porphyria's lover

Question 1

porphyria’s lover summary?

Answer 1

• “Porphyria’s Lover,” which first appeared in 1836, is one of the earliest and most shocking of Browning’s dramatic monologues.
• The speaker lives in a cottage in the countryside.
• His lover, a blooming young woman named Porphyria, comes in out of a storm and proceeds to make a fire and bring cheer to the cottage.
• She embraces the speaker, offering him her bare shoulder.
• He tells us that he does not speak to her.
• Instead, he says, she begins to tell him how she has momentarily overcome societal strictures to be with him.
• He realizes that she “worship[s]” him at this instant.
• Realizing that she will eventually give in to society’s pressures, and wanting to preserve the moment, he wraps her hair around her neck and strangles her.
• He then toys with her corpse, opening the eyes and propping the body up against his side.
• He sits with her body this way the entire night, the speaker remarking that God has not yet moved to punish him.

Question 2

the rain set early in to-night …

sullen wind …

tore the elm-tops …

vex the lake

Answer 2

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : immediate setting of ominosity, mystery, bleakness

Question 3

glided in porphyria

Answer 3

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : gothic imagery, foreshadows her death?

Question 4

she shut the cold out …

made the cheerless grate blaze up …

Answer 4

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : she brings warmth to the cottage

Question 5

withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl and laid her soiled gloves …

untied her hat and let the damp hair fall …

she called me …

she put my arm about her waist and made her smooth white shoulder bare

Answer 5

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : she is depicted as initiating this

Question 6

murmuring how she loved me

Answer 6

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : does she truly say this? or does his obession overtake?

Question 7

too weak … to set her struggling passion free

Answer 7

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : morality - he does this for her

Question 8

porphyria worshipped me

Answer 8

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : is this true? or his obsession?

Question 9

that moment she was mine: mine, fair, perfectly pure and good

Answer 9

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : he’s obsessed

Question 10

all her hair in one long yellow string I wound three times her little throat around and strangled her

Answer 10

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : he murders her but also vicitmises

Question 11

as a shut bug that holds a bee i warily opened her lids

Answer 11

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : whilst this poses her as a helpless victim, could it also symbolise a sexual thing?

Question 12

without a stain

Answer 12

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : she’s preserved

Question 13

her cheek once more blushed bright beneath my burning kiss

Answer 13

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : he romanticises her death

Question 14

it

Answer 14

Porphyria’s Lover
analysis : he changes her pronoun to it - full control