Porphyria's Lover

'Porphyria's Lover' is another one of Robert Browning's more famous poems. In fact, before this class, it was the only one of Browning's poems that I had read. Like 'My Last Duchess', it is a dramatic monologue, but still with a rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme is ABABB for the most part. The person the speaker is talking to is unknown. He could simply be musing to himself about what has happened. The meter is 8 syllables, so, for the most part it is in iambic octameter.

As for the main plot, in the most literal taking, our speaker tells us the story of what recently happened between him and Porphyria. The first five lines have the speaker describing the weather as rainy, windy, and generally dismal. I keep summoning up images of Wuthering Heights. The next four lines describe Porphyria coming into the cottage and getting warm. The next 16 lines explain rather sensually about how she acts towards the speaker. The next lines he starts to think about where they and thinking about the situation they are in and how much love she has for him; how she worships him. The next lines talk about how he takes her hair and strangles her with it. Then, after she has breathed her last breath, he continues to keep company with her in a rather disturbing scene as he opens her eyes, toys with her hair, sits her next to him, and even kisses her dead, lifeless body. He leaves us with the lovely line of “And yet God has not said a word!”.

In the beginning, the weather reflects the speaker's own mood. Then, Porphyria comes. Even though she's soaking wet and cold, she lights up the mood and brings a kind of cheerfulness. It can be speculated that she is married to a wealthy man by the line “To set its struggling passions free/ from pride vainer ties dissever,/ And give herself to me forever.” There is also the line later, “ That moment she was mine, mine, fair,/ perfectly pure and good:..” He then goes off the deep end and decides that the best thing would be to keep her all to himself, to keep her pure and good, and to have her to brighten his cottage and mood forever more.

The way he decides to kill her puts a whole new perspective on the idea of a 'crime of passion.' for those of you who aren't really sure what exactly a crime of passion is, think of something that would require a lot of 'passion' for lack of a better word, to do – stabbing, strangling, etc. not only is the pseaker strangling his lover, but he's strangling her with her own hair. Then he continues on as if nothing is different, even though he has to prop her head on his shoulder, physically open her eyes, and you can bet when he kisses her she won't be kissing him back. Unless we're watching some extra disturbing episode of Supernatural. To top it all off, as he sits with her all night, he muses on the fact that God has not said a word, so obviously, he hasn't done anything wrong, right?

Religion vs. Spirituality

            When reading The Moonstone you quickly begin to see (or at least you should be seeing) plenty of things throughout that could be seen as opposites or juxtapositions; subjective knowledge vs. objective knowledge, belonging vs. otherness, men vs. women, and the list could go on. However, one of the juxtapositions that really caught my eye, especially in the end of the story, is the idea of religion vs. spirituality. In the novel this drastic difference is portrayed by Godfrey Ablewhite and Miss Clack for religion and the Indian trio for spirituality.

            Despite Miss Clack constantly referring to Godfrey as her ‘Christian hero’, throughout the novel we see that he simply cannot fill those shoes. In the beginning we are led to believe that he is at least an okay guy; he is well educated, a philanthropist, helps lead women’s charity groups, and may actually really love Rachel (though we know we were all rooting for Franklin). The evidence against him culminate throughout the novel as we see that the charities he is helping with are not that charitable, he has been embezzling money from a boy he has care over, he wanted to marry Rachel for the money, and to top it off, he is the one who truly stole the Moonstone! He uses his ‘Christianity’ as a cover for all the deplorable things he does. If he were not involved as he was, he would not have the opportunity to misuse the amount of trust placed in him.

            Miss Clack seems to be more consumed with religion and gossip than anything spiritual. She makes sure that she always attends church. She always leaves obnoxious pamphlets all over her friends’ and family’s homes in an attempt to save their immortal souls. She has no drama in her life and enjoys snooping into others at any given moment. She also makes sure that she helps out with charities, even though her main one is not that charitable. All the children have plenty of pants (too many actually), but the men have none and have to spend more money that they do not have to buy more, or miss work because they have no pants. Then we top that wonderful character off with a plentiful helping of piousness.

            At the end of the novel when we get to see the true sacrifice that our Indian trio went through is when we get a real picture of real spirituality. These men sacrificed their rather important stations in their society to act as performers to get closer to the precious relic. They sacrificed the comforts of their homeland. These misfortunes they whole heartedly accept for the good of their religion. Self-sacrifice was a necessity for the good of their religion. Now they will have to part ways and wander the land as pilgrims for the rest of their days, even though they succeeded in their quest. They were well aware of the consequences when they set out for the moonstone. None of this mattered. Could we ever see Godfrey or Drusilla (Miss Clack) ever going to these lengths for something spiritual, even though they parade themselves around as such spiritual people?