FREE ESSAY ON OBSESSION: ESSAY ON PORPHRIA'S LOVER BY ROBERT BROWNING

OBSESSION: ESSAY ON PORPHRIA'S LOVER BY ROBERT BROWNING

"Porphyria's Lover" is one of many poems by Robert Browning. In this poem a woman named
Porphyria is killed by her lover. This man's obsession with Porphyria led him to murder.
Through vocabulary, imagery and situation Browning shows the reader the mind of an
obsessed man.
Imagery in a poem helps the reader visualize the surroundings and helps the reader infer
the main events in a poem. The opening lines in the poem show a dark dismal night. "The
rain set early in tonight,/The sullen wind was soon awake,/It tore the elm-tops down for
spite,/And did its worst to vex the lake:/I listened with heart fit to break." This helps
the reader think of a dark evening and a man sitting impatiently for his lover.
Browning gives Porphyria power by saying, "She shut the cold out and the storm,/And
kneeled and made the cheerless grate/Blaze up, and all the cottage warm." The reader can
sense that this woman holds some power over her lover. She seems to take care of him.
This sets up a reason why the speaker is obsessed with Porphyria.
Porphyria is obviously of a higher rank in society by her use of the words "pride and
vanity." This "rank" gives her obvious power. Porphyria's power is stopped when she tells
him why she came. "Murmuring how she loved me--she/Too weak, for all her heart's
endeavor/ To set its struggling passion free/From pride, and vainer ties dissever,/And
give herself to me forever." This is Porphyria's weak attempt at a break-up. By
"murmuring" she loses the pride she talks of. One can infer that she had come to him from
a party when the speaker says "tonight's gay feast." By breaking-up with him she could
possibly enjoy her evening with another man. Porphyria knows that he needs her to care
for him but does not want that kind of life anymore. She tries to make this break-up less
painful for her lover by saying that she would stay with him if she could but she can't.
She lies to him.
Passion blinds the speaker to all sense of reality and he starts a chain of thinking that
leads him to believe that Porphyria is truly enamored of him. "But passion sometimes
would prevail,/Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain/A sudden thought of one so pale/For
love of her, and all in vain:/So, she was come through wind and rain/Be sure I looked up
at her eyes/Happy and proud; at last I knew/Porphyria worshipped me." The speaker thinks
that she has come to him to save her from her destiny and family. "All in vain" shows how
the speaker has very little reality left in his mind. Those words show how the speaker is
below Porphyria and how his inferiority may lead him to try to be her superior. He loved
her to a certain point and past that point she infested his mind. To not have her around
him to take care of him was too much for him.
The speaker "debated" what to do and realized that she was with him at that moment
looking very pretty because she had come from the party and had not left immediately.
"That moment she was mine, mine, fair,/Perfectly pure and good." He realizes that to keep
her he must kill her. "In one yellow long string I wound three times her little throat
around,/And strangled her." The speaker then projects his feelings on her. He says he is
sure that she felt no pain when he knows that he was hurt and in turn he hurt her.
The speaker's need for Porphyria in his life led him to kill her and to have him by her
side forever. In a way, the speaker has chosen Porphyria's path in life; instead of being
in high society she can stay with him. ". . . Her head, which droops upon it still;/The
smiling rosy little head,/So glad it has its utmost will,/That all it scorned at once is
fled,/And I, its love, am gained instead!" In those lines, one can see that the speaker
is obsessed. In his mind his deeds were not wrong because God had not bothered to strike
him dead by lightning making the speaker's obsession with his love legitimate and valid
in the world.