porphyria's lover Flashcards
(14 cards)
poems description
A man sit sin his cold cottage on a stormy night. Porphyria his lover arrives and makes the cottage warm and comfortable, before sitting down next to him.
He ignores her while she’s flirting with him – he seems upset with her. however he decides that she loves him and that she belongs to him– he wants to preserve the moment to he strangles her with her own hair. its clear that the speaker is mentally disturbed.
He opens her eyes and spends the rest of the night sitting next to her dead body.
form
the poem is dramatic monologue. the asymmetrical rhyme scheme (ABABB) and enjambment suggest that the speaker is unstable.
porphria has no voice in the poem – the speaker projects his own thoughts and feelings onto her life and death.
structure
events in the poem mirror each other . in the first half of the poem, Porphyria is active and dominant while her lover is passive, which is shown by the way she rets his head on her shoulder.
These positions are reversed when the speaker kills her– afterwards he places her head on his shoulder
“Only this time my shoulder bore her head”
language of possession
“that moment she was mine mine,”
he wants to posses her
the speake want her to belong to him “for ever” , but he believes that her “pride” and “vainer ties” (possibly meaning her social status)
are stopping her from being with him. He is desperate to posses her , and in death she becomes his object
language of love and violence
“blushed bright beneath my burning kiss”
juxtaposition
the speaker combines love and violence to reflect the troubled and destructive nature of his love
e.g-> “heart fit to break” and “burning kiss”
madness
speaker is delusional, he thinks that she wants to be murdered so she can be with him forever
passivity
the first half of the poem decribes porhyrias actions whilst her lover is passive. However by killing her narrator makes her complketely passive.
she also seems passive throughout her murder– perhpahs the narrator chose not to report any struggle because to him it was the perfect moment
“ the sullen wind was soon awake”
The pathetic fallacy creates a threatening, ominous atmosphere
Heart fit to break
Narrators emotionally at breaking point and hints his mental instability
She shut the cold out and the storm
Porphyria aus powerful force in the speakers life.
Her actions contrast with the miserable weather.
Yellow hair
Repetition of yellow hair shows his obsession with it. It foreshadows his using it to strangle her later in the poem.
Mine mine
Repetition is disturbing and emphasises how he wants to posses her
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss
He believes her red face is actually a blush from his passionate kiss
“Burnin kiss” juxtaposition shows the narrators love for her but also destructive
And yet God has not said a word!
Ambiguity- could be surprised that he hasn’t been punished or perhaps he doesn’t believe he committed a sin at all.
