Porphyria's Lover
The rain
set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore
the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When
glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And
kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew
the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat
and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put
my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all
her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
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.
But
passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden
thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I
looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria
worshipped me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That
moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing
to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And
strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut
bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I
untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed
bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head,
which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad
it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's
love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus
we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!
"Porphyria’s Lover" is a
poem by the British poet Robert Browning, first published in 1836. Along
with"My Last Duchess," it has
become one of Browning’s most famous dramatic monologues—due in no small part
to its shockingly dark ending. In the poem, the speaker describes being visited
by his passionate lover, Porphyria. After realizing how much she cares for him,
however, the speaker strangles Porphyria and then props her lifeless body up
beside him. He then concludes the poem by announcing that God has yet to punish
him for this murder. While the speaker is often taken to be a madman, his (very
twisted) motivations seem clear: in killing Porphyria, he takes control over
her, transforming her into an obedient object that will remain "pure"
forever.
“Porphyria's Lover” Summary
It started raining very early in the
night. The wing began to howl and broke the tops of elm-trees just for fun. It disturbed
the waters of the lake and I was listening to the storm. I was thinking that my
heart would break and just at that time Porphyria entered the room. She shut
the windows immediately to keep cold and wind out. She lit a blazing fire in
the fireplace and made the cottage warm. After that, she took off her wet cloak
and shawl. She put down her dirty gloves, untied her hat to let her damp hair
fall loose. Finally, she came and sat down next to me and spoke to me. I did
not say any thing back, so she put my arm around her waist.
She brushed her blond hair over her
smooth white shoulder and laid my cheek on it. She spread her hair over my face
and her shoulder, whispering that she loved me. She wanted to be with me but
her pride and ego stood was stopping her form indulging in her desires and
letting me possess her forever. But sometimes, her desire gets the best of her.
Earlier in the evening she was at a happy, raucous party but still she was thinking
about me. She was picturing me wanting to be with her so badly that it made me
weak and pale, and all for nothing. This was the reason why she came to see me
in the storm. Don’t doubt it: I looked at her happy, proud eyes, and in that moment,
I was finally sure of it that Porphyria was in love with me over head and ears.
Suddenly, realizing how much she
loved me filled my heart with happiness and pride, and it just kept getting fuller
as I was trying to figure out what to do next. In that moment, she belonged only
to me. She was beautiful, virtuous and noble. I finally figured out what to do.
I gathered her hair into one blonde
rope and twisted it around her thick neck three times and strangled her. She did
not feel any pain and I was totally sure of it. Her eyes were like a flower
with its petals closed up around a bee. I cautiously opened up her lids and saw
her blue eyes again, looking happy and perfect. I loosened the hair from around
her neck. Her cheek was rosy beneath my passionate kiss again. I propped up her
head, this time it rested on my shoulder. Her little smiling pink face is still
there, resting on my shoulder. She was so happy the she finally got what she
wanted. She has won my love and every other thing that she struggled with were
gone. She never guessed how I would interpret her single, sweet desire. Now, we
were sitting together and we have not moved an inch all night. The God who was
watching had not said anything about it.
Porphyria’s Lover Themes
Love, Violence and Control
The violent climax of “Porphyria’s Lover”
comes as a shock: right in the middle of a tender moment, the speaker suddenly
decides to strangle Porphyria, the woman he loves. Many scholars have argued
that the speaker is mad—in fact, in 1842 the poem was published alongside another
of Browning’s poems and collectively titled “Madhouse Cells”—but his violence
might not be all that random. Instead, it seems he kills Porphyria for a
certain set of perverse reasons: he wants to fulfill (what he thinks is)
Porphyria’s “one wish” to fully surrender herself to him, and to make this
loving moment last forever. Told entirely from the vantage point of its twisted
speaker, the poem positions love as a form of total submission, and violence as
a means of control.
