own hair. This poem is an exercise in considering madness, the potential link between violence and sex, and the psychological impact love can have (in this case, on an insane speaker; however, the reader is also left to wonder if the speaker is not insane, perhaps merely a liar).

The calm, casual way the speaker describes the murder is strange, reflecting the warped mind of the speaker. And the event of the murder seems to come out of nowhere unless we consider that the murder is a shift of dominance. When Porphyria comes in, she is active and the speaker is passive.

She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, (16-19).

Notice that she physically controls his movements and "makes" his cheek lie. The speaker, mad with love and insecurity, sees a moment where he can become the dominant figure in their love and takes it, and this takes the reader by surprise. He waits until the "moment she was mine, mine, fair,/Perfectly pure and good." Therefore, he can be with her in this so called "perfect" state forever.

"Porphyria's Lover" is similar to Poe in its treatment of Gothic subjects. And some critics claim that a full analysis of this poem along the lines of Gothic horror has been overlooked. Check the third link below for an analysis which posits that the speaker is not really insane; he kills Porphyria believing she is a vampire. This interpretation is a bit of a stretch, but horror was a contemporary subject in Browning's time. For example,Frankensteinwas published in 1818, Poe lived from 1809-1849, and "Porphyria's Lover" first appeared in 1836.

“Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning is a dramatic monologue.  The poem’s story comes from the mind of the man who waits for Porphyria. The poem belongs to the lover and his perspective.

The setting of the poem is a cottage in the country.  The cold and rainy storm outside exacerbates the atmosphere of the story.  The narration is first person with the poem being told from the mind of the lover.

Porphyria

This subject of the poem glides rather than walks into the cottage. This is a young woman who is breaking all societal conventions by meeting a man in his house in a sexual affair.   

Porphyria  is a blond with long, beautiful hair.  Passion and sexuality exude from the young woman.  Her first movement is to make a fire. The author makes Porphyria a force of nature when she enters the cottage. 

The narrator does not answer Porphyria when she calls his name.  Obviously, her love for him comes from her heart when she puts his arm around her waist and places her bare shoulder next to his cheek. 

Pulling him under her spell, Porphyria shows him how much she loves him.  Although this pleasant night of love convinces him that she loves him, the lover believes that she will give in to family pressure and not remain with him forever as she promises.  Her eyes portray her deep feelings of happiness and pride. She has given herself to him fully.

Porphyria’s Lover

To the reader, it should be obvious that something is wrong with the lover.  Why is he not extremely happy to have this beautiful young woman come to him through a terrible storm to give him her love? His unresponsiveness predicts something is wrong.  When Porphyria tells him that she loves him, he does not respond.  In his mind, he avows his love, but this is overshadowed by his feeling that this is all in vain. 

The narrator’s problem comes from his feeling that Porphyria is weak.  The societal pressures will force her to give up this affair. Even though they are together, he knows that this will not last.  He comes to the conclusion that she worships him.  In his mind, he debates about what he needs to do about this situation. 

The lover realizes that for the moment Porphyria belongs to him entirely.  Suddenly, he decides what to do. He strangles her to death with her long blonde hair. He believes that she felt no pain and repeats this in his mind.

Clearly, the narrator has slipped the bounds of sanity.  He compares her closed eyes to a bee that opens up a flower bud; he opens her eyes. He let go of the hair around her neck.  He kisses her and thinks that her cheeks are blushed in reaction.

Here is the scene that he sets in his delusion:

I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still. 
The smiling rosy little head,

The insane lover props her head up as those she is just sitting by him with a smile on her face. He believes that all her worries are behind her now and that he has gained her love forever.   So they sit together all night long and do not move.  He seems to feel good that God has not spoken to him yet to give his disapproval.  

Browning was exploring sexuality and violence in his work. The poem divided into two parts addresses two problems that Browning’s society felt were shocking.  The first problem would be the illicit love affair. In the second half of the poem, Browning examines the madness of the narrator and the murder of his lover.   What an interesting poem from 1832!

This poem is one of Browning's great dramatic monologue. The dramatic monologue is a specific type of poem in which the speaker reveals to an implied audience some relevant piece of information. In doing so, the diction and style the speaker uses eventually reflects more about his or her own mental or moral character than is initially intended. As others have mentioned, this is a form of direct characterization, such that the reader must piece together the true from the false.

This speaker has committed a horrific crime by strangling his beloved so that he can keep her with him forever without change in the relationship. The poetic lines move quickly and smoothly along, masking the morbid events described.

