The genius of Browning in Porphyria's Lover
... Browning grants certain credibility to the narrowness of the speaker's viewpoint in that it displays the most extreme result of lifelong subservience to the world's own confining expectations. Introducing nature's unpredictability at the onset of the poem, Browning suggests the detrimental effect of an outside force and foreshadows the speaker's equally spiteful gesture: "It tore the elm-tops down for spite, / And did its worst to vex the lake: / I listened with heart fit to break" (3-5). Here the speaker muses about his apparent powerlessness to weather's force, the symbolic obstacle of the outside world that keeps Porphyria away. Importantly, "When glided in Porphyria" (60), the narrator's weakened heart has already been broken many times if not once, both by social restrictions on his love affair, and the subsequent limitations on Porphyria's love for him. Therefore, the speaker's distance from the world outside becomes also an inability to respond to Porphyria upon her entrance; he sits in the cottage wanting only her love, without need of explanation, so that when he is spoken to, "no voice replied" (15). Soon, Porphyria's gift of comforting warmth within the storm exacerbates his obsession to the point of insanity-driven violence. Paradoxically, the warmth of Porphyria's love appears to the narrator to be so temporary that it incites his own predominant passion. Innocently seeking to comfort her afflicted lover, Porphyria forces him to embrace her and makes "her smooth white shoulder bare" (17). Abruptly, Browning's scene of chilling weather interrupted by warm companionship becomes a picture of overt sexual expression amidst the cottage's roaring fire. The initial presentation of traditional domesticity, a comforting shelter from a raging storm, turns quickly now to unstoppable, passionate pace. The reader cannot presume to know whether Porphyria's expressed love for the speaker is true; what is important is that Browning's speaker sees murderous action as the only way to preserve the moment and eliminate social barriers. The speaker's lust for precedence over other forces in Porphyria's life evidently leads to her fatal end. His ecstasy at her new, momentary devotion leaves him at the gate of attaining his dream, but without any sense of trajectory: "Porphyria worshipped me; surprise / Made my heart swell, and still it grew / While I debated what to do" (33-35). On the instantaneous realization of Porphyria's love, the speaker's requited passion and rational mind still stand separate to some extent. However, it is not long before his heated desire to keep her "Perfectly pure and good" (37) lead him to find "A thing to do" (38). The narrator's being situated above social law, if but only once, proves to be so stunningly empowering that he loses rational ability to decipher anything but a self-centered whim. The complacency of Browning's speaker in carrying out his murderous deed ironically reflects the complacency of society towards the sexual, aesthetic, and sensual pleasures of life. Exhibiting no definite regret beyond the weariness of having taken what was the only available path, the speaker points to the painlessness of his lover's necessary death: "No pain felt she; / I am quite sure she felt no pain" (41-42). However, Browning's presenting the reader with an unreliable narrator serves only to intensify the psychological effects of his unrequited love, and says nothing for the supposed convictions and yearnings of Porphyria. While Porphyria finds her way to the speaker through the symbolically oppressive weather of the outside world, the speaker kills her upon realizing not only society's restrictions on their relationship, but Porphyria's own unwillingness to love him fully but for the present moment. He proclaims somewhat vehemently, "Porphyria's love: she guessed not how / Her darling one wish would be heard" (56-57). Browning presents the justifiability of the murder only through the stricken eyes of the narrator; while the poet points to social confines as the cause of the speaker's insanity, he does not discount...