Porphyria's Lover: Key Poetic Devices

Consonance and Alliteration

Consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds in consecutive or nearby words. Browning makes heavy use of consonance throughout “Porphyria’s Lover,” and he often does so through the specific technique of alliteration (uh-LIT-uh-RAY-shun), in which sounds repeat specifically at the beginning of consecutive or nearby words. Consonance and alliteration often interweave in the poem, as they do in the opening lines, which feature a complex patterning of S, T, and W sounds:

The rain set early in to-night,
   The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
   And did its worst to vex the lake:
   I listened with heart fit to break.

Closer inspection also reveals repeating L, N, and R sounds. However, the S, T, and W sounds are the most pervasive, and attending to them helps reveal how consonance and alliteration interact. In the second line, for instance, Browning uses the S sound both to create alliteration between “sullen” and “soon.” Yet the S sounds at the beginning of these words also form a consonant relationship with the S sound in “was.” The same can be said for “wind” and “was,” which alliterate together and yet also form a consonant link with the W sound in “awake.” The sonic complexity demonstrated in these opening lines gives Browning’s language a sensuous quality that mirrors the sensuality depicted in the overall poem.

End-stopping and Enjambment

End-stopping refers to when a poetic line ends with a forced pause. By contrast, enjambment (en-JAM-ment) refers when one poetic line flows into another without stopping at the end. Browning manages these two techniques in a way that subtly reveals the speaker’s mental instability. To begin, let’s consider the poem’s opening five lines:

The rain set early in to-night,
   The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
   And did its worst to vex the lake:
  I listened with heart fit to break.

Each of these lines is end-stopped. The end stops help control the pace of the verses, and they also give added emphasis to the rhymes, thereby drawing attention to the orderly patterning of the rhyme scheme. These features give the speaker’s opening words an overall impression of balance and control. However, the moment Porphyria enters the poem, the regular end-stopping ceases and enjambment begins to encroach (lines 6–9):

When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

This passage features alternating enjambed and end-stopped lines in a way that upsets the balance of the previous lines. Note, for instance, the awkward and unexpected stop that occurs just before the final word in the first line. With Porphyria’s arrival, the speaker is clearly no longer fully in control. Enjambment continues to throw off the speaker’s measure until after he kills Porphyria and finally regains control at the poem’s end (lines 58–60):

And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!

Personification

Personification refers to instances where a poet invests an inanimate object or abstract concept with human-like attributes or feelings. Browning makes surprising use of personification in “Porphyria’s Lover.” The reason it’s surprising is that the speaker personifies Porphyria herself. This may sound strange, since personification typically involves projecting human-like attributes on to nonhuman animals or objects. But arguably Porphyria loses her status as fully human after the speaker strangles her. At this point in the poem, Porphyria the woman is reduced to a lifeless corpse. And yet, the speaker regards her body as if it’s still alive and responding passionately to his touch. Consider the speaker’s description of Porphyria immediately following the strangulation (lines 46–52):

And I untightened next the tress
   About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
   I propped her head up as before,
   Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
   The smiling rosy little head

The two lines in bold above represent a perverse form or personification. In the first line, the speaker imagines poor Porphyria still capable of blushing in reaction to his passionate kiss. The speaker’s use of personification becomes creepier still in the second line highlighted above. There, he characterizes Porphyria’s “rosy little head” as somehow “smiling,” as though it’s exuding an aura of general happiness and contentment—emotions Porphyria herself can no longer feel.

Repetition

Browning uses several types of repetition in “Porphyria’s Lover,” but they all share a common function: to reveal the mental disturbance that hides behind the speaker’s facade of reasonableness. The speaker is clearly an educated man who has probably studied classical rhetoric. But every time he busts out a fancy-sounding technique, the effect is more menacing than impressive. In line 36, for example, the speaker declares: “That moment she was mine, mine.” The use of “mine” twice in quick succession exemplifies a type of repetition known as epizeuxis (EH-pih-ZOOK-sis). Unfortunately, knowing the technique’s name doesn’t make its use here less creepy. The same can be said of lines 41–42:

No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.

Here, the speaker uses a more sophisticated type of repetition known as chiasmus (kee-YASS-muss), which involves the repetition of words or concepts in reverse order. Yet the rhetorical flourish of flipping “no pain felt she” into “she felt no pain” cannot distract from the speaker’s self-delusion—she obviously felt pain! A final example appears in lines 51–52:

Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head

This utterance both begins and ends with a reference to Porphyria’s head, which makes it an example of epanalepsis (eh-PAN-uh-LEP-sis). Once again, the sophisticated rhetoric cannot conceal the menacing nature of the image being presented.

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