Porphyria's Lover

I found that while Porphyria’s Lover certainly explores the emotion of the narrator and helps explain why he murdered her, it does not go into a full analysis because it remains solely from the narrator’s perspective. However, this allows for Browning to force us into the perspective of this deranged man and see how differently he sees the world.

               One way this concept is explored is by the diction used in the latter half of the poem. Throughout the scene where her love for him is exposed, the diction becomes somewhat childish and dream-like as he casually decides to murder her: “Perfectly pure and good: I found / A thing to do, and all her hair / In one long yellow string I wound”. A few lines later it describes her eyes “As a shut bud that holds a bee”. By making the language so childish it gives the view that, for the narrator, the decision to kill her was not well thought-out, but simply something he suddenly realized would be interesting or nice—to preserve the moment, you know?

By only allowing us to see the world through his eyes, the poem becomes a morbid and frightening insight into how differently and inanely other people can see the world—and what they might do to you on a mere whim.