When Porphyria first appears, she is
presented as a strong-willed woman—especially for the stodgy Victorian time
period in which the poem was written. As soon as she enters the cottage, she
shuts out the storm and starts a fire, reshaping the environment in which the
speaker exists. And while the speaker is “so pale,” she casts off her
rain-soaked clothes as though the bad weather doesn’t trouble her at all. She
even supports the speaker on her shoulder, physically propping him up.
Moreover, her decision to come to the cottage
in the first place reflects an independent streak. Though she’s been at a “gay
feast,” she decides to go out in a storm to be with the person she loves. For
the speaker this marks a kind of internal triumph: though she’s been struggling
to balance what her “heart” desires” with her “pride,” she has chosen to give
into passion, to throw caution to the wind. In other words, she has chosen her
own desires over the social punishment that might arise from indulging in them.
Especially for a woman in 19th century England—a period in which women’s
sexuality and ability to engage in public life was tightly controlled—Porphyria
is presented as a willful woman with genuine agency.
Once Porphyria gives into her passion,
however, her status changes. She stops being an independent person. The speaker
describes her as “mine, mine, fair, / Perfectly pure and good.” The repetition
of the word “mine” emphasizes that Porphyria has become a possession, an
object—something the speaker owns. And by strangling her, the speaker can keep
her in that “pure and good” state.
After Porphyria is dead, she ceases to have
the control and agency she displayed earlier in the poem. Instead of opening
her eyes, the speaker opens them for her. Instead of supporting the speaker’s
head on her shoulder, he supports her on his shoulder. As a result, she cannot
remove herself from his embrace: she is permanently under his control,
permanently “mine, mine.” By killing Porphyria, the speaker establishes control
over her, takes away her agency, and turns her from an active subject into a
passive object. And in his twisted mind, he’s done the right thing—granted his
lover’s “one wish” to be with him forever.
Sexuality, Morality, and Hypocrisy
As “Porphyria’s Lover”
ends, Porphyria (now dead) and the speaker sit all night in their strange
embrace. The speaker’s power over Porphyria has become absolute and unbending.
Yet despite the speaker’s violent and disturbing crime, he appears to go
unpunished: as he announces triumphantly in the poem’s final line, “And yet God
has not said a word!”
For the speaker, it seems
this silence means that God approves of his decision to murder Porphyria, since
doing so forever keeps her “perfectly pure and good.” And given the strong
sexual undertones of the poem, with its mention of bare shoulders and burning
kisses, the speaker is probably thinking specifically of sexual purity here.
Essentially, the speaker thinks that by murdering Porphyria he prevents her
from sinning; by killing Porphyria, the speaker prevents her from straying into
sexual acts that might endanger her soul’s status with God.
This is clearly a twisted
interpretation of morality, but it could be the poem's way of critiquing those
who would prioritize restrictive ideas about virtue above actual human life.
The speaker assumes that God values purity above all else—so much so that he’s
willing to allow murder. God's silence suggests to the speaker that he has not
only gotten away with murder, but that he was justified in killing in the first place.
Taken in context, the poem
might be suggesting the hypocrisy of the early-Victorian society in which
Browning lived—a very religious world that seemed to outwardly condemn any
inkling of moral deviance, and in which female sexuality was particularly restricted
and controlled. Perhaps the poem is saying that an obsession with being
"good" has come at the expense of actually being good—that is, of appreciating
and valuing other people.
On the one hand, the early readers of the
poem would likely have condemned Porphyria for embracing her own sexuality. On
the other hand, they would have been titillated by the poem’s violence and
sensationalism. Browning manages to give them what they want: a very sexual,
very titillating poem—that also punishes sexual freedom. The speaker’s violence
thus not only preserves Porphyria’s sexual purity, it also preserves the
reader’s: since the poem punishes her for her sexuality, it gives the reader a
kind of plausible deniability. In this way, the Victorian reader is just as
hypocritical as the speaker, defending violence because it preserves a narrow
notion of sexual purity.
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