Commentary on Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning

Authors Avatar by kenneth711 (student)

To begin with, I am going to give a brief contextual background of the poem. Robert Browning, who lived during the 1800s, was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic verse, especially the dramatic monologue, made him one of the most famous poets of the Victorian era. One of his more sensational dramatic monologues is Porphyria’s Lover, which was part of the group of poems called the Madhouse Cells. He gave them this name because he felt he needed to give a signal to confused readers but he later dropped it because it lead to reductive reading and he preferred that each reader come up with their own interpretation. During the Victorian era there was a cultural transition away from the rationalism of the Georgian period towards romanticism and mysticism with regard to religion, social values and the arts. The era is popularly associated with the values of social and sexual restraint. Despite his parents’ staunch evangelical faith, Browning was an atheist for a brief period during his teenage years. Now that we know little more about Browning and the time at which the poem was written I can proceed to discussing some of the themes involved with this poem. These themes include death, madness and sex.

Death is a prominent theme in many of Browning’s dramatic monologues. Browning uses this theme in many ways in this poem. Firstly, he uses it as a way of immortalising that particular moment the speaker had with Porphyria. Line 35 states “That moment she was mine, mine”. For that particular moment “Porphyria worshipped [him]” and this made his “heart swell”. This entails a sense of happiness and means that he wouldn’t at all have minded if things could be that way all the time. It seems that this is when the speaker got an idea…in fact, a desire, the desire to freeze this special moment, to ensure that in his mind she worshipped him forever. Killing her would mean that she would forever be in that state, the state in which she worshipped him, the state that meant he was the primus mobile, and the state that meant she would be his forever. On lines 44-45 he says “again Laughed the eyes without a stain” and this shows us that he believes that he managed to save that moment since her eyes still have the same “Happy and proud” they had when he realised that she worshipped him. This is similar to the situation in My Last Duchess. The memory of the duchess lives on through the painting but the painting obviously portrays her in a particular manner, a manner the Duke would like to show her off to other people, a manner that isn’t the one that the Duke had her killed for. The memory that is brought about by the painting is one of a perfect moment, as in Porphyria’s Lover. Now every time the speaker thinks of Porphyria they will remember that particular moment.

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In addition, in Porphyria’s Lover death also serves to illustrate Browning’s religious attitude. We already know that Browning was once an atheist and this would mean even though he may have considered himself a believer again afterwards, questioning what he said to believe in would most likely be inevitable. At the end of the poem the deranged speaker says “And yet God had not said a word”. This may be a reference to how the poet, Browning, believes that one’s actions on earth will only have their consequences on earth, otherwise there will be no reprimanding what-so-ever. This is once ...

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