Robert Browning

Robert was a very privileged child who could never really decide what to do with his life. After he married Elizabeth Barrett he became wound up in her and still could not focus on his works. It was after he died that he felt really sad and decided that he was going to stop and really focus on his work and influence others. That is exactly what he did.
Porphyria’s Lover:
This poem was very dramatic. Just by reading the title I thought it would be a love poem. While, I suppose it is a love poem it is not what one would expect. The first clue that this poem is not a normal love story is the title. If you are in love with someone you title a poem after them possibly, but in this case the title is actually about the speaker in the poem, instead of the woman he loves.
The poem begins by setting the mood with a dreary stormy night. A storm had been through and done damage to the area. The speaker says “It tore the elm-tops down for spite” 3. The speaker points this out to say that the storm was a real beast and did these things on purpose. However, then comes the lady the speaker is in love with, Porphyria. The speaker says, “When glided in Porphyria; straight/ She shut the cold out and the storm” 6-7. Pretty much the speaker is very much in love with this lady. He says that just by her entering the room she makes the “storm and cold” go away and she warms the place up. However, then the speaker begins to describe her. When he describes her she does not sound all that appealing. It makes me wonder if this poem is about a personal experience Robert had with Elizabeth since she was so sick the first time they met. His biography says that the first time they met Elizabeth was very skinny, and on the couch covered in many blankets. This sounds very similar to the Porphyria being described. He describes Porphyria with “a dripping cloak and shawl, / and laid her soiled gloves by, untied/ Her hat let the damp hair fall” 12-13. He describes her as imperfect coming in wet from a storm. Then he goes on to talk extensively about her hair being misplaced and wet and not fixed. He seemed at this point in the poem quite obsessed with her hair. I found this interesting that he would point out so much about her hair, but then later we find out why. He also points out that she is weak. This is where I see the connection between the speaker and Robert coming in. Porphyria is very in love with the speaker, but she has some troubles in her life which the speaker does not really go into detail about. We just know that there is something there causing her pain. The speaker likes that fact that she is in love with him though because he says, “Happy and proud, at last I knew/ Porphyria worshipped me” 32-33. He was so happy and was uncertain what to do about her loving him. Then all of a sudden he decides to kill her with her own hair by strangling her. At this point in the poem I begin to think that the speaker probably has a mental condition. The reason I say this is because he really believes it was alright to kill her. In fact he says, almost to re-assure himself, “No pain felt she; / I am quite sure she felt no pain” 41-42. He is stating that because he is trying to make the situation better in his head and make himself feel better about what he did. This is an argument with himself that he is not wrong for strangling her. Then he goes on to prop her up by a tree with her head on his shoulder. We still do not know until the end of the poem why he killed her, which here again points to the speaker having a mental problem, or just being crazy. The reason he killed her was so that they could spend the rest of their lives together sitting there by that tree. His reasoning is because he was granting her the wish she wanted, which was to be with him. He says, “Her darling one wish would be heard” 57. I do not believe this is what Porphyria wanted, however the speaker seemed crazy, and obviously loved her too, but he took it a little too far. This poem starts out as a nice love story, and ends up with murder being justified through love. Maybe the speaker believed she was in some sort of pain, and by killing her he could take away that pain and they could sit there and be in love the rest of their lives. He did not kill her out of fury or angry, and we see in the poem that he is justifying what he did. Therefore, the speaker clearly believes he did this for the best of Porphyria. This poem reminds me of an Edgar Allen Poe poem.