Porphyria's Lover

In the monologue, “Porphyria’s Lover”, Robert Browning portrays the narrator as a lunatic in love with her mistress, Porphyria. The madman is so deeply in love with the angelic Porphyria, she commits a heinous crime in order to keep her to herself. Browning puts the reader into the mind of the sociopath, enabling for the reader to have a better understanding of who she is, reasoning for killing her lover, and the metaphorical ties to the setting and the lunatics emotional adaptations throughout the poem. It should noted that it is never stated in the poem that the narrator is a man, so it can be questioned if Porphyria is running from her family and friends, because she is lesbian. Browning opens the play personifying a raging storm that

Even with a storm raging outside, when Porphyria enters the cottage she is not rushing in like you’d picture a girl who was soaking wet, no Browning derscibes her stride as a glide. It can be assumed that she has been here before, because she does not knock or call to inform the person in the household that she is there. The first thing she does when she walks in isn’t to take off her “dripping cloak and shawl” but she kneels by the fireplace and “made the cheerless grate blaze up.” While she can be seen as a warm and cheery woman, Browning skips steps in starting the fire such as getting wood or even lighting a match raising question to if she is something magical. The reader can also assume that Porphyria and the narrator are sexually aqquainted by letting her “damp hair fall,” because in the Victorian time period women didn’t take down their hair in the presence of people who they were not familiar with. What is catching is how she tells the narrator that she loves them. Porphyria is described as “murmuring how she loved” her mistress, because “she too weak” for what her heart desires and “to set its struggling passion free.” So then it brings into question why didn’t Porphyria struggle or fight her lover while she was being strangled? Porphyria could not free herself from her own pride and “vainer ties,” therefore she gave her life to her lover through an assisted