“Porphyria’s Lover” is a disturbing story of love and murder. It begins with a lonely man sitting and waiting for his lover to arrive. His lover finally arrives through the cold and danger of a storm and she comes in lovingly besides him. As she leans towards him he begins to think of how lucky he is that she is his. In this state, he decides to reciprocate this love in an odd way. The way he reciprocates is by grabbing some of her hair and looping around her neck to strangle her. After he does this, he lies quietly besides the body and relaxes with his lover. This is a very disturbing poem because the speaker does not realise the horrible things he is doing. He views the strangling of his lover not as a heinous act of violence against
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The disturbing ideas in Browning’s “Porphyria 's Lover” display many terms of the Psychoanalytic lense including the fears of betrayal and abandonment, repression and selective perception and the id from the Freudian model of …show more content…
The speakers dear Porphyria enters his house and is very happy to see him when they hold each other close. At this point the narrator thinks to himself “That moment she was mine, mine, fair,/perfectly pure and good: I found/A thing to do, and all her hair/ In one long string I wound/Three times her little throat around,/And strangled her” (Browning 36-41). The speaker of this poem sees all the love and good of his lover and sees that, at the moment, all of this is his. In a state of insanity, he makes the decision that in order to keep this love and this good, he must hold her with him and in order to do this he must stop her from leaving. The way the speaker stops her from leaving him is through strangulation. He fears that if he gives her the chance, she will betray and abandon him by running away. His attachment to Porphyria and his fear of her abandoning him causes the speaker to take drastic measures. In the speaker 's mind, he thinks “And I, its love, am gained instead!/Porphyria 's love”(Browning 54-55). Through the murder, the author has escaped his fears of Porphyria abandoning him and their love and therefore feels he has suddenly gained the love of Porphyria.This fear driven illusion is very important to the poem and representative of fear of
The disturbing ideas in Browning’s “Porphyria 's Lover” display many terms of the Psychoanalytic lense including the fears of betrayal and abandonment, repression and selective perception and the id from the Freudian model of …show more content…
The speakers dear Porphyria enters his house and is very happy to see him when they hold each other close. At this point the narrator thinks to himself “That moment she was mine, mine, fair,/perfectly pure and good: I found/A thing to do, and all her hair/ In one long string I wound/Three times her little throat around,/And strangled her” (Browning 36-41). The speaker of this poem sees all the love and good of his lover and sees that, at the moment, all of this is his. In a state of insanity, he makes the decision that in order to keep this love and this good, he must hold her with him and in order to do this he must stop her from leaving. The way the speaker stops her from leaving him is through strangulation. He fears that if he gives her the chance, she will betray and abandon him by running away. His attachment to Porphyria and his fear of her abandoning him causes the speaker to take drastic measures. In the speaker 's mind, he thinks “And I, its love, am gained instead!/Porphyria 's love”(Browning 54-55). Through the murder, the author has escaped his fears of Porphyria abandoning him and their love and therefore feels he has suddenly gained the love of Porphyria.This fear driven illusion is very important to the poem and representative of fear of