Some readers note that the first half of the poem involves the beloved's molding the speaker to her preferences, while the second half involves him molding her. These mutual shapings create a disturbing center marked by death. The fact that the speaker does not break his tone or pacing at this moment seems to enhance the macabre tone, which is further punctuated by the end in which the speaker seems to be waiting for a divine retribution that does not come.

Robert Browning’s poem “Porphyria’s Lover” written in 1836 embraces the shock value of a murdered lover.  Browning’s poem uses a dramatic monologue to tell the story of Porphyria and her lover. 

This was the beginning of the Victorian Era.  Sex and the woman’s body would not be discussed in public forums. This was one of the most “prudish” times in history.   

The speaker of the poem is a psychotic killer who strangles Porphyria with her own blonde hair.  The point of view is first person.

The narrator is the more dominant of the two characters.  Porphyria does defy her family to come to the cottage;  however, it is the speaker who murders his lover and sits with her waiting for God to speak to him.

Summary

The narrator lives in a cottage out in the countryside. His lover is a beautiful and well-endowed young woman. Out of the storm, Porphyria enters the cottage and begins to make a fire.  Her entrance seems to cheer up the cottage.  The lovers embrace with the young woman beginning to seduce the narrator.  The speaker does not say anything to Porphyria. 

The young woman tells the speaker that nothing could keep her from coming to him, not even the exciting party that she was attending. By coming to him, she has gone against the wishes of her parents and friends.

From her words, the speaker realizes that Porphyria adores him.  Wanting to never lose this moment, the madman takes her hair, wraps it around her neck and strangles her.

Spending the rest of the night with the corpse, the narrator opens her eyes; and though she is dead, her eyes seem to laugh. Then, he lets her hair loose from her neck. He props her head against his shoulder and kisses her passionately. Proud that he gave Porphyria her wish that they would be together, the man and the corpse sit silently all night long.

And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!

Because of his insanity, the narrator feels justified that he killed Porphyria since God said nothing to him. There are so many questions left unanswered by the poet: the murder’s motivation, his desire, and the cause of the madness. 

In the first five lines it describes the rainy weather outside.  The wind picks up as well, and this sets the tone for the poem. The next 10 lines describe her coming inside and warming by the fire.  It also shows that she's soaked and cold from the weather outside. She then calls to him and he won't reply.  She takes his hand and wraps it around her waist and had his head placed on her bare shoulder, telling him quietly how much she loved him.

The next few lines explain his perception of her--which is very different from what we expected.  He describes her as "too weak, for all her heart's endeavor to set its struggling passion free from pride" as if she cannot handle loving him and cannot completely commit to only him. 

Once he knew at this point that she "worshipped" him, he grabbed her hair (lines 38-41) and strangled her with it. Even more disturbing is his reaction to that: he opens her eyes and kisses her cheek, then props her head on his shoulder and sits there with her through the night.  He does this thinking that it was the right thing to do since God did and said nothing about his actions. 

So he did this to preserve the special love that they had forever.  He knew it would never last, so he took her life so that their "moment' would be theirs forever. 

Browning's poem takes place in a cottage during a storm at night. Porphyria, a beautiful woman with long blond hair, enters the cottage and builds a fire, a symbol of the hot passion she ignites in the speaker. The speaker realizes she loves him and his "heart" (a euphemism for another body part) swells. However, he can't deal with his own sexual desire or the sexual availability of Porphyria, so he strangles her. As he is telling the story, morning has come and he is sitting with the corpse of Porphyria in his possession, pleased that God has not punished him for his murder.

The speaker is mad or insane, but, according to the eNotes guide to themes, the poem is a comment on the religious belief in predestination, a Christian theology most closely associated with Calvinists. This theology argued that people are predestined by God from birth as either the damned or the saved and nothing a human could do could change that destiny.

Therefore, the broader context of the poem is a critique of antinomianism, the idea that God would not punish one he had saved. The poem was published in a journal called the Monthly Repository. This journal was edited by W. J. Fox, who was a Unitarian who rejected antinomianism. He or Browning included a preface pointing to the absurdity of believing that God will forgive the chosen few who commit terrible crimes. Reading the poem, it is difficult for us not to believe that the murderer should and will be punished after his crime is discovered.

A second context of the poem is the sexually repressed Victorian era, a time people did not have good mechanisms for dealing with sexual desire, a topic which was often censored and repressed.

