Porphyria’s Lover

Cards (14)

  • ‘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