Porphyria’s lover is angry, nervous and spiteful at the start. He is sullen like the weather. ‘To vex the lake’ shows his anger towards his lover. The spite is the motivation for his later actions and this is an example of the dramatic monologue allowing us to access deeper thought processes. There is a magical sense in the way Porphyria ‘glided in’ because she has an immediate effect on him. ‘She shut the cold out’, and soothed her lover. However, he is unresponsive to her and there is no movement. She soon dissociates herself from her upper class links when she ‘withdrew the dripping cloak’ and when she ‘let the damp hair fall, she becomes sexually liberated. ‘She sat down beside him’ and makes all the moves because he is successfully ignoring her. Her actions are more physical than what she has to say. ‘She put my arm about her waist and made her smooth white shoulder bare’. This suggests that she has released herself from her aristocratic ties and now tries to catalyse their physical relationship.
It is at this point at the end of the opening to the poem where we see the core of the problems that Porphyria’s lover has. The rhyme scheme is consistent in this part of the poem with the structure ABABB used up until lines 41-50. Up until line 22, the poem is iambic tetrameter in its beat with eight syllables per line. However, the key details are released in three nine-syllable lines where the B rhyme is used. It is at the point when she tells him she loves him: -
‘Murmuring how she loved me – she
Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.’
She is not prepared to lower her social status for him. She is too weak and cannot breakaway suggesting that Porphyria doesn’t rate the relationship as highly as her lover would like. He really wants her but is angry that she is using him and seeks revenge.
Verse three of Mariana shows heightened hopelessness that change will never come. She is supremely sensitive of minute sounds in hoping that her lover will come. She is awake at obscure times and can hear strange noises. ‘Upon the middle of the night…the oxen’s low came to her.’ It came to her is passive in the way that she can’t control the goings-on around her. There is suggestion of change in the stanza but hope is lost, embodied by the colon. Alliteration on ‘sleep she seemed’ uses slow, lazy sounds that depict how gloomy she is. Now, ‘The day is dreary’ and therefore she is miserable for twenty-four hours.
In verse four, Mariana’s emotional state is suggested by a ‘sluice’. She has damned up passion just like the sluice contains the stagnant water. ‘Waters slept’ which are barely alive, however the visions still come to her showing her vulnerability to passiveness. The way the ‘marish-mosses crept’ is like a nightmare for Mariana and heavy sounds of ‘clustered’ and ‘crept’ are weary suggesting she is too weary. She is so desperate for her lover to come that she goes into deep thoughts about the tree she can see. ‘Hard by a poplar shook always…for leagues there was no other.’ The tree is a masculine symbol. The fact that there is only one tree suggests that there is only one man for her and because he doesn’t come, there’s no chance for Mariana’s life to change. The symbolism picks up over the next few verses. The end of the stanza shows how the cycle continues for Mariana because she is back to saying how ‘Her life is dreary’ and repeats the same order until the last verse.
The vocabulary used in verse five is more violent and visual than the nature words before. The poem moves into her room on the first line, ‘And ever the moon was low.’ The white curtain is the symbol of Mariana’s fading light and hopefulness as the shadow starts to cover the curtain. The curtain is like Mariana’s white flag as she surrenders to hope of a change. Her emotions are portrayed really well as ‘Wild winds bound within their cell.’ The winds pick up at the same time as her emotions and she is again like the sluice because her thoughts are held up like the water. The shadow of the tree falling across the bed is a clever way of showing he sexual frustration because only the tree’s shadow will ever be on her bed, not the real man.
Eventually Porphyria shows some passion towards her relationship with the lover. And the balance of power now switches to the male as she is fulfilling his wish. He is ‘One so pale’ as she can’t see him as a deeper love. ‘Be sure I looked up at her eyes happy and proud’ suggests that he really does love her and, ‘At last I knew Porphyria worshipped me’, is his cue to make the moment last forever. He is even more desperate to prolong the moment as, ‘Surprise made my heart swell, and still it grew.’ He was surprised by her active response and his fast-beating heart made him eager to treasure the special moment forever.
