Robert Browning

I first began reading "Porhyria’s Lover", by Robert Browning, thinking that it might be a beautiful passionate love story. In a way, it still turned out to be a passionate love story, but in a twisted and on insane way. The poem actually left me sad, confused, and angry in the end.

In the beginning of the poem, the weather is described. It states, “The sullen wind was soon awake, / It tore the elm-tops down for spite, / And did its worse to vex the lake.” I perceived these events to foreshadow the forthcoming events. The speaker is like the sullen wind being awakened and suddenly being destructive. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker seems to be passive and sullen, and then all of a sudden, he takes over the situation and strangles his lover. It is evident that he is sad from line 5 of the poem when he tells, “I listened with heart fit to break.” Porphyria on the other hand seems quite the opposite to him. She came in with a strong presence as she “shut the cold out and the storm.” She did many things around his cottage and finally “last” she sat down by his side. This “last” could be a foreshadowing that her sitting by his side is the last thing she will do. In addition, it could have made him even sadder that this is the last thing she did when she entered in. He seemed to be the last thing on her mind. Her next moves seem to be extremely intimate with him almost as if seducing him. The reason for his sadness becomes clear to the reader in the following lines:

“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.” (22-25).

In his eyes, she was too weak to ever overcome her pride and truly be with him forever. He would only ever be someone on the side to her whom to which she could not give her whole heart. In the next couple of stanzas, the mood of the poem seems to pick up and he seems to be happier. He states, “Happy and proud; at last I knew / Porhyria worshipped me; surprise / Made my heart swell, and still it grew” (32-34). The speaker finally feels as if he had her all to himself and that she is “perfectly pure.” In the next instant, to sustain this love forever that he had in that instant, he strangled her to death with her own hair. In his mind, killing her was the only way to be able to have her completely forever. After he killed her, it becomes obvious that the speaker’s sanity needs to be questioned. He opened her eyelids and says she “laughed the blue eyes without strain” and “blushed bright beneath my burning kiss.” She still seemed very much alive in his eyes. He then propped her head up on his shoulder reversing their previous roles.

The last few lines of the poem give me an eerie feeling every time I read them. He says, “And thus we sit together now, / And all night long we have not stirred, / And yet God has not said a word!” (57-60). It seems as if he has found comfort in what he has done and still will not let the image of their forever love together go. Because he could not fully have her before, he now seems to be creating his own false image of happiness and a life with her. The last line seems especially creepy when he mentions that God has not said a word. Is he trying to convince himself that it is okay because in his mind God is staying out of the situation? It is evident that this woman and their love have had a maddening effect on him and in result, the consequences have been devastating.