Porphyria's Lover Gender

“Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning exemplifies the gender ideology prevalent during the Victorian era in an unconventional way. The roles of Porphyria as a female and her unnamed, seemingly insane male lover continually develop throughout the poem. During the Victorian era, male figures were generally more dominant within society while females were expected to be passive and submissive, forming a growing power struggle as traditional roles are defied. For the majority of the poem, Porphyria does not comply with the standards of women in her time. She is portrayed as confident and controlling over her lover. However, the man eventually strangles her, an action clearly showing his dominance and reaffirming the norms of their time. Browning’s

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Porphyria takes control as early as the title of the poem. The possessive nature of “Porphyria’s Lover” suggests her dominance over her lover, the narrator of the poem. She continues to hold the majority of the control when she returns home from a feast that she attends without her lover while he sits at home, an action most representative of a Victorian woman. Porphyria continues with a series of actions that further undermine the sexual stereotypes often representative of the Victorian era when she walks in the door to her lover and “shut out the cold and the storm / And kneeled and made the cheerless grate / Blaze up, and all the cottage warm” (Browning 7-9). Her implied power over natural phenomena foreshadows the power she eventually exerts over her lover. Following this, she “let her damp hair fall,” representative of the subversion of gender roles Porphyria shows from the moment we are introduced to her. Ending the line on the word “fall” suggests a comparison between Eve and Porphyria and their