Porphyria's Lover — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Porphyria's Lover
The poems
What you need to know
Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning: what it is about, its context, and how Browning uses language, form and structure.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the cluster it compares well with, with similarities and differences.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'The rain set early in to-night', 'The sullen wind was soon awake', 'It tore the elm-tops down for spite', 'When glided in Porphyria', 'Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour', 'Porphyria worshipped me', 'That moment she was mine, mine, fair', 'In one long yellow string I wound', 'I am quite sure she felt no pain', 'And yet God has not said a word!'.
Form: a dramatic monologue in one unbroken stanza with a regular rhyme scheme, and the unreliable speaker's calm control.
Context: Browning's dramatic monologues, Victorian ideas of female purity and male possession, and the speaker's madness.
Comparisons with The Farmer's Bride, Love's Philosophy and When We Two Parted.
