Porphyria's Lover: Love, Sex and Sin While it is easy to say that this poem is simply a frightening and perverse tale of a man who cannot adequately expressing his feelings for a woman is much more complex. Two main motifs of the poem, love and sin, create a sense of contradiction. Browning uses this contradiction to explore the relationship between art and morality. The title of the poem leads the reader to believe that the speaker and the woman have been in a relationship for some time. It conjures up the image of a woman secretly visiting her lover. Then, the speaker tells the reader that Porphyria “slips” into his house and “kneels down and makes the sad grill/Blaze light, and all the little house warm” (6-9). Only someone who had visited the man's house many times before would have felt comfortable enough to "slip" in and start a fire. This confirms that this relationship has continued and that it is not the first time the two have met. Throughout the poem, "love" is described in terms of a power struggle, suggesting that the balance of power, dominance, and control in the relationship between this man and this woman will never be equal; that will always be vying for free will over the other and the relationship. At the beginning, Porphyria "murmurs how she loved [the speaker]" (21). Women of the Victorian era were supposed to stifle their sexuality and ignore it altogether. The woman in this poem makes it clear that Browning did not agree with this view. Although Porphyria has not been able to completely repress her desires, as is evident from the fact that she even went to the man's house, she is attempting to exercise some restraint. Instead of screaming or even just saying at a normal volume that she loves him, she just murmurs. T......middle of paper......cheme, ABABB, CDCDD, EFFEFF, GGHHH, etc. Although it follows a certain pattern, the rhyme scheme is a bit unbalanced. It's heavy on B rhymes, D rhymes, and so on. This imbalance in the rhyme adds to the speaker's thought of imbalance. The most striking thing about the form of the poem is that there is no change in its sound at any point. When describing the tumultuous storm, use clear language. His tone doesn't change when the woman enters his house; he gives the reader no indication whether or not he is happy that she is there. The reader expects some sort of change in the language when the man kills the woman, but the poem remains in the same rhythmic pattern. All these details seem small and might even be missed upon first reading the poem, but they add greatly to the thought that the speaker might be suffering from the same kind of imbalance as himself...