Porphyria’s Lover a Poem Written by Robert Browning

In the poem “Porphyria’s Lover”, the author Robert Browning uses the ideas of love and sin to create a contradiction and uses this contradiction to explore the relationship between morality and art. The poem is much more complex than a perverse, frightening account of a man with the inability to properly express his feelings for a woman.

The title “Porphyria’s Lover” leads the audience to believe that the woman and the speaker have had a relationship for a good period of time. When the woman enters into the man’s presence, she enters the cabin with ease and starts a fire; something a person would not do unless they were comfortable with the person and the situation. The actions of the woman confirm for the audience that her visit to him was not the first time that the two have met. In terms of struggle for power, the concept of love is shown. There is an underlying meaning to love in the poem and that one of them in the relationship will always be trying to have one up over the other and the relationship. The dominance and control in their relationship will never be equal. During the time of the Victorian era, it was not common for women to encourage their own sexuality but in fact ignore it altogether. Although Porphyria has not been able to fully repress her desires, as evident in the fact that she even went to the man’s house, she is attempting to refuse her heart’s desires still. “Murmuring how she loved me” shows that Porphyria does love the speaker and she goes on in a romantic way of expressing this by laying her shoulder bare and lying his cheek on her shoulder. Instead of shouting or even simply saying at a normal volume that she loves him, she only murmurs. The speaker acknowledges the power that she has over him by a...

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..., but they add enormously to the thought that the speaker may be suffering from his own type of imbalance.

Works Cited

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