Porphyria's Lover

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.

Explain (tell me what image the poem brings to mind)She begins by describing the "death of winter's leaves".

The speaker’s lover, Porphyria, comes home one night and has plans to go out to a party. Instead, she spends the night with the speaker and shows him love that she has never shown before. The amount of love that the speaker receives makes him feel very delighted that he never wanted to let her go. The speaker says, “at least 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 she felt; I am quite sure she felt no pain” (L. 32-42). The speaker kills Porphyria by using her own hair to strangle her. The reason being so, he did not want to lose the amount of love Porphyria showed him. Killing her was the only option to make sure that she stayed with him forever and can not leave him. This shows the effect of desire upon the speaker, he did not want to lose the great amount of love Porphyria showed him, so the only option to make sure she stayed with him forever was to kill her while she was with him. The poem shows how one’s desire for love can lead them to doing something they would not normally think of doing, but the fact that desire is so strong towards one’s emotion, it gets the better of

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

A fireplace is roaring inside the cottage when Porphyria arrives. The speaker clearly is attached to her and loves being with her. She comes in and dries off and they both sit on a bench together and appreciate each other. Then, all of a sudden he plays with her hair and wraps it “three times” around her throat, making sure she’s dead. However, three lines before that, the speaker says that “Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria loved me” (Lines 32-33) He is exuberant with the final realization that she loves him. He seems to be so happy but after he kills her he feels as if this is the nicest thing he could do for her. Obviously, he becomes too obsessed. He becomes so obsessed with her that he seems to give up on just simply being happy with her and that he fears how God will judge him. He mentions how he makes sure she was dead which is another testament to the true insanity and the cautionary tale woven by the author. Thanks to the wonderfully crafted characters developed by Connell and Browning

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.

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

The speaker in Porphyria’s Lover does things that make the reader believe that he is acting irrationally, but from his perspective the logic behind his actions could be seen as reasonable. He is in love with a woman who is love with him and everyone else. He makes a decision that can be seen as irrational but in the end, it works out and you see why he did it and what positive aftermath was after it. In this poem, the speaker is in love with Porphyria but he doesn’t receive the love and display of affection that he wants from her. He sees her withdrawing her clothes and this brings in even more passion than he already had for her.

To start off the analysis, the setting of the entire poem is significant. Though the poem takes place in a house, the atmosphere the house is set in is also important. The month is September which is a month of fall which can be seen as a symbol for decline. It definitely insinuates that the poem is leading towards death. Line 1 has “September rain falls on the house” which gives the feeling of a dark and cold night with a storm on top of that. To further develop that, Bishop gives us the failing light in line 2 to also give us an idea of the grandmother’s struggle. Bishop uses the cyclical theme of changing seasons to show the unending nature of what is transpiring within the

Joseph Pequigney, author of Such is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, agrees with and elaborates on Freud. He writes, “All of these characteristics belong to the poet’s love for the friend. It is a love that pays handsome narcissistic dividends; it is advantageous also for the friend, who is praised for personal qualities that would likely pass unnoticed were the poet not under the spell of his beauty.” Pequigney goes on to touch on the antithesis of the poet’s love for the young man, his lust for his mistress the “dark lady”. Because the mistress offers no self-seeking advantages, she is “disesteemed with vice but never virtue ascribed to her” (Pequigney 157). The poet attacks and questions her physical attractiveness as the affair goes on and she arouses lust that comes and goes.

The number one way the poems Life in a Love and Porphyria's Lover were alike, this would be that the speaker in both is a man who's extremely jealous. So jealous they kill the women they are in love with. On line fifteen of Life in a Love, it states, "So the chase takes up ones life, that's all" in the previous lines he is speaking of his dearly beloved. In my mind when he says this the chase is referring to a man trying to get a woman's attention and when he's gotten it he must do ANYTHING to keep it (killing her). In Porphyria's Lover on line twenty-five, it

Robert Browning wrote his poem “Porphyria’s Lover” with an ABABB format so that it would flow smoothly and quickly as it was read, so that the series of events that lead up to Porphyria’s death happen quickly and astonishingly. When the poem starts out the reader is informed that the weather outside is “sullen” or bad tempered and that it is destroying things around it just because it can. The reader also learns that the narrator is also “sullen”

Porphyria's Lover also demonstrates several of Robert Browning's defining characteristics as a poet. It contains his criticism towards the beliefs and practices of self-restraint and his traditional use of dramatic monologue to expose a single character's personality, which in turn often provides an additional depth to his works in coordination with his use of unpoetic language. Also taking into account the author's own personal experiences with his wife, the poem can also be perceived as a representation of the development of their relationship. Browning's criticism of the idea of self-restraint is evident throughout the poem "Porphyria's Lover" as it was shown in the internal debates both characters underwent as they decided whether or not they should consummate the love between them.

The mind of a psychotic can be an interesting maze to travel. The reason's that they do what they do will probably remain a mystery for a long time, despite technological advancements. The reasoning for some psychotics “slips” and harms to others can possibly be explained by Owen J. Flanagan, as he states, “The fact that slips sometimes take even the person himself by surprise is explained by the fact that unconscious wishes are usually unknown to the person himself.” (Flanagan). This can help explain how the men act within the stories My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover. Furthermore, this is a comparative analysis of the lover’s within Porphyria’s Lover and My Last Duchess, both by Robert Browning.

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.