One of Robert Brownings earliest and most unsettling poems; Porphyrias Lover has the speaker of the dramatic monologue narrate how he killed his beloved, Porphyria, strangling her with her own 'yellow string' for hair. Doing so to make her his forever. Recalling his story to establish his actions and preserve her death. The language used is simple and structured to sixty lines combined with an asymmetrical rhyming pattern, conveying an absurdity kept beneath our speakers evidently sadistic soothing tone.
The poem shows themes of sex, violence and unnecessary madness which, because of it's time would have been of great interest to the victorian readers, who were seeming fans of sensational horror tales and abandonment of all things moral, but in Porphyria, Browning turns common expectations of such sensationalism by exposing the sex between Porphyria and her lover as normal and natural with lines 'Perfectly pure and good', 'made my heart swell and still it grew' making the reader acknowledge the relationship of sex and violence, then exposing the nature of the speakers delirium.
The reader is left wondering whether to consider the deluded speakers account, and to understand condemnation of sexual misbehavior and why sexuality is most often linked with dominance and power
This is an interesting analysis. Remember to focus on the narrative elements.
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