Explication of “Porphyria’s Lover”, Essay Example

This poem dramatizes the conflict between the narrator’s internal struggles to balance insane thoughts and behaviors with the normal concept of love and social acceptance for his lover Porphyria.  Immediately from the beginning lines of the poem, the author showcases the inherent struggle that exists when Porphyria declares her love and devotion for the narrator.  Despite all social constrictions, the woman has decided to embark on a new life with the main character, and yet a part of him is wary of her recent decision to do so.  He acknowledges the fact that she is madly in love with him and that she is his, but something, rather mentally or socially, restricts his ability to completely give in to her.  The cognitive duality that Robert Browning thrusts upon the narrator conveys similar social and personal struggles that individuals of all backgrounds experience in many aspects of life.  Through the use of rhythm, meter and rhyme, the conflict becomes ever much clearer to the reader.

The meter and rhythm of “Porphyria’s Lover” is quite unique and intentionally varies at different times throughout the story to help convey important parts of the plot to the reader.  Most of the poem conveys a standard iambic tetrameter, where four iambs, or unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables, exist in almost every line.  In addition, the pattern of the work stays very consistent in a standard ABABB repetitive technique.  Within this pattern, the final words of each line rhyme with their associated “A” or “B” lines.  In many cases, the author has been forced to interject commas, hyphens or other forms of punctuation to cause the intentional rift in a phrase.  Many phrases and sentences are split up to follow the rules of the ABABB format, and often this can cause problems for the reader that is trying to follow the poem as straightforwardly as possible.  Just as the poem’s plot is extremely intense and shows the conflict within the narrator, the structure of the written ABABB pattern shows a conflict as well between common speech and uncommon, almost insane word choice and sentence structure.  This may be the author’s way of communicating the madness and insanity within the narrator through a much different rhythmic pattern.

While the pattern is overall very consistent clear, it still maintains the oddities of lines that do not follow the iambic tetrameter format.  For instance, within the fifth line of the work, the narrator explains “I listened with heart fit to break.”  Here, the line actually contains five iambs, which is different from the previous format used throughout the beginning portion of the poem.  This is very crucial because it may be the writer’s literary way of describing a point of importance within the story.  This line is the first place within the poem that the narrator actually refers to himself in any way; therefore, it holds a special place in the story and in the written format of the poem.  As the poem is a monologue written from the point of view of the narrator, this portion of the written work is important and noteworthy for the reader to understand the rarity of someone telling a story about themselves, without ever referring to themselves often.  Nevertheless, Browning continued to utilize iambic tetrameter throughout the bulk of the remaining lines, until one particular pairing of lines that read: “Happy and proud; at last I knew, Porphyria worshiped me: surprise.”  Again, as in the previous example, the rhythm of the lines is thrown off because the writer is pointing to the moment of the narrator’s epiphany where he realizes that his lover worships him completely.

Overall, the poem attempts to showcase similar verbiage and word choice that would be used throughout everyday speech and communication.  This allows the reader to quickly become immersed in the conflict of the narrator, which leads to his final climactic decision to strangle his beloved.  Through this word choice, the writer conveys a very solemn tone that continues throughout the story, even at times where the narrator reaches a point of realization or climax within the plot.  On more than one occasion, Brown refers to Porphyria’s hair as yellow strands that fall from her head.  Once is in the narrator’s description of her wet figure, and the other is in the narrator’s description of the object he uses to strangle her.  This is obviously no mistake and is meant to instill the importance of color and assimilation between the multiple passages.  While each passage contains a different intention of the narrator, it also shows the mental conflict within him.

Through utilizing the varying choice of words to describe the actions and plot, the setting and imagery of the story is also important to the development of the conflict and the final climax.  The narrator lives in his cottage outside of the nearby cities, out in the country.  The setting is during the evening hours where a large rainstorm is pouring down upon the cabin.  Due to the storm, the cabin is very cold and damp, so this setting’s characteristics force the narrator and Porphyria to start a fire to warm themselves and raise the solemn mood.  Finally, the words “o’er” and the phrase “vainer ties dissever” help illustrate the time period that the poem was written.  These words were not commonly used during the 1900s, so it helps place a timetable on the poem to help understand the supposed time frame of the plot.  As the poem comes to an end, the imagery of the deceased corpse that once was the lively, beautiful Porphyria is positioned by the narrator resting perfectly on his shoulder.  There they sat together the rest of the night, and the narrator describes his joy that God has not decided on a worthy punishment for his actions.