Essay Porphyria’s Lover and The Laboratory

The nonchalance of the speaker in “Porphyria’s Lover” reveals his inability to comprehend Porphyria’s extreme affection. Both speakers judgmental and critical attitudes towards women also contribute to these messages. The Duke’s impulsive decision to kill the Duchess creates an unsettling mood, and Porphyria’s unwanted affection creates a disturbing mood. Overall, Browning’s message based on both of these poems is it is best to have an equal balance of affection in any

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

Robert Browning’s "Porphyria’s Lover" contains the methodical ramblings of a lunatic; it is a madman’s monologue that reveals the dark side of human nature. Power and passion coalesce to form the strangulation of the beautiful and innocent Porphyria, and at the same time strangle the reader’s ability to comprehend what is occurring and why it is occurring. The murder’s monologue depicts a heinous crime. The simple fact that the monologue is issued from the murderer himself creates a sense of distrust. There is no doubt that the man is disturbed, but the level of his lunacy remains uncertain. In one short poem, Browning provides an intense glimpse into the mind of a homicidal maniac,

The word ‘love’ possesses such complexity and magnitude that people commonly have a hard time defining it effectively without oversimplifying. Given the true intensity of feeling, jealousy is often said to be synonymous with being in love and the real impact love can have on a person can be unpredictable. Considering this, The Cambridge Dictionary defines a ‘crime of passion’ as a crime committed because of very strong emotional feelings, especially in connection with a sexual relationship. The poems “Porphyria’s Lover” and “The Laboratory” by Robert Browning, although significantly different, essentially share the theme of love and jealousy. In both poems, readers are introduced to the darker side of romance through male and female speakers so overwhelmed with emotion, they turn to murder as a means of expression. Using dramatic monologue, Browning brilliantly explores the profound effect love can have on its victims and the psychological elements leading to a crime of passion.

Robert Browning, the man whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the best Victorian poets, opens his poem “Porphyria’s Love” with a thrilling, yet romantic tone that leaves the reader with skeptical question. After Porphyria gets all settled from being outside in the rain storm, she begins to remove her wet clothing. Beginning to transition into modern style, the narrator states;

Soon after she sits along side of the narrator and placed his arms around her waist. As she sat along side of him she adjusted her clothing to where her shoulders where they’re being shown. In my opinion that behavior showed how much Porphyria wasn’t afraid to put herself out there and that she is a bit aggressive. I feel this way only because she was the one made him put his arms around her waist as they sit in front of the fire that she had built. During the time period this poem was written it wasn’t common for a woman to do a “man’s” job especially for a wealthy woman.

"Porphyria's Lover" is a poem during England's Victorian society about an adoring husband with hopes of equality for women. According to Masterplots II, “The title can be very misleading causing one to expect a perfect love relationship, perhaps two lovers in a cozy cottage retreating from the storm described in the opening lines. However, the perceptions reported by the lover soon alert the reader to his unbalanced perspective (Dickinson 3068).” A major theme occurring in “Porphyria's Lover” is love. The poem is about a women who having an affair which appeals to some people in Victorian society. Madness is a theme Browning uses in two of his works. The lover’s love makes him go crazy. He decides that in order to control what Porphyria does is to kill her. He knows she will not stay so he kills her. After killing her he shows no emotion. According to Dickinson, “A possible additional thread of meaning may be derived from the knowledge that the poem was first published with another poem, "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" and that the two poems were later grouped under the heading 'Madhouse Cells’ (Dickinson

The Dramatic Monologue in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ helps build tension, horror and suspense because only one character is talking, making it a one-sided story. After he tells us about himself, the way he very unexpectedly killed Porphyria shocked and surprised me. However, the dramatic monologue in ‘My Last Duchess’ is very interesting simply because one of the main characters in absent throughout the whole poem, making us want to learn first-hand about them, and actually see if they were actually like the way they were described.

Love is a peculiar thing. It has intense influence over people and their actions and, based on the specific person, it also has the power to distort and alter one’s preconceived reality. When one is truly in love, at some points there may be difficulty in distinguishing what is real and what is fantasy. While this may initially seem ideal and somewhat magical, this inability to differentiate the two proves to be dangerous at times, as demonstrated through Robert Browning’s poem, “Porphyria’s Lover”. In this poem, Browning proves through his theme of fantasy vs. reality that love can indeed be dangerous. It is through literary elements such as the use of dramatic monologue, the use of irony, and the poem structure itself, that Browning is able to present his theme so effectively.

