Psychosis is defined as a loss of contact with reality, usually including false beliefs about what is taking place or who one is (delusions) and seeing or hearing things that aren't there (hallucinations). So, by that definition, I cannot really classify this guy as crazy. I might say that he is obsessed, to say the least. The evening starts of with Poryphia expressing her love:
Murmuring how she loved me—she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever (1308).
Porphyria paints a picture of an uneven love match. It seems that she is in love with a man that her "vainer" sect does not approve of. Maybe her family is rich and already has he promised to another. This would explain the her lover's desperate desire to come up with a way to keep the two of them together:
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her (1308).
In a desperate attempt to keep Porphyria with him forever, her lover kills her. Why? To keep her in that moment with him forever. I understand why he did it, not that I would have used the same means, but I can see why he did it. However, I do have one question...why didn't they just elope?
Deborah,
ReplyDeleteGood poem to discuss, and some good attention to the quoted passages (and nicely chosen illustration, although not quote the method or relationship from the poem). Good question at the end—I think it is a good topic for critical thinking to consider why an author would shape events toward an "unhappy" ending when there were ways available to create a "happy" resolution. Assume the author gave the ending he wanted, and consider why he Browning might have wanted to create this one.