Summary & Structure
English Lit: AQA GCSE Poetry - Love & Relationships, topic 3.1.1
Summary of Porphyria’s Lover
Robert Browning's Porphyria's Lover is a dramatic monologue, delivered by Porphyria’s lover after he has murdered her and propped her corpse up next to him.
Browning
- Robert Browning is the husband of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, author of Sonnet 29.
- Robert Browning was a key Victorian poet.
- He follows on from the tradition of Romantics such as Shelley and Byron.
- However, many of his poems are more concerned with particular anxieties of the Victorian era – particularly those of morality in both the public and private spheres.
Context
- We see in this poem a man who seems mentally unstable, yet in his own mind he has created a perfectly respectable scene.
- In the title, there is an implication of Porphyria’s own guilt in this situation. She has a lover, which implies that it is a relationship outside the realms of Victorian respectability.
Wider symbolism
- Beyond this Victorian setting, the poem is an exploration of a dysfunctional relationship in the most extreme sense – the man wants to have total control over his lover, and he cannot imagine any other way to do this except for killing her.
- There is little communication between the two.
- Browning presents this poem as a dark and twisted version of what love is. The narrator is so focused on his own desires that he has been driven mad.
Form and Structure of Porphyria’s Lover
Here's some interpretations of the form and structure of Porphyria's Lover:
Dramatic monologue
- The poem is delivered in one long stanza. We are only given the direct speech of our murderous narrator. All speech from Porphyria is reported, and she is muffled even then as she is "murmuring how she loved [him]."
- Therefore, our narrator is presenting Porphyria in a muffled and silenced way even while she is alive – just the way he prefers her to be.
Enjambement
- There is extended use of enjambement (sentences flowing over the ends of lines) in the poem.
- This could be a subtle hint at the true instability of the narrator, even though his tone seems calm on the surface.
- The regular rhyme scheme and calm tone create a sense of cohesion (togetherness). But the enjambement undermines this.
Test yourself on Summary & Structure
Which of these are true about Robert Browning?
What poem from this collection did Robert Browning's wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning write?
What poetic era was Browning from?
What is the form of Porphyria's Lover?
What could the extended use of enjambment hint at in Porphyria's Lover?