Porphyria's Lover

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

Hardy initially uses similes to illustrate the bleak landscape, referring to the “sun [as] white” and leaves as “grey”, to emphasise his sorrowful opinion of love. Specific diction of bleak words strongly communicates his message of love being hopeless and sorrowful. He also uses personification of “starving sod”, to allude that the earth is frozen and desiring nutrients which it lacks. This creates an undesirable setting and mood of despair and sorrow expressing how he perceives love. In contrast, Browning orientates an inviting, cheerful setting through the use of similes. The scene is vibrant with “little waves that leap” and “warm sea-scented beach[es]”, allowing the reader to perceive it as joyful. This illustrates how he regards love as an uplifting experience, which brings people together. He structures his poem with no stanzas, allowing for the reader to follow the radiant journey of love. In contrast, Hardy includes stanzas allowing him to express his message though new topics. They consist of the bleak setting, his former partners eyes, her bitter smile and his message of how all love disappoints. He includes an enclosed rhyme scheme, presenting the entrapment of love, expressing no freedom and joy in relationships. In opposition, Browning uses anaphora of “and” to express how the speaker’s mind is not in the moment, looking ahead to the future where they reunite with their lover. It is evident that Hardy conveys his message of love as sorrowful and full of despair, in contrast Browning message reveals love as gracious and

The loss of a loved one is perhaps the most difficult experience that humans ever come up against. The poem Porphyria’s Lover, written by Robert Browning, adds a sense of irony to this. At the most superficial layer, the speaker’s in both Porphyria’s Lover and Neutral Tones, written by Thomas hardy, both deal with loss. The tones in Neutral Tones seem to be indifferent, or Neutral. Porphyria’s Lover speaker ends up murdering his beloved at the end the poem. While this isn’t the case with the speaker in Neutral Tones, the two speakers are much more similar than we might think. The speaker in Neutral Tones doesn’t outright murder his lover, but there is a considerable amount of disdain and contempt towards his supposed lover. The speaker in Porphyria’s Lover is quite obviously a disturbed man, the sinister nature of the speaker in Neutral Tones, however, is not as clear. Delving further into this idea, I will also discuss other obscure parallels throughout the two poems.

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

Sexuality has an inherent connection to human nature. Yet, even in regards to something so natural, societies throughout times have imposed expectations and gender roles upon it. Ultimately, these come to oppress women, and confine them within the limits that the world has set for them. However, society is constantly evolving, and within the past 200 years, the role of women has changed. These changes in society can be seen within the intricacies of literature in each era. Specifically, through analyzing The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, one can observe the dynamics of society in regards to the role of women through the lens of the theme of sexuality. In both novels, the confinement and oppression of women can be visibly seen as a result of these gender roles. Yet, from the time The Scarlet Letter was published to the time The Bell Jar was written, the place of women in society ultimately changed as well. Hence when evaluating the gender roles that are derived from sexuality, the difference between the portrayals of women’s oppression in each novel becomes apparent, and shows how the subjugation of women has evolved. The guiding question of this investigation is to what extent does the theme of sexuality reflect the expectations for women in society at the time each novel was written. The essay will explore how the literary elements that form each novel demonstrate each author’s independent vision which questions the

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 lake is tormented by an early storm. The speakers says: “The rain set early in tonight, the sullen wind was soon awake, it tore the elm-tops down for spite, and did its worst to vex the lake.” (line 1) With the wind as “spiteful” and “vexing” it is easy to see that Browning is setting up a pathetic fallacy, all with the simple choice of words. This pathetic fallacy is also found at the very end of the poem as well though, although it can be noted in its absence. With lover in hand, our speaker no longer notices the weather outside. He sees not God’s attempt to prevent Porphyria from going to the cottage in the first place, but only his current power over her. This disparity is clear only to the reader, showing us that although Browning wishes to show us what would drive a man to kill his lover, he does not advocate such

This poem was set in Renaissance Italy and women were denied all political rights and considered legally subject to their husbands. Women of all classes were expected to perform, first and foremost, the duties of housewife: sewing, cooking, and entertaining, among others. It is obvious from the historical context that Browning’s poem was

The narrator of the poem is in love with Porphyria. He soon learns that love taken to the extreme is not much love at all. “I listened with heart fit to break” He was so attached to her that any emotion she shows greatly affects him. “To set its struggling passion free, From pride , and vainer ties dissever.” This is the beginning of his consciousness disconnection her from being a person to her being a construct of his obsession. She became just a figment that he could control. Nevertheless, turning from love into and overwhelming insanity. “And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain.” He thinks she felt no pain because he does not associate her with a living being anymore. Furthermore, she is just a side effect of a twisted individual's mind consumed by his extreme love for her.  The extreme change in his mood shows his love changing from a feeling to an

She says that she loves him to the depth and breadth and height, which indicated that her love is long lasting. The image “by sun and candlelight” that Barrett Browning creates, is that her love may be ordinary like the sun, but its continuous since the light keeps shining day and night, which is why she uses the candlelight to represent the light she has for him is still on at night. Another image that Barrett Browning conveys is “I love thee freely, as men strive for Right, I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise”. This line shows that her love for him is of her own free choice and she compares it to the nationalists that fight for their countries, indicating that their love is as strong as a person’s love is to their country. Barrett Browning also says, “I love thee with the passion, put to use/In my old greifs… and with my childhood’s faith” here, the poet redirected her emotions from her past concerns onto her love. She states that her she loves him with her childhood’s faith, which could mean that she loves him with unquestioning confidence, just like a naïve child might.

The finest woks of Browning endeavor to explain the mechanics of human psychology. The motions of love, hate, passion, instinct, violence, desire, poverty, violence, and sex and sensuousness are raised from the dead in his poetry with a striking virility and some are even introduced with a remarkable brilliance.

Nevertheless, it is the only poem on the list containing dramatic irony. The title alone is misleading, as the poem is not about Porphyria’s lover, rather her murderer. The speaker is completely unaware that he has done something wrong, proclaiming in line 42, after strangling her, “I am quite sure she felt no pain.” He believes he made her happy, and that her love is his forever, whereas the readers know that he is insane and that he has just murdered this woman. There is a sort of detached madness in his belief that he has won her ultimate

The use of rhyming quickens the pace of the poem, adding to the woman's increasing excitement as the apothecary grinds up the mixture. Many of Browning's poems were written about people with an unusual nature. At first glance, the poem appears to be written as if she were talking to the apothecary, but reading into it shows that she may be thinking to herself as at the start of the poem she tells the man to take his time, but as she thinks about the possibilities and power the poison will bring her she begins to hurry him. Her careless attitude towards her future crime suggests that she may have previously killed and does not care about being found out as she is proud of what she will have done.

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 society around her attempted to suppress her creativity, yet she continued to fight against them through her words. In her poem “The Soul's Expression” she narrates her “struggle to deliver” what she believes to the extent that she has “stammering lips and [an] insufficient sound” (Browning “The Soul's Expression”). Through her poems she is able, to express her feelings of deprivation in regards to women’s basic human rights, which have been so intensely denied. Browning asserts herself as a strong, unconventional woman with a “right to work and be independent” (The British Library).