Obsession Essay on Porphrias 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
"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. 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. One can infer that she had come to him from a party when the speaker says "tonight's gay feast. Porphyria knows that he needs her to care for him but does not want that kind of life anymore. "All in vain" shows how the speaker has very little reality left in his mind. " He realizes that to keep her he must kill her. Those words show how the speaker is below Porphyria and how his inferiority may lead him to try to be her superior. 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. The speaker's need for Porphyria in his life led him to kill her and to have him by her side forever. He loved her to a certain point and past that point she infested his mind. "In one yellow long string I wound three times her little throat around,/And strangled her. By "murmuring" she loses the pride she talks of.
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Robert Browning,
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helps reader,
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tonight's gay feast,
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tonight's gay,
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