porphyria’s lover and the farmer’s bride present contrasting perceptions of women
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Compare how poets present women in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and one other poem from the Love
and Relationships Anthology.
Porphyria’s Lover and The Farmer’s Bride present contrasting perceptions of women. Both poems
explore a failed relationship from a male perspective with the absence of a female voice, through
their similar use of dramatic monologue. While Porphyria’s Lover presents the woman of the poem
as impure, the word ‘Lover’ in the title suggests a sexual and possibly illicit love affair;’ The Farmers
Bride in contrast presents the woman as an innocent and pure bride, victimised and angelic.
However, despite this both poems explore the balance of relationships and female submission, with
social standards of the 19th Century.
In The Farmer’s Bride, Mew uses similes to clearly expose the relationships between men and
women. The girl remains powerless, and nameless throughout the poem, simply a possession of the
Farmer as shown by the repeated pronouns of ‘she.’ This presentation of women is also
emphasised in the short 4 line stanza in which the farmer expresses his feelings of rejection. Similes
comparing the girl to ‘a leveret,’ ‘a young larch tree,’ and ‘wild violets’ suggest she is not fully
matured and without adult strength, which may reflect the 19th century views of women in society,
particularly relevant to the rural setting where women’s only role was to bear children. The
references to nature also show Mew’s criticism of the increasing industrialization of the countryside
and how it was being used for purpose, without protecting its fragile beauty, in the same way the
young girl is used by the farmer. Additionally the use of sibilance within this stanza echoes the
whispered description of the girl and the little information the reader learns about her.
Similarly, In Porphyria’s lover the woman is voiceless but Browning deploys pathetic fallacy to
present Porphyria and her presence. Porphyria’s impact on the beginning scene of the poem is
immediate, shutting out the ‘cold’ and the ‘storm’ and making the ‘cheerless grate blaze up.’ This
contrast of cold to warm demonstrates how the speaker’s mental state is changed by her arrival
and the symbolism of the storm outside and the adjective ‘cheerless’ represent his struggles and
disarray when she is not there. This presentation of his dependence on Porphyria is striking as
typical Victorian relationships meant women were dependant on men both financially and socially.
While both women in the poems are not shown as having physical strength, they are dominant in
their ability to control the male narrator’s emotions. The theme of lust is present in both poems, in
Porphyria’s lover Browning deploys alliteration to express the speaker’s extreme passion and
longing for his lover in the description ‘blushed bright beneath my burning kiss.’ The adjective
‘bright’ contrasts the lifeless state in which the narrator has left Porphyria , and the use of
oxymoron in ‘burning kiss’ present this sexual desire as dangerous, as the verb ‘burning’ has
connotations of pain and danger while ‘kiss’ has that of love and pleasure. The narrator, despite the
ordered structure of the stanzas, does not feel fully in control as Porphyria lets her ‘damp hair fall’
and ‘smooth white shoulder bare,’ symbols of her openly flaunting her female sexuality while he
remains passive in the situation This uncontrollable sense of desire for his lover, eventually turns
the narrator delusional and his psychosis can be linked to the rare disease and woman’s name in
the poem: ‘Porphyria,’ which can result in such mental illness.
Similarly, in The Farmer’s Bride the yearning tone Mew adopts in the poem is suggestive of the
farmer’s sexual desire. While the woman is described as ‘a frightened Fay,’ and a hushed aspect of
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