However, there is an element of cold and brutal rationality about his thought process. ’He debated what to do’ and the repetition of the word ‘mine’ suggests his mad possessiveness. Porphyria was now ‘perfectly pure’ so had dissociated herself from her upper-class lifestyle. The sense of madness within Porphyria’s lover is emphasised by the lack of punctuation at the ends of lines 37-39. The words are all spur of the moment and link together without pause because he is not really in control of his actions. By using her hair to strangle her, he is getting his revenge because that is what she originally used to seduce him when ‘all her yellow hair displaced.’ He says that ‘No pain felt she’, suggesting a lack of her emotion towards him, and his regrets about his current actions.
‘As a shut bud that holds a bee’, is the lover trying to justify his actions. He is enjoying describing the moment and the caesura on line 41 shows how he captures the moment of joy. He is supremely arrogant in his actions as well. The words kiss and tress are only half rhymes. That is the first point in the poem where the strict rhyme scheme is not kept to therefore it shows how he is breaking up and going insane as Browning no longer keeps fully to his rhyme scheme. There is a big difference with the opening to be drawn at this point because the opening of the poem uses very soft words but now powerful words are used that adds to the symbolism of the moment.
Mariana’s feelings have now become even more suicidal. In verse six she no longer has any sense of beauty. There is irony in the first line as ‘All day within the dreamy house, the doors upon their hinges creaked.’ The house is not dreamy so that is ironic because it is the complete opposite of the situation. Also, she is desperate for her lover to lift the hinges but the wind making them creak is a cruel blow to her hopes. Where ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ has a magical element, ‘Mariana’ has now evil, haunted features such as the creaking hinges and shrieking. This stanza also has imagery in keeping with previous verses because the use of ‘mouldering’ is like the black moss from earlier on.
Browning uses alliteration as a tool to portray explosive emotions. ‘Blushed, bright…burning.’ They are very passionate sounds that suggest he still has the feeling of sexual fulfilment with Porphyria in his mind. The pathos of the poem is summed up in Porphyria’s vulnerability by using words such as ‘Blushed bright and smiling rosy little head.’ The use of the word ‘still’ is Porphyria’s lover talking in the present tense for the first time. He draws us in to share his moment of power over her. ‘So glad it has its utmost will,’ means that Porphyria’s lover is deluded because he feels that she wanted to die and that it was her utmost will to be with him forever.
Porphyria’s lover has acted upon his problem whereas Mariana remains strongly passive. The repetition of the word ‘old’ implies that there will never be anything new in Mariana’s life. They are also memories of her lover that will never become current thoughts again. She is trapped in a never-ending cycle that she has to take drastic measures to stop. The final stanza is where time is slowed down for us to see how slow it is moving for Mariana. ‘The slow clock ticking’ is the example of this. Also, she is going mad inside as there is no such thing as a slow clock, but she imagines there to be one. Again she hears the small noises of birds and sees the tree again. This perfectly heightens our awareness of how trapped she is. There is no punctuation at the end of lines 74-79 that suggests she is lost and confused. Onomatopoeic wind sounds are repeated again to show the cycle. The wooing wind is ironic because she wants the man to woo her but only the wind will. The sunset indicates that he is obviously not coming today and another day has passed. The verse ends with ‘I am very dreary’ and ‘He will not come’. She is now more tired than ever before and gives up on all hope of her lover coming. We know this because she uses definitive future tense for the first time in the poem. She accepts it but is not happy about it and even cries because of it again.
Both central characters appeal to God at the end of the poems. Porphyria’s lover is in another world. He thinks that God endorsed his actions, ‘God has not said a word.’ Mariana realises that the only way to overcome her problem is to kill herself, ‘O God, that I were dead!’ Another similarity is obvious here because both solutions are death but the difference is that Mariana but must commit suicide.
‘Mariana’ is very much a Victorian feminist poem in stressing female passivity, which was very prominent in that era. ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ reinforces the idea of male activity and dominance compared with females having the over ruling power. Both poems are very successful in portraying desperate situations but focus on different points. Tennyson is very effective in showing a switch in power and the thought process of the central character. However, Browning’s depiction of detail around Mariana’s entrapment is most impressive. The way we can see her life going round and round in circles with amazing background ingredients is fantastic imagery by Tennyson. Therefore I think Mariana is more effective.
