Abnormal psychology/"Porphyria's Lover"

     When I think about dramatic monologues, I always return to the scene in Anne of Green Gables when Anne recites something by Tennyson in the drawing room. This is how people entertained themselves pre-media ... through the oral storytelling tradition.
     So here's my poem for the ... month (?). It's creepy, yes, but lovely, and Robert Browning creates a chilling mood. There is something in our human nature that takes perverse pleasure in being scared (exhibit A - horror movies; exhibit B - the career of Edgar Allan Poe). The why of "Why would someone write this poem?" finds part of its answer in that urge to be terrified. Browning, too, had some curiosity in exploring this villainous mind ... what we now call abnormal psychology. In real life, Browning had an enormous mutton-chop beard and an adoring wife named Elizabeth Barrett who wrote a famous sonnet professing the many ways she cared for him.

Porphyia's Lover

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.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever.
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 l knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While l debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string l wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
l am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
l warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And l untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
l propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
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 l, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said aword!

p.s. I always ask my students if the speaker of the poem really loves Porphyia. Could he love her and kill her? The answers are usually mixed. Some proclaim that true love precludes violence; others venture that it might be possible to love and hurt someone simultaneously. One or two students notice that he has some kind of mental problem in that he thinks he's fulfilling her wish. I've never strangled someone with her/his own hair, granted, but I know what it feels like to love and hate at the same time, and to care so much that you could punch someone in the face. Just a thought ...