Complete Text
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.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
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,
And spread, o’er all, her yellow hair,
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.
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 worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
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,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!
Summary
“Porphyria’s Lover,” which first appeared in 1836,
is one of the earliest and most shocking of Browning’s dramatic
monologues. The speaker lives in a cottage in the countryside. His
lover, a blooming young woman named Porphyria, comes in out of a
storm and proceeds to make a fire and bring cheer to the cottage.
She embraces the speaker, offering him her bare shoulder. He tells
us that he does not speak to her. Instead, he says, she begins to
tell him how she has momentarily overcome societal strictures to
be with him. He realizes that she “worship[s]” him at this instant.
Realizing that she will eventually give in to society’s pressures,
and wanting to preserve the moment, he wraps her hair around her
neck and strangles her. He then toys with her corpse, opening the
eyes and propping the body up against his side. He sits with her
body this way the entire night, the speaker remarking that God has
not yet moved to punish him.
Form
“Porphyria’s Lover,” while natural in its language, does
not display the colloquialisms or dialectical markers of some of
Browning’s later poems. Moreover, while the cadence of the poem
mimics natural speech, it actually takes the form of highly patterned
verse, rhyming ABABB. The intensity and asymmetry
of the pattern suggests the madness concealed within the speaker’s
reasoned self-presentation.
This poem is a dramatic monologue—a fictional speech presented
as the musings of a speaker who is separate from the poet. Like
most of Browning’s other dramatic monologues, this one captures
a moment after a main event or action. Porphyria already lies dead
when the speaker begins. Just as the nameless speaker seeks to stop
time by killing her, so too does this kind of poem seek to freeze
the consciousness of an instant.
Commentary
“Porphyria’s Lover” opens with a scene taken straight
from the Romantic poetry of the earlier nineteenth century. While
a storm rages outdoors, giving a demonstration of nature at its
most sublime, the speaker sits in a cozy cottage. This is the picture
of rural simplicity—a cottage by a lake, a rosy-cheeked girl, a
roaring fire. However, once Porphyria begins to take off her wet
clothing, the poem leaps into the modern world. She bares her shoulder
to her lover and begins to caress him; this is a level of overt
sexuality that has not been seen in poetry since the Renaissance.
We then learn that Porphyria is defying her family and friends to
be with the speaker; the scene is now not just sexual, but transgressively
so. Illicit sex out of wedlock presented a major concern for Victorian
society; the famous Victorian “prudery” constituted only a backlash
to what was in fact a popular obsession with the theme: the newspapers
of the day reveled in stories about prostitutes and unwed mothers.
Here, however, in “Porphyria’s Lover,” sex appears as something
natural, acceptable, almost wholesome: Porphyria’s girlishness and
affection take prominence over any hints of immorality.
For the Victorians, modernity meant numbness: urban life,
with its constant over-stimulation and newspapers full of scandalous
and horrifying stories, immunized people to shock. Many believed
that the onslaught of amorality and the constant assault on the
senses could be counteracted only with an even greater shock. This
is the principle Browning adheres to in “Porphyria’s Lover.” In
light of contemporary scandals, the sexual transgression might seem
insignificant; so Browning breaks through his reader’s probable
complacency by having Porphyria’s lover murder her; and thus he
provokes some moral or emotional reaction in his presumably numb
audience. This is not to say that Browning is trying to shock us
into condemning either Porphyria or the speaker for their sexuality;
rather, he seeks to remind us of the disturbed condition of the modern
psyche. In fact, “Porphyria’s Lover” was first published, along
with another poem, under the title Madhouse Cells, suggesting
that the conditions of the new “modern” world served to blur the
line between “ordinary life”—for example, the domestic setting of
this poem—and insanity—illustrated here by the speaker’s action.
This poem, like much of Browning’s work, conflates sex,
violence, and aesthetics. Like many Victorian writers, Browning
was trying to explore the boundaries of sensuality in his work.
How is it that society considers the beauty of the female body to
be immoral while never questioning the morality of language’s sensuality—a
sensuality often most manifest in poetry? Why does society see both
sex and violence as transgressive? What is the relationship between
the two? Which is “worse”? These are some of the questions that
Browning’s poetry posits. And he typically does not offer any answers
to them: Browning is no moralist, although he is no libertine either.
As a fairly liberal man, he is confused by his society’s simultaneous
embrace of both moral righteousness and a desire for sensation;
“Porphyria’s Lover” explores this contradiction.
