Porphyria 's Lover By Robert Browning

communicates two interpretations concerning Both poems describe the behavior of people who are in loving, romantic relationships. There are several aspects common in both poems. Using the literary technique of dramatic dialogue, the author reveals the plot and central idea of each poem. Robert Browning tells each poetic story through a single speaker. Both poems reveal an account in which the admirer kills the object of his love. This paper will compare and contrast the following characteristics: the setting, the speaker, the mood and tone, and theme found "My

Robert Browning provides a critical view of gender and power relations in his dramatic monologues “Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess.” The dramatic monologue, as S.S. Curry has written, "reveals the struggle in the depths of the soul” (11). Browning delves into the minds of characters to show their conceptions of women and ideas of power. He explores the mental processes of the characters, and invites readers to question societal ideas of power and gender. The mental pathologies of the speakers is emphasized, which forces readers to examine the sanity of their own notions of gender dynamics.

The acceptance of love has the power of transforming an individual to demand of that same love. The social context of the 1850’s was seen to be emphasised on individual’s emotions and rebellion against established social rules and convections which was evident in her open declarations of love and demanding’s of love which was a concept of idealised love. The notion of idealised love transforming an individual is presented in the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’. Sonnet 14 as Elizabeth Browning urges her lover to not love her for any particular reason other than “love’s sake only”. In the Octave, the first line is EBB talking directly to whom she loves and she uses high modality in the word ‘must’, making it seem like she

Robert Browning uses descriptive details to portray a theme of how darkness rises from warmth and happiness by showing us on how a man’s love for someone makes him turn to savagery. The narrator of the poem has very deep feelings for his lover, but he only thinks of himself and he never wants the girl to leave his side so he does the unthinkable. In the times that the girl was not home or was not with the narrator then there was coldness and darkness, but when she was with the man then the house would “blaze up, and all the cottage warm”. She created hope and the narrator needed that constantly, so he realized that his love was too strong to put on hold everyday when she would leave. The fact that the narrator had to watch his lover leave everyday

“The courtly lady…possesses a curiously hybrid gender. While maintaining stereotypically female sexuality, she also holds, in principle at least, the status of a feudal lord.” Burns’ statement insinuates a reversal of power dynamics between man and woman in the courtly love lyric, implying that the woman’s stereotypical beauty and sexuality in courtship, is a gateway to subverting and overpowering the lovesick male, making her a superior lord. The Amour Courtois lyric is deemed inconsistent with the representation of woman as an empowered “feudal lord” due to the sheer objectification of femininity and beauty. Poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Dunbar commend a woman’s aesthetic appeal or satirise the lack of it, thus elevating medieval misogynistic expectations of physical beauty as a feminine necessity that objectifies women under the control of man’s advances. Throughout courtly love lyrics female beauty is a purely frivolous and superficial trait lacking predominant depth, to render woman as a “lord” would be poetically conflicting as the only power exemplified by female subjects in courtship is through the idolisation and sexual lust of the male devotee.

Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover” is a perfect representation of the status of women during the Victorian Era; women were treated as objects not people. They were property of men, not individuals. In this poem, the speaker, Porphyria’s lover, murders Porphyria and does not only think it was okay to do so, but he also thinks what he has done is noble. In the lines shown above, the speaker begins to realize that Porphyria loves him. Not only does she love him, but she “worships” him. This further pushes the idea that, because he is a man and she a women, he is so superior to her that he is a god. It is not actually her love that he wants, it is the power that he gets from earning her love and making her his subject. His heart does not swell because of the joy in discovering that she loves him; it swells because of this sense of pride he now feels. In the next line, he debates what to do to preserve her “love” forever. In line 36, the speaker comments on how, in that moment, Porphyria was pure and innocent, as Victorian women should be, and suddenly thinks of how to keep her that way. The speaker wants to hold on to the image of her like this forever; so he decides to kill her. The narrator then strangles Porphyria. When describing the act of strangling her, the narrator describes her throat as “little.” Here he is once again showing his dominance over her. However, the most important thing is that he uses her hair, of all things, to strangle her. At the time, hair was a

The early nineteenth century poem by Robert Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover”, is filled with examples of figurative language. Browning uses metaphors, similes, and personification to bring the poem to life. The use of figurative language allows Browning to raise from the dead a poem with the unemotional tonee of the speaker. He exposes the mind of a psychopath, an insane lover, mastering the art of the dramatic monologue.

