Porphyria’s Lover Flashcards
Key Words to use for Porphyria’s Lover?
-objectification (treated as an object)
-sunjugation (under his control)
-marginalisation (treated as insignificant)
-dehumanisation (treated as less than human)
Summary
1) A man sits in his cold cottage on a stormy night. Porphyria, his lover, arrives and makes the cottage warm and comfortable, before sitting down next to him.
2) He ignores her while she’s flirting with him - he seems upset with her. However, he decides that she loves him and that she belongs to him - he wants to preserve the moment, so he strangles her with her own hair. It’s clear that the speaker is mentally disturbed.
3) He opens her eyes and spends the rest of the night sitting with her dead body.
Context
Robert Browning (1812-1889) was born in Cambervell. Surrey. He published Porphyrias Lover in 183 Ropyria is a disease that can result in madness
Form
FORM] - The poem is a dramatic monologue. The asymmetrical rhyme scheme (ABABB) and enjambment suggest that the speaker is unstable. However, the regular rhythm of the poem reflects his calmness. Porphyria has no voice in the poem - the speaker projects his own thoughts and feelings onto her in life and in death.
Structure
STRUCTURE - Events in the poem mirror each other. In the first half of the poem, Porphyria is active and dominant while her lover is passive, which is shown by the way she rests his head on her shoulder.
These positions are reversed when the speaker kills her - afterwards he places her head on his shoulder.
Language of possession
LANGUAGE OF POSSESSION
- The speaker wants Porphyria to belong to him “for ever”, but he
believes that her “pride” and “vainer ties” (possibly meaning her higher social status) are stopping her from being with him. He is desperate to possess her, and in death she becomes his object.
Language of love and violence
LANGUAGE OF LOVE AND VIOLENCE
-The speaker combines love and violence to reflect
the troubled and destructive nature of his love - e.g. “heart fit to break” and “burning kiss”.
quotes about romantic love?
“Her smooth white shoulder bare” “yellow hair displaced”
-He breaks her down to individual components of her body rather than seeing her as a whole thus objectifies her.
-Her “white shoulders” connote innocence and virginity which makes her seem more like a male fantasy than a real person
-explores romantic love through the lens of male hubris within a patriarchal society. The male speaker idealises the object of his affection to an extreme, leading to her dehumanisation and portrayal as a de-personalised object of worship.
quotes about obsession + longing + death
“that moment she was mine mine”
“laughed the blue eyes without a stain”
-Repetition of the possessive pronoun “mine” emphasises the speaker’s possessive nature.
-speaker longs to preserve Porphyria in unrealistic, idolised perception of her which leads to him committing murder.
-His delusional obsessions lead to him fulfilling his desires to preserve her innocence in her death.
