So today we started off with one of my favourites, Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning. This is a fairly classical poem from the early Victorian era, and for a Victorian it's... very risque, involving strangulation, naked shoulders, and murder.
Anyway, he didn't see the romanticism right off the bat, so I explained the eroticism behind the poem, and that got me to thinking about power relationships, especially in the context of dominant and submissive. Porphyria's Lover is an interesting study, if you read it in the context of a very BDSM-esque love story that puts 50 Shades to shame. Of course, there's the standard, boring analysis of "the Lover is batcrap psychopath crazy", but for some reason, recalling Browning's love story with Elizabeth, that just doesn't seem to fit in my head.
Let's start off with the general plot. The narrator, or the Lover, is sitting in his cottage alone in the cold during a stormy night, when Porphyria sweeps in, removes her gloves, and starts a fire. She makes him hug her around the waist, and the Lover perceives that the woman adores him, but for some reason she cannot be with him. So, in a stroke of inspiration, he strangles her with her own hair, then arranges her corpse to sit next to him... and that's how he spends the night.
The reason why Porphyria cannot be with the Lover is up to speculation, but a common one is that she is promised to someone else. Regardless, it's rather clear that getting married is not an option for these two. I have a feeling that the party Porphyria leaves to come to the Lover is, in fact, her engagement party, and therefore the Lover sat, desolate, with "heart fit to break".
The Dominant and the Submissive
The relationship between Porphyria and her lover is a classic dominant/submissive relationship, where at a glance it is clear that the lover is the dominant one. He is the one calling the shots, he is the one who kills Porphyria, not the other way around. She submits to him, rather willingly (from his point of view, anyway), putting his arms around her waist, and she doesn't appear to flail or struggle when he kills her. She's the one who comes to the cottage, not the other way around.
But is it really? This isn't called My Lover, Porphyria. The entire title originally started out as Porphyria, indicating (perhaps because it's written from the lover's point of view) that the poem revolves around the woman. She is the one who decides to come. She is the one who bares the shoulders. In that sense, it is the submissive who is allowing the dominant to dominate.
So who holds the reins here?
Is It Love?
A lot of people find the Lover a psychopath, and that is what a vanilla relationship person would probably perceive. For someone who has a streak of something else, though, this isn't as messed up as it sounds.
Consider the sadism/masochism. If your partner is a masochist and you oblige to indulge, then the underlying psychological working is "I love you, so I shall give you pain"; if the partner is a sadist, then it is "I love you, so I will suffer the pain you give me".
Porphyria left a party ("Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain/A sudden thought of one so pale/For love of her, and all in vain:/So, she was come through wind and rain") to see the Lover. Maybe even an engagement party. Things are fairly desperate, and the fact that she allowed the Lover to grab her hair, wind it around her neck three times, and choke her (she didn't flail, even if she couldn't scream because her airway was closed off) can be interpreted as Porphyria's silent acceptance, if not plea, to rather die by her lover's hands than be married off to some random man that she does not love.
The Lover, however, is well aware that death and love don't usually go hand in hand, and therefore must justify his killing by stating twice that she felt no pain. Interesting.
The thing about these relationships is that it is very hard to draw the line between agape and eros. Is it altruistic love that motivates the Lover, or is it more carnal? I think it's a mix, like every romantic relationship out there; after all, if it was just 100% agape, one should theoretically be able to let someone go with a blessing if that person insists that that is what they want, but how many of us can do that?
Death as the Act of Possession
I think this is what confounds a lot of analysis on this poem that makes is rather blah and mundane. It is a rather weird concept, but I came across a line before where the male protagonist openly states that he'd rather kill his lover than let anyone else take her.
"So you'd forever be mine", he said.
Killing is, in a way, a claim of ownership. "Taking life" is one way to put it, subtly appending a claim of ownership on that person's life. "He took her life" is the phrase here, but when one thinks about it, it can also mean that he is now in possession of her life.
Which is probably the appeal of the classic theme of Death and the Maiden; Death claims the ownership of the very substance of the Maiden, the symbol of purity and beauty, so that no man can claim it. It is fatalistic, almost Gothic, and in my opinion, very Victorian.
In that streak, My Last Duchess is also an interesting read; although the Duchess is often attributed to Lucrezia de'Medici, she died of illness, not murder. Now, her sister, Isabella, was murdered for being in a relationship with another man, and her husband, Paolo Orsini, by strangulation. Oddly enough, according to one source, there was a fine dagger stuck to the hilt into her entrance to womanhood.
I'd totally buy that the Duchess was Isabella.
The thing about these relationships is that it is very hard to draw the line between agape and eros. Is it altruistic love that motivates the Lover, or is it more carnal? I think it's a mix, like every romantic relationship out there; after all, if it was just 100% agape, one should theoretically be able to let someone go with a blessing if that person insists that that is what they want, but how many of us can do that?
Death as the Act of Possession
I think this is what confounds a lot of analysis on this poem that makes is rather blah and mundane. It is a rather weird concept, but I came across a line before where the male protagonist openly states that he'd rather kill his lover than let anyone else take her.
"So you'd forever be mine", he said.
Killing is, in a way, a claim of ownership. "Taking life" is one way to put it, subtly appending a claim of ownership on that person's life. "He took her life" is the phrase here, but when one thinks about it, it can also mean that he is now in possession of her life.
Which is probably the appeal of the classic theme of Death and the Maiden; Death claims the ownership of the very substance of the Maiden, the symbol of purity and beauty, so that no man can claim it. It is fatalistic, almost Gothic, and in my opinion, very Victorian.
In that streak, My Last Duchess is also an interesting read; although the Duchess is often attributed to Lucrezia de'Medici, she died of illness, not murder. Now, her sister, Isabella, was murdered for being in a relationship with another man, and her husband, Paolo Orsini, by strangulation. Oddly enough, according to one source, there was a fine dagger stuck to the hilt into her entrance to womanhood.
I'd totally buy that the Duchess was Isabella.
