Prophiria's_Lover_Essay_(Literary_Analysis)

Abhisek Mishra (MYP) Eng 1 Pre-IB Mrs.Chang 9/23/11 In his dramatic monologue, “Porphyria’s Lover”, Robert Browning describes a scene where a young Victorian woman sneaks over in the middle of a stormy night from a feast to the house of her loved one. As she cannot have a romantic relationship with her beloved as they are of different social classes, the woman wishes to die rather that live and go through her life without the one whom she loves. The woman’s loved one acknowledging the woman’s wish to die then reluctantly proceeds to murder her by wrapping her yellow hair around her neck three times and strangling her to death. Browning utilizes vivid imagery, repetition, and bias to reinforce the speaker’s reason in murdering her beloved. The author uses vivid imagery when describing the intensity of the love between Porphyria and her lover. The author described in detail the woman undressing and placing the hand of her beloved around her waist. The author also describes in great detail the horrible weather that the woman had faced to get to the house of her loved one. This emphasizes how much the woman loves the man as she would come to him in a rainy and stormy night away from all the comforts in her life just to die with him. The author also uses great detail when describing how the main speaker views the woman. The words used to describe the woman portray the woman as an angelic figure. The way the woman is described it seems as if the speaker believes that she is a very beautiful woman. This shows how much the man loves the woman also. She looks like an angel from his eyes. In addition to vivid imagery the author also has a powerful use of repetition and foreshadowing in his poem. The foreshadowing is found mostly at the beginning of the poem. The setting of the poem is set at the beginning as a dark gloomy place. There is a major storm raging outside as the woman enters the hose of her beloved. The author writes “The sullen wind was soon awake, it tore the elm-tops down for spite, and did its worse to vex the lake:” .This ominous setting instills in the reader a sense of dread and properly foreshadows the impending death. The morose setting properly precedes the inevitable tragedy that takes place later in the story. Just by reading the first few lines of the poem the reader can feel that something tragic has happened or will happen soon. Also the author’s frequent repetition of certain phrases emphasizes certain ideas. When the author says that “No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain” he emphasizes that the man is feeling bad about the crime he had just committed and is trying to convince himself that the women felt no pain upon death. All of this evidence clearly shows that the woman and man were in secretly in love against the will of their society and the woman made her beloved kill her because she could not bear to live without him. Word Count: 514