40 Fun Facts About Porphyria's Lover

What does the speaker of 'Porphyria's Lover' wind three times around Porphyria's throat to kill her?

Her own hair becomes the weapon: he gathers it into one long yellow string and strangles her just when he feels surest of her love.

In the final line of 'Porphyria's Lover', who does the speaker note has stayed silent all night?

God has not said a word, the killer remarks, and readers still argue whether he takes that silence as approval or is uneasily waiting to be punished.

What weather sets in early on the night of 'Porphyria's Lover', before Porphyria arrives?

Rain sets in early that evening, yet she comes anyway; the speaker treats her soaked arrival as proof of how badly she wants to be with him.

Which famous children's poem first appeared in the same 1842 collection as 'Porphyria's Lover'?

The Pied Piper of Hamelin shared the 1842 volume with the murder poem, so Browning's rat-catcher and his killer came out side by side.

According to most readings of 'Porphyria's Lover', what is the speaker trying to do by killing Porphyria?

Preserve a perfect moment: he wants to stop time at one flawless instant of the evening, so he kills her and arranges her body as though she were still alive.

Which fellow poet did Robert Browning secretly marry in 1846, ten years after publishing 'Porphyria's Lover'?

Elizabeth Barrett married him in secret because her domineering father forbade any of his children to wed, and he disinherited her for it.

In 'Porphyria's Lover', what does the speaker twice insist that Porphyria never felt as she died?

Pain is what he rules out, twice over, as if persuading himself; critics read the repetition as a sign of how deluded he is.

Which poetic form, also used in Tennyson's 'Ulysses', is 'Porphyria's Lover' most often classed as?

Dramatic monologue is the label: one character, plainly not the poet, does all the talking and gives away far more about himself than he intends.

After shutting out the storm in 'Porphyria's Lover', what does Porphyria kneel down to do?

Stoke the fire: she makes the cheerless grate blaze before taking off her own soaked clothes, a job the speaker had not stirred himself to do.

In 'Porphyria's Lover', what kind of dwelling does Porphyria enter to find the speaker alone in the cold?

A cottage is the meeting place, and one reading takes that as a hint that the lovers cannot be seen together openly or in society.

What colour are the eyes that the speaker of 'Porphyria's Lover' opens again after killing Porphyria?

Blue eyes that still seem to laugh are what he claims to see, which critics treat as his own hallucination and not a sign of life.

Which five-line rhyme pattern does Robert Browning repeat from start to finish in 'Porphyria's Lover'?

ABABB runs through all sixty lines, and the repeated closing rhyme brings each group of five to a heavy rest.

Which soiled item does Porphyria lay aside after coming in from the storm in 'Porphyria's Lover'?

Her gloves are the stained detail; some critics set them against the speaker's later claim that her eyes, open in death, are without a stain.

In 'Porphyria's Lover', what kind of gathering has Porphyria left behind to visit the speaker that night?

A feast, and a merry one: she walks out on the party mid-evening, which the speaker takes as proof that her passion for him has won out.

How does the speaker of 'Porphyria's Lover' react when Porphyria settles next to him and calls him?

He says nothing, so Porphyria has to arrange his limp body against hers herself; critics wonder whether he will not respond or simply cannot.

As 'Porphyria's Lover' ends, hours after the murder, what is the speaker still doing?

Sitting with her is all he does: the pair have not stirred all night, and he talks as though the scene could simply go on.

After the murder in 'Porphyria's Lover', where does the speaker prop up Porphyria's drooping head?

On his shoulder, in a mirror image of the start, when she had drawn his cheek down onto hers; the two have swapped roles.

Which device is Robert Browning using when the wind in 'Porphyria's Lover' is called sullen and spiteful?

Personification gives the gale human moods, and critics see the speaker projecting his own helplessness onto the weather before Porphyria arrives.

In 'Porphyria's Lover', where does Porphyria place the speaker's unresisting arm as she embraces him?

Around her waist: she does the embracing for him, and the speaker reports it as if his arm were an object being moved by someone else.

Under which joint title did Robert Browning pair 'Porphyria's Lover' with 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' in 1842?

Madhouse Cells was the heading, a label that warned readers from the start not to trust either speaker's account of himself.

Which Unitarian-founded British periodical first printed 'Porphyria's Lover' in its January 1836 issue?

