My First Poem Interpretation

Interpretation of  Porphyria's Lover
Photographer: Richard Avedon
Magazine: The New Yorker
Date: November, 1995

From: Alafoto.com 

On my second blog for my ENG 102 class, I am suppose to read a variety of poems and pick one that stands out for me. The poem I have chosen for my blog is "Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning. 

Porphyria's Lover is a dramatic monologue in which a man decides to strangle his wife in a cruel manner. Even tough, I was in shock when i realized that he had killed the woman he loved, I liked it so much because poems are usually romantic, descriptive, narrative but this one was dramatic and that is what makes it interesting. There is romanticism at the beginning of the poem, but all of the sudden the poem turns into an assassination and this is when the poem becomes more appealing and I felt curiosity about the end. Different ideas came to mind about this poem, I thought that this man was dead and that the women, who was alive was suffering due to an illness. However, the fact that he decided to stop the life of another person makes believe that he did not believe that god existed. Besides being atheist, I also thought he was a psychopath and fetishist. On the other hand, when the speaker says "to-night's gay feast", I became confused, was the speaker actually a woman and not a man? or was this phrase was used just as comparison?

In the poem, we clearly see that her name is Porphyria. This is also the name given to a serious and terminal illness in the blood. The speaker repeatedly makes allusion to her illness within the poem, an example is "too weak to set her passion free". People with this illness experience a horrible death, this is why I believe he decided to help her dying as an act of love. Clearly, Robert Browning is giving a different sense of love.

I have chosen this image because it clearly represent "Prophyria's Love". It Portrays a women with a rope around her neck and her body giving us a visual way on how she die; But it also shows a good image of a women suffering. The skeleton dress as men underneath her shows two think. One is the love and feeling that the men had for the women by trying to get her out the rope. And also, that he always had her in his mind and now that their are together their love will be forever. This feelings can be seen in one of his lines "And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred, And yet God has not said a word!" This also show his atheist side, by challenging god what he had done in the past. 

This poem stuck so much in my head that the first thing I did once I read it, was to emailed to my wife. I told her in the email how hard it is to see the person you love suffering and even harder is to know that the only way to stop that suffering is by killing them. This poem really put me to thing and compare this poem with the same feeling a person's feel when they have their love one's in a state of comma.