How Far Is Porphyria’s Lover a Love Story?

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How far is porphyria’s lover a love story? The story of porphyria’s lover by Robert browning is a dramatic monologue about an insane killer not named who kills his lover in a supposed act of passion. This is not a love poem as it is not the story of two lovers but the language suggests a wanton woman not a conventional tale of two innocent lovers in a story unrequited love. The poem explores how far there love goes but the first person narrator’s unreliable perspective is that it was a crime of passion, the rhyme and the setting all says that this is not a true love poem as the convention are not all what they should be. The setting at the beginning of the poem is not that of a love stories as it is not the lovely summers say of many of the conventional love stories but a storm of raised emotion. The setting is a personification the narrator’s attitude and is foreshadowing for the death. This personification continues when she “shut the cold out” and this shows how she affects the character, this although more along the lines of a love poem is still not the traditional setting for love as this is now lust. Porphyria is described as a wanton rather than beautiful, gorgeous etc. as you may see in other poems, this is not correct if this was to be a love poem. We see this lust rather than love in the way she is said to have “yellow hair” and how she “makes her shoulder bare.” we can sense how there is a frustration as he quite clearly want more than the to be his lover but to be a together, this is a convention of a love poem but the way she acts makes it more of a story of lust. The ABABB rhyme scheme is pleasant like a love poem and gives a rhythmic up beat approach to the relationship; this is the antithesis of the way that the poem unfolds as rather than having the expected denouement that you might get in a normal love story. The use of the present tense is
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