Porphyria’s Lover

• ‘she was mine, mine, fair’


  • Repetition of mine shows possession, potentially obsession

  • once she gives into her passion she loses her independence

  • BACKS UP LOVE AS A WEAKNESS
• ‘too weak for her heart’s endeavour’


  internal fight, however lost it to go see the speaker. had the agency to go see him
• ‘and made her smooth white shoulder bare’


  scandalous behaviour, blasphemous and immodest.

  Victorian Era: women were supposed to be pure and modest as if they bare their shoulder it would tempt the men into having lustful thoughts
• ‘And laid her soiled gloves by, untied / Her hat and let her damp hair fall’


  sexual undercurrent - she is aware of her sexual power
• ‘I propped her head up as before, only, this time my shoulder bore’


  roles reversed- she no longer has agency, volta was when she told him she loved him and this is the consequence
• what does the form represent in porphyria’s lover?


  it is a dramatic monologue which can be account to reveal that she has been dead since the beginning of the poem- a psychological destruction of the lover
• what does the irregular rhyme scheme represent?

  a fractured state of mind
• what are the missing words:

  ‘she was ____, ____, ____’

  mine, mine, fair
• what are the missing words:

  ‘too ____, for her ______ endeavour’

  weak, heart’s
• ‘and ____ her ______ _____ shoulder bare’

  made smooth white
• ‘and laid her ______ _____ by, ______ / Her ___ ___ let her ____ ____ fall’

  soiled gloves untied / hat and damp hair
• ‘I _______ her ____ up as ______, ____, this time __ shoulder ____’

  propped head before only my bore
• ‘and all night we have not stirred, / And yet God has not said a word!’

  she has been dead since the beginning of the poem, blurred line between life and death- God approves of what he’s done
• ‘Her darling one wish would be heard’

  he has granted her wish to be together by murder