Porphyria’s Lover Tells All

    In Robert Browning’s poem Porphyria’s Lover, published in 1836 and 1842, the speaker tells of Porphyria and the way he killed her. This is similar to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, published in 1843. It is interesting that the second publication of Browning's poem comes so close to Poe's short story. Although it is unlikely Poe was inspired by Browning, the themes they include seem to be popular for the time. The actions that the speakers are involved in most likely speak of the time. Both speakers are presumably insane, but they are able to convince the reader otherwise. They appear to be normal characters until the action begins.

    Robert Browning’s speaker goes into detail about his murder. He says that he took Porphyria’s hair and “in one long yellow strong I wound/three times her little throat around/and strangled her”. The Lover seems to have loved Porphyria, but he then strangles her with her own hair. He knows that, at the moment, she "worships" him, and that she is currently "perfectly pure and good". In order to maintain this, he kills her. He does not want this to change so he thinks he is doing the right thing. This is obviously the last choice, but he does not want to lose the image that he has of her.  

    Edgar Allen Poe writes of a guy who kills an older man. At first, he appears to be guiltless as he says “The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead”. Poe's character has been driven mad by the old man. Once he has killed the man, he checks to make sure he is actually dead. He is relieved, and proud, that there is no evidence left behind. The speaker does, however, quickly become guilty. There has been a movie made based on this story and it focuses on some of the guilt (trailer below from :15-1:40). 

  Both speakers start out believing that their victims felt no pain and they do not believe they are crazy. They are fairly convincing at first, but slowly the reader begins to wonder. When the Lover begins to open Porphyria's eyelids and when Poe's character hears the heart beating "louder! louder! louder! louder!" The murders are the turning points of these texts because it is when the readers realize that the speakers are crazy. 

    Although the lover of Porphyria does not seem to have any guilt, he brags that “God has not said a word”, he and Poe’s character are similar. They are also quite possibly insane, but the readers do not catch on to this at first. Both also kill people that they seem to love. These are not acts on anger, but they are definitely not acts of love. This theme seems to speak for the time as Browning and Poe often write about madness and murder. Using the speaker to tell this story can hide the madness of the characters, but it is also more crazy when reading that the thoughts of these speakers. They do not believe they are mad and that makes them all the more psychotic.