion of analternative but no less disturbing plot that might explain the anomalousdetails cited above. What if Browning wanted to titillate his readerswith the possibility that instead of murdering Porphyria, the narratorhas made love to her using erotic asphyxiation, a well-documented butdangerous sex game in which participants use some type of mechanism toimpede the flow of oxygen to the brain in order to heighten sexualpleasure? Hazelwood et al. note that this behavior is much more commonthan might be expected ( 4), that it is practiced throughout the world(81) and surfaces repeatedly in art and literature ( 7-9), some of theearliest examples being Mayan relics dating from 1000 A.D. (14).Witnesses to public hangings in England were familiar with the fact thathanged men often experienced erection and even ejaculation ( 8). More tothe point, the private practice of brief asphyxiation for the purpose ofsexual arousal is cited in various English and European texts, includingRobert Herrick's poem "Upon Love" (1648); de Sade's Justine (1791);Gamiani, ou, Deux nuits d'exces (1833), attributed to Alfred de Musset;an anonymous English pamphlet entitled Modern Propensities: Or an Essayon the Art of Strangling (c. 1792), as well as nineteenth-centuryeditions of the London Times and English and Continental medical books.(n3) If such a game were part of Porphyria's sexual initiation into theso-called "little death" of orgasm, and if her lover untightened hertresses at the right moment, then Porphyria's eyes would still have beenbright, and her cheek would in fact have blushed again, because shewasn't dead.( n4) The fact that Porphyria experienced no pain may beexplained by a detail in the Modern Propensities pamphlet's account ofhow a dubious character named Parson Manacle ministered to a condemnedwoman who was terrified that hanging would be painful. In this story,which may well be a spoof, the parson first demonstrated eroticasphyxiation himself and then included the prisoner in his sex play inorder to show her that hanging would not hurt. The pamphlet concludesthat the poor woman's "ideas of hanging were greatly dissipated, andthat she believed a few repetitions [. . .] would entirely remove herterrors" (qtd. in Hazelwood 21). Further support for the eroticasphyxiation reading can be found in the differences between thenarrator's vivid description of Porphyria's appearance and those of thelovers in the Blackwood's and Procter accounts. The eyes of the deadwoman in Blackwood's are blue, but also "dim," and her face is "fixed asice" (qtd. in Mason 256). Procter's dead woman's blue eyes are coveredby "a dull film," and her "pulse [is] silent" (qtd. in Mason 256).Certainly such a reading is distasteful and rather creepy, butdistasteful creepiness is common in Browning's dramatic monologues. Forexample, the Duke of Ferrara in "My Last Duchess" is unable to hide hisruthless and morbidly obsessive character; in "The Laboratory," a jiltedwoman from the French court excitedly buys poison for her lover and hisnew paramour; and in "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," a Spanish monkreveals not only his lust for "brown Dolores" but also his extensiveknowledge of scrofulous French novels.There are other reasons to consider this reading, including thelikelihood that Browning exposes rather than colludes with thecharacters in his poems who objectify and oppress women sexually andsocially (Maxwell 989).( n5) As Maxwell points out, at the beginning ofthe poem, Porphyria is clearly in charge, but the tables turn on her bythe end of the poem. This volte-face invites the audience to readbackwards and to move their focus from the behavior of thelover/narrator to Porphyria's plight. Apparently Porphyria is driven bya powerful sexual passion and the desire for agency, but she lives in asociety that discourages both and that seems to allow only twoalternatives for her sexually. This young woman is not yet the angel ofsome man's house, nor was she born to be a prostitute. We are told thatshe has left a "gay feast" and ridden out all alone on a stormy night tobe with her lover, whose arm she boldly puts around her waist and towhom she enticingly bares her "smooth white shoulder" (16-17). These areclearly the actions of a woman who feels and wishes to act upon sexualdesire. But Porphyria is also described as "Too weak, for all herheart's endeavor, / To set its struggling passion free / From pride(22-24)."These lines are usually read as a reference to the difference in socialstatus between the lovers, one of the impediments to their beingtogether that drove him to murder her. Alternatively, these lines mightrefer to the pride and fear of a young gentlewoman who knows the likelyconsequences and social price to be paid if she sets her passion freeoutside of marriage in an age with no reliable birth control. Finally,we might take the poem's last line about God's silence to reflectPorphyria's concerns, not her lover's, for she is part of a societywhich taught young women that God himself would frown on them for freelyexpressing sexual desire.The evidence of a subplot of erotic asphyxiation under "Porphyria'sLover"'s primary narrative suggests that the sexual pathologies exploredin the poem are more complicated and radical than we may have formerlythought. It also supports the work of other scholars who have suggestedthat readers should look as seriously at Porphyria's story as they do ather lover's.NOTES (n1.) I wish to acknowledge and thank my student Angela Brown, for itwas in conversation with her that this argument emerged.(n2.) See Armstrong, entire; also Marcus.(n3.) Modern Propensities (1792) refers to the case of Francis Kotzwara(who died practicing erotic asphyxiation) and the prostitute SusannahHill (who was acquitted of his murder). The London Times for 17September, 1791, also refers to the Kotzwara case. Modern Propensitiesdetails another story of erotic asphyxiation-the case of a curiousfellow named Reverend Parson Manacle (see Hazelwood et al. 15-22). Wolfespeculates that the pamphlet is the product of a patent inventor ofspring bands, which may have been used in erotic asphyxiation. Citing anote in Guthkelch and Smith, Hazelwood speculates that Jonathan Swiftmay have referred to some kind of physical pleasure resulting fromswinging or possibly hanging (see Guthkelch 272, n. 2). Hazelwood alsocites a number of English texts written after the Victorian period thatrefer to erotic asphyxiation, suggesting that the practice has beencontinuous in Britain. Among these are Beckett's Waiting for Godot(1954), P. D. James' An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), and theEnglish film The Ruling Class (1972), directed by Peter Medek andstarring Peter O'Toole. Hirschfeld describes the medical texts.(n4.) See Hazelwood for descriptions of how erotic asphyxiation oftenonly "interferes with the supply of fresh blood through the majorarteries to the head" and does not actually compress the trachea or stopa person's breathing (60).(n5.) Though she does not go so far as to posit erotic asphyxiation,Maxwell has also touched upon the confusing erotic behaviors in"Porphyria's Lover."WORKS CITED Anonymous. "Old Bailey. Third Day. Murders." London Times 17 September,1791: 3.Anonymous. Modern Propensities: Or, an Essay on the Art of StranglingEtc., Illustrated with Several Anecdotes. London: J. Dawson, n.d. [c.1792].Armstrong, Isobel. "Browning and Victorian Poetry of Sexual Love."Robert Browning. Ed. Isobel Armstrong. Athens: Ohio UP, 1975. 267-98.Browning, Robert. "Porphyria's Lover." The Norton Anthology of EnglishLiterature. Ed. M. H. Abrams. 7th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W. W. Norton,2000. 1349-50.Guthkelch. A. C., and D. N. Smith, eds. A Tale of the Tub. To which isadded the battle of the books and the mechanical operation of thespirit. By Jonathan Swift. 2nd ed. New York: OUP, 1958.Hazelwood, Robert R. Autoerotic Fatalaties. Lexington, Mass.: LexingtonBooks, 1983.Hirschfeld, Magnus. Sexual anomalies; the origins, nature, and treatmentof sexual disorders. A summary of the works of Magnus Hirschfeld. NewYork: Emerson Books, 1948.Holmes, Ronald M. Sex Crimes. London: Sage Publications, 1991.Marcus, Stephen. The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality andPornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England. New York: Basic Books,1966.Mason, Michael. "Browning and the Dramatic Monologue." Robert Browning.Ed. Isobel Armstrong. Athens: Ohio UP, 1975. 231-66.Maxwell, Catherine. "Browning's Pygmalion and the Revenge of Galatea."ELH 60.4 (Winter 1993): 989-1013.Wolfe, R. H. "The hang-up of Franz Kotzwara and its relationship tosexual quackery in late 18th-century London." Paper presented as the11th Annual Janus Foundation Lecture on the History of Medicine, SanFrancisco, CA, 15 January, 1980.