A Close Reading of Browning’s Porphyria's Lover

Robert Browning’s 19th-century poem, Porphyria’s Lover, is an intriguing and unconventional tale of twisted romance. In Porphyria’s Lover, Browning utilizes the literary devices of rhythm, imagery, and personification in order to illustrate the shocking destructive force of false love that seeks selfish pleasure over mutual companionship. 

Browning’s use of iambic pentameter and a regular A-B-A-B-B rhyme scheme creates an anti-climatic tone and a character who is perverse and abnormal in his nonchalance towards his actions. An expository opening to the poem where “The rain set early in tonight, [and] the sullen wind was soon awake,” establishes the normal speech pattern of the speaker that iambic pentameter seems to mimic. The conversational pattern of speech that iambic meter approximates is used to signal to the reader that the speaker is telling a story of the past rather than narrating an experience that is occurring in the present. The choice of the iambic meter over more dramatic structural alternatives such as the “evil” trochee meter indicates that Browning made a clear choice to establish a discordant sense of monotony in a story that is anything but. From the very beginning of the poem, this blunt normalcy with which the speaker tells his story is juxtaposed with the tumultuous climate of the setting described, creating a sense of uneasiness and dread for what’s to come. If the speaker can describe such a storm with such nonchalance, then the speaker’s inner mental climate must mimic that of the divine external climate on the outside. The consistent A-B-A-B-B rhyme scheme is an unusual and rarely used pattern for its time. However, it is applied in a consistent and rigid manner that almost seems to create a natural pause in thought after every fifth line. The poet made an unconventional decision to use this method of a rhyme for the organization of the poem in place of the more definitive and obvious use of stanzas.  This form of rhythmic organization lends order to an unbroken poem that would otherwise sound like a rambling story. Even as he took her hair and “wound, three times her little throat around, and strangled her,” the iambic meter and ABABB rhyme scheme do not shift. This is a unique literary choice in a time when poetic convention dictated that emotion and rhythm are immensely correlated: when one changes, the other should as well. Logically then, this choice must indicate that the speaker’s emotion did not change despite committing such a violent act towards a woman he had just spoken so fondly of. Thus, the poet has cleverly used rhythm to characterize the speaker as a man of irrationality and sick-mindedness. This characterization would have been impossible to do through dialogue because a character cannot pronounce themselves to be insane: insanity is defined by the subject’s oblivion to it.  I consider Browning’s use of orderly rhythm to show a disorderly mind twisted by tormented love as the most ingenious application of a literary device in this poem.

Browning’s use of colorful and vivid imagery serves to convey a romance defined by chastity and purity and brings the Gothic element of divinity into play. Porphyria’s very presence “shut the cold out and the storm, and kneeled and made the cheerless grate, blaze up and all the cottage warm.” The god-like powers she has over the speaker's environment suggest that she is of divine or supernatural nature. This firmly connects the poem to Gothic sensibilities: the most profound of emotions and the most graceful of people are made in the image of God Himself. The warmth associated with Porphyria is contrasted with the “cold...and the storm,” and this suggests that the speaker thinks of Poryphria as his primary source of happiness and comfort. Therein lies Browning’s attempt to play on the reader’s preconceived associations of climate with emotion.  Cold, rain, and winter are paired with negativity while warmth, light, and fire are correlated with positivity. The pastel colors of her “smooth white shoulder” and her “yellow hair” suggest that Porphyria is an object of beauty and innocence. The word object is key here because read by itself, the description of Porphyria could be read as the description of a figurine or painting of a woman as easily as a description of a woman herself. This aspect of the poem makes Porphyria less tangible as a real woman and instead suggests that she is a generic representation of womanhood based on the ideals of femaleness of the period. Her hair is also specified to be “displaced,” in a reference to Gothic ideals of female chastity. Using such culturally sensitive imagery is an incredibly effective way to convey a lot of information about a character with as much brevity as possible. In comparison to her angel-like body, Porphyria’s clothes are impure and unclean and should be shed to reveal her full beauty. Her beauty only arises after she has “[withdrawn] the dripping cloak and shawl, and laid her soil'd gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall.” Much of the imagery surrounding her clothing is “wet”. Therefore the love that the speaker has for her physical form is accompanied by this perverse attempt to strip her of the layers that define her individuality: her beauty is in her vulnerability to the speaker rather than in her expression of identity. I find that this use of imagery to emphasize the divinity and purity of Porphyria’s physical form above her goodness of character is Browning’s brilliant way of showing that despite the flowery romanticism in the speaker’s diction, his love for Porphyria is only skin-deep and ephemeral in nature. 

Browning’s use of personification characterizes Poryphria as an object of desire with little agency of her own and thus makes Porphyria's death all the more disturbing and abnormal. After her death, Porphyria’s “head...droops upon it still:  The smiling rosy little head, ... it has its utmost will.” Her “head” is meant to refer to her mind, her thoughts, and her emotions.It is disturbing that the part of the body that we consider to be the center of the self is treated as a separate individual with a will of its own, despite being eternally estranged from the physical body that gives it life. Despite having passed away, “her cheek once more, Blush'd bright beneath my burning kiss,” almost out of its accord: placing the will of her body in the hands of the speaker’s sexual advances. It is implied that this control over her actions is perhaps his motivation for killing her in the first place.  Even “Her lids: again Laugh'd the blue eyes without a stain.” If eyes are the ultimate window to the soul and Porphyria’s eyes are self-willed in their gleeful response to the speaker’s actions, its an indication from Browning that Porphyria’s soul has been spiritually and physically lost by this act of evil. The speaker is “quite sure she felt no pain,” and compares her to “a shut bud that holds a bee”. A closed floral bud that contains a stinging bee is personified to be Porphyria’s image because both the bud and Porphyria are alike in their powerlessness to fight off their attackers. This reference to an element of nature that signifies a passive acceptance of pain and suffering is utilized as an analogy to Porphyria’s situation. The manner in which these ultimate expressions of the self are treated as if they are separate and willful entities is indicative of the speaker’s complete lack of perception of Porphyria’s individuality beyond her bodily sexuality. When alive, the discussion of her “lids”, her “cheek” and her “head” as independent personalities would have made no sense. With her death, however, the speaker finally has the ability to love Porphyria’s body without having the distraction of her character in the way. I see Browning’s personification of the body as the most effective literary technique serving to dehumanize Porphyria from the speaker’s point of view. 

In the utilization of rhythm, imagery, and personification, a higher purpose of Browning is observed: the illustration of how love that is only superficial and surface-level is just as violent as hate. Browning masterfully intertwines and overlaps the literary effects of rhythm, imagery, and personification to convey how a troubled man who seeks comfort in the arms of a perfect maiden can seemingly abandon all reason in his murder of the very same woman and suffer no internal guilt nor divine punishment for his crime. For a poem set in the 19th century, this appears to be a rather forward-thinking comment on the injustices of the patriarchal system that allows this dehumanizing aspect of the male gaze to be fetishized as glorious romance.