In both poems, there are similarities in the narrator’s attitudes towards their women. Both narrators show an unnatural possessiveness towards them, presenting an unattractive, all-encompassing jealousy that wanted to eclipse all other interests that their women may have. It means that in each poem, the narrators end up killing their wives. In ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, the narrator justifies his actions by saying he wanted to preserve the perfect moment in time.

At the early age of five, Robert Browning was a very profound child being that he was already extremely knowledgeable in the arts of reading and writing. He was a very anxious student and continued to learn many languages by the age of fourteen. In 1833, Browning published Pauline and in 1840 he published Sordello but both were sadly known as a failure. He even attempted to publish several plays but they were all unsuccessful. Browning did not become successful until he published his collection of poems Men and Women in 1855. In 1842, Browning published “Porphyria’s Lover,” which is also a successful poem (“Robert Browning”). In “Porphyria’s Lover,” the speaker is watching and waiting for Porphyria on a cold, stormy night. Once Porphyria has returned, she lights the fire, takes off her warm

Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover” is a poem in which Porphyria is strangled with her hair by her lover, the narrator. The narrator is no doubt a psychotic man and is strikingly described by the weather in the beginning of the poem. The weather is presented as a storm in the night, “The sullen wind was soon awake,/ It tore the elm-tops down for spite,/ And did its worst to vex the lake” (Browning, 1-3). The weather’s description sets a gloomy, sullen mood for the reader to expect what is to come from the narrator. Next, the narrator describes a damp Porphyria "gliding" into the cottage (Browning, 6). He makes it a point to mention that her presence brought cheer and warmth, as Porphyria “made the cheerless grate [b]laze up, and all the cottage

"Porphyria's Lover" is a thrilling, and rather unusual love story by Robert Browning, given from a deranged man’s perspective. It is the tale of a man who is so infatuated with Porphyria that he decides to keep her for himself, as if she was a doll or some type of prize. What makes this poem so interesting is that the only twisted way he feels he can keep her, is by killing her. The poem uniquely depicts the separation of social classes, feminism, describes how a man overcomes a rather biased society, and also uses symbolism to represent the Industrial Revolution which was taking place at the time. In many of his poems, Browning questions the rights and almost seems to mock the ideas of what women had to be portray in the Victorian era, this is especially present in his poem “Porphyria’s Lover”. Browning also mentions in the poem what women were meant to be like at the time, yet he also talks about how some tried to escape from the harsh lifestyle they lived just like Porphyria.

Violence towards a woman who was once desired and wor-shipped by men appears to be a recurring motif in Browning's po-ems. "Porphyria's lover" is one of the earliest dramatic mono-logues by Robert Browning in which he explores the mind of an insane male lover. Browning reveals the changing thoughts and feelings as well as the emotional disorder of his speaker. The reader often perceives a gap between what the speaker says and what he actually reveals. The poem depends upon the reader's abil-ity to make inferences as well as to analyze the speaker's attitude towards Porphyria since he does not give any background informa-tion. It is also possible to argue that the withdrawal of the author from the text, or his refusal to give you moral guidance after plac-ing a difficult question or situation before you, he must believe one of three things; that no guidance is needed because the case is ob-vious, or that no guidance is possible because you must see the truth yourself, or that it does not really matter if you come up with the same answer he does. In Porphyria's lover we can sense Browning's interest in psychological analysis, he liked to take ab-normal behavior or unconventional characters and analyze them.

In the poem, “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning, he describes a man who has murdered the woman he loved, named Porphyria. Porphyria’s lover, the speaker starts the poem off by explaining the bad weather that set into the night and how it has been raining and windy. The speaker’s word choice sets a depressing mood. The speaker who is obsessed with Porphyria lives in a remote cabin. Porphyria is coming from a social gathering already which shows the social contrast between the two. He obsesses over Porphyria and he believes that she is in love with him, strangles her with her hair. (Explain more) The speaker then describes throughout the poem his actions after he kills Porphyria and looks into her eyes as if she was his forever now and just lies with her dead corpse all night. Porphyria’s lover is not guilty of insanity because he is mentally unstable. He shows signs throughout the poem that he is insane by the way he obsesses over her and then strangles her to death then lies with her corpse for hours just cuddling her.