When his lover takes off her hat she let “her damp hair fall” creating a sense of disorder in their relationship.

Comparing and Contrasting the Theme of power and control between Porphyrias Lover, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and My Last Duchess

Porphyria’s Lover and The Laboratory “Porphyria’s Lover” and “The Laboratory” both deal with crimes of passion. Explore ways Browning explains ways of obsessive nature of his character and analysis the effects of literary techniques. “Porphyria’s Lover” is a poem about a crime and passion. Porphyria is a young, wealthy girl who seems to have abandoned her family’s tradition of choosing wealthy men as lovers. Her lover remains anonymous, this could be because he has murdered her and does not want his name releasing.

In Robert Browning's dramatic monologue, "Porphyria's Lover," the love-stricken frustrations of a nameless speaker end in a passionate, annihilating response to society's scrutiny towards human sensuality. Cleverly juxtaposing Porphyria's innocent femininity and her sexual transgression, Browning succeeds in displaying society's contradictory embrace of morality next to its rejection of sensual pleasure. In an ironically tranquil domestic setting, warm comfort and affection come to reveal burning emotional perversions within confining social structures. The speaker's violent display of passion ends not with external condemnation, but with the matter-of-fact sense of

Both of these works contain the unique ability, as portrayed by Browning, to create a deep fictional psyche that displays the strange relationship between man and woman. This relationship is displayed as one full of pain, jealousy, rejection and happiness, the majority of these emotion are contained in love and marriage. From this the reader can infer the nature of love being the conquering of class distinction and marriage involves sexist male inhibitions. Insecurities are seen in both poems and are evident in the perspective voices of the male protagonists, who are seen as incapable to handle their aggressive and possessive natures when it comes to love and marriage. Browning seems to be demonstrating the side of relationships avoided previously by Romantics and in doing so shows the negative implication on seemingly unruly

The title of the poem “My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun” suggests that the speaker is not in love with his ‘mistress’. However, this is not the case. Shakespeare uses figurative language by using criticizing hyperboles to mock the traditional love sonnet. Thus, showing not only that the ideal woman is not always a ‘goddess’, but mocking the way others write about love. Shakespeare proves that love can be written about and accomplished without the artificial and exuberant. The speaker’s tone is ironic, sarcastic, and comical turning the traditional conceit around using satire. The traditional iambic pentameter rhyming scheme of the sonnet makes the diction fall into place as relaxed, truthful, and with elegance in the easy flowing verse. In turn, making this sonnet one of parody and real love.

The dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess” was penned down by Robert Browning. In this poem, the narrator is the Duke of Ferrara, and the listener is the count’s agent, through whom the Duke is arranging the proposed marriage to a second duchess. The poem is ironical and reveals its rhetorical sense, gradually. In the later part of the poem, the Duke claims that he does not have a skill in speech, but his monologue is a masterpiece of subtle rhetoric. While supposedly entertaining the listener by showing his wife’s portrait, he clearly reveals his character. Through his formalized tone of rhyme, he reveals his egoistic and jealous attitude.

The title ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ may indicate to the reader the idea that the lover would be the only active article in the poem, especially if it was written by a male during those times. However, at the beginning of the poem Porphyria is immediately given the active role, she’s the one who “glided in” wanting to visit him “for love of her…/ through wind and rain”, she also “shut the out cold and storm”. This gives Porphyria a masculine physical ability as she has the power to “shut…out” something as sinewy as a storm, which goes against the female stereotype.