Porphyria's Lover Setting

In life, nothing can be perfect. People try to catch the perfection, and always feel there is a missing part of life or their heart. People are never satisfied about what they have; no matter how successful they are or how luck they are. Even you get more but desire more. Sometimes, people try to fill the empty feeling in their heart without scruple, like the narrator in the poem “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning. Porphyria’s love is the narrator’s missing part; he tries to get her love by killing her. Their love is discouraged by their social status. Killing her and keeping her body however, is not a way to find the psychic completeness, even making him feel emptier. In the poem “Porphyria’s Lover”, Robert Browning uses symbolism, setting,

The narrator describes the behavior of Porphyria after she entered the room, “ She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate, Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;” (7-9). This is a description of the arrival of Porphyria turns the room from the cold into a warm place. Such a description of his love to her is very deep. Porphyria in his heart is so important that once she entered the room he felt warm. In the warm room, there is an ambiguous atmosphere surrounds them. Additionally, the narrator states that “She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare, And all her yellow hair displaced,” (16-18). The narrator said the room was warm enough that Porphyria could take off her clothes. All of these setting makes the readers realize this is a romantic moment for the narrator and Porphyria. Suddenly, instead of having sex, the narrator killed Porphyria in the end. The contrast between setting and the denouement just like the conflict between their social

The use of conflict and analogy helps the reader understand the action of the narrator after killed his lover. These literary devices shows the reader the conflict between the different social status; the conflict between the setting and the denouement and the conflict of the narrator and himself. All of these are because of love, which is the narrator’s missing pice. According to Lacan, “psychoanalysis alone recognizes this knot of imaginary servitude that love must always undo again, or serve.” (508) Love plays a significant role in human life. Go through the human life, love always be somone's missing piece. Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory of feeling broken and incomplete, and the journey to find the missing piece in life. In this poem, there are well