In "Porphyria's Lover," Browning addresses the obsession the outwardly polite and prudish Victorian society had with sensational stories of horror and depravity.  The themes of sex and violence and madness in this dramatic monologue speak to this obsession.

Browning turns the conventional presentation of these issues and themes, however, by making them seem natural and beautiful.  Porphyria glides (line 6) in amidst the rain and the wind and shuts out the cold and the storm (line 7).  She builds a fire that warms the cottage (line 9).  She bares her shoulder (line 17) and lays her hair upon his cheek (line 19).  These are all images that create beauty and comfort.

At a poignant (a feeling of specialness) moment, she totally gives herself to her lover, and he, trying to preserve the moment, strangles her with her own hair, painlessly, according to the speaker. 

Browning forces readers to contemplate the relationship between sex and violence and power and complex madness, as well as beauty. 

How you react to the poem is, of course, up to you. 

In this poem, set in the mid 1800's (probably around 1834 in England, where it was written), a man is waiting in his cottage for his loved one to come to him.  She is a wealthy woman who had been at a party, and someone that did not want to admit her love for him, or the relationship that they had.  He was below her in station, and she was probably afraid or embarrassed about their love.  When she arrives, she comes to him and puts his head on her shoulder and tells him that she loves him.  In a startling move, he takes her hair and strangles her with it, in order to keep her for himself forever, and to have her there, in that state of loving her, forever.

The ending is very dramatic and shocking; it is hard not to read the poem and be shocked by it.  The narrator is clearly a bit insane; he kills her and confesses the murder in the poem.  His reasoning for the murder is illogical, and his maniacal glee at having gotten away with it suggests an unstable mind.  To think that a man who loved someone, and who was trusted and loved in return, would strangle her so brutally out of jealousy and a fierce desire to possess, is disturbing.

I hope those thoughts helped; good luck!

In order to compose a critical appreciation of this poem, you will need to analyze it in terms of its figurative language, imagery, structure, and central purpose (or theme) as well as any other poetic devices or elements that seem significant to the way it makes meaning and conveys a message. You can also assess how effective you feel these elements are in conveying a particular message or theme. This appreciation should be formatted like any argumentative essay: an introduction with a thesis statement, topic sentences and evidence to support that thesis, and a conclusion which sums up your main ideas and discusses their significance.

Certainly mood seems to be a fruitful area for analysis of this text. The narrator establishes a dark, sad, and even an eerie mood in the first few lines with the references to "rain" and "night" and a "sullen wind" that tears down the trees "for spite" and "vex[es] the lake," all of which made his "heart fit to break." Although Porphyria seems almost angelic when she enters, or rather "glides" into, the room, lighting a fire that makes the "cottage warm" again, she has evidently come to break off her relationship with the narrator. The weather helps to establish the mood of the poem, and it seems to echo first the narrator's feelings and then Porphyria's.

The rhyme scheme, on the other hand, actually seems almost deceptive. The lines rhyme in an ababb cdcdd efeff ghghh (and so on) pattern. The simplicity of the end rhyme makes the poem seem as though it might address a lighter topic. But the repetition of the final sounds at the end of each grouping of lines (the bb at the end of the ababb group, for example) seems to push the poem forward, to propel it onward to the next grouping of lines, as though the narrator—and we—are caught up in a chain of events that escalates alarmingly quickly and in unexpected ways.

Thus, irony would be another rich area to explore here. Irony occurs when there is a discrepancy between what we expect and what actually happens. Certainly, when we hear that the narrator loves Porphyria, we would not expect him to kill Porphyria as a result of that love. We would not expect a person to murder the one they love just to keep that person near them. Further, the idea of murdering someone with their own hair seems an especially brutal way to go about it, and this ought to shock us as well. Then, what does it say about the narrator that he seems not to understand that he has not found a happy solution to the couple's problem? The narrator seems to believe that even God condones their actions.

Browning's 'Porphyria's Lover' is a dramatic monologue which means it is written in the first person allowing us to see into the mind of the speaker. Clearly as the speaker is a murderer this is interesting to us as it allows us to see his motivation.

It appears that Porphria is attached to another; 'vainer ties dissever' and the speaker is jealous of this and wants to keep her to himself; the only way he can do this is to kill her so she cannot leave. The killing does not appear to be planned; in fact it is chillingly casual 'I found/A thing to do' and the speaker does not seem to feel any remorse or guilt. He feels that he has got away with it; 'And yet God has not said a word!' He has attemped to 'freeze' a perfect moment and has done so.