Monthly Repository ran the poem under a one-word title, the victim's name alone; the word 'Lover' was only added in later collected editions.

Which metre, one foot shorter than Shakespeare's usual line, does Robert Browning use for 'Porphyria's Lover'?

Iambic tetrameter, four beats to a line, never lets up, and some readers hear that unchanging rhythm as a sign of the speaker's disturbed mind.

Decades before Freud, 'Porphyria's Lover' became Robert Browning's first poem to explore which subject?

Abnormal psychology was new ground for him in 1836, and it became a habit: many of his later speakers are eccentrics, lunatics or people under strain.

Scholars who read the name in 'Porphyria's Lover' literally argue that Porphyria stands for what?

A disease is the claim: porphyria is also a rare blood disorder, so on this reading the speaker's killing of her marks his own recovery.

To which country did Robert Browning, author of 'Porphyria's Lover', move after his 1846 marriage?

Italy was home for fifteen years; the couple settled in Florence at Casa Guidi, and Browning later called the country his university.

In which London church is Robert Browning, author of 'Porphyria's Lover', buried beside Tennyson?

Westminster Abbey holds him in Poets' Corner, although he died far from London at his son's home in December 1889.

Because 'Porphyria's Lover' names no listener, which stage term do some critics think fits it better?

Soliloquy is the stricter word, since nobody in the poem hears him; Browning's later speakers usually give themselves away to a listener who is present.

Which Robert Browning poem of 1868–69, long after 'Porphyria's Lover', retells a murder trial through many voices?

The Ring and the Book runs to more than twenty thousand lines and finally brought him the renown he had chased for nearly forty years.

Which Romantic poet did Robert Browning, author of 'Porphyria's Lover', imitate as a boy by turning vegetarian?

Percy Shelley so dazzled him that he asked for the rest of the poet's works for his thirteenth birthday and declared himself an atheist as well.

Which series of eight pamphlets by Robert Browning included 'Porphyria's Lover' in its third number in 1842?

Bells and Pomegranates was meant to hold only his plays until his publisher, Moxon, persuaded him to add shorter poems already printed in periodicals.

Which Scottish periodical printed the 1818 murder tale thought to be a source for 'Porphyria's Lover'?

Blackwood's Magazine ran 'Extracts from Gosschen's Diary', a lurid tale by John Wilson, the critic better known to readers as Christopher North.

'Porphyria's Lover' is called a Victorian poem, but which monarch reigned when it appeared in January 1836?

William IV was still on the throne; Victoria did not succeed him until June 1837, about a year and a half after the poem first appeared.

In 'Porphyria's Lover', what does the speaker say keeps Porphyria from giving herself to him for ever?

Her pride, along with what he calls vainer ties, holds her back, so she loves him yet cannot bring herself to break with the rest of her life.

In 'Porphyria's Lover', what does the speaker decide about Porphyria on looking up into her eyes?

She worshipped him, he concludes, and the surprise makes his heart swell; critics point out that the idea is his alone, since she never puts it into words.

In 'Porphyria's Lover', which insect inside a closed bud does the speaker picture as he opens Porphyria's eyelids?

A bee shut in a bud is his image for her closed eyelid, which he lifts warily; critics have linked the odd simile to his fixation on her body.

Which trees does the wind tear at 'for spite' in the opening lines of 'Porphyria's Lover'?

Elms lose their tops to the gale, one of the few scraps of landscape in a poem that never states where or when it is set.

In the opening of 'Porphyria's Lover', what stretch of water does the sullen wind do its worst to vex?

A lake lies near the lonely house, and the speaker imagines the gale bullying it out of malice, an early hint of his warped view of things.

Which Shakespeare tragedy has one study set beside 'Porphyria's Lover' as a critique of male sexual possessiveness?

Othello also turns on a man who kills the woman he loves; one study sets Browning's poem beside it as a critique of male sexual possessiveness.

After loosening his grip in 'Porphyria's Lover', what does the speaker do to Porphyria's cheek?

Kisses it, and he claims the cheek blushes under his lips, one more sign that he will not admit she is dead.

Which final collection by Robert Browning, author of 'Porphyria's Lover', came out on the very day he died?

Asolando reached readers on 12 December 1889, the day its author died, after he had turned back to brief lyrics for one last volume.