Porphyria: A Hallucination

            Robert Browning’s poem “Porphyria’s Lover” is one of two poems in Browning’s “Madhouse Cells” monologues that emphasized the fact that the speaker is not of the right state of mind. In the case of the speaker of “Porphyria’s Lover,” he is suffering from an acute porphyria attack which causes him to hallucinate and generally lose contact with reality. All of the speaker’s actions and what he sees in the poem therefore are influenced by his disease.

            According to the article “Psychiatric complications of a late diagnosis of acute porphyria in an affected male,” by Gabriela Elizondo Cárdenas et al., “[a]cute porphyrias are a group of genetic disorders” (Cárdenas et al 366). Acute porphyria, as described in the article, has multiple symptoms such as: nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, “distention, constipation, or diarrhea. Other symptoms are insomnia, tachycardia, hypertension, seizures, hallucinations, depression, irritability, anxiety, and other acute psychiatric symptoms” which can be seen in attacks (Cárdenas et al 367). There are signs of the speaker having an acute porphyria attack starting in the very beginning of the poem. The speaker starts by personifying the storm outside in saying “The sullen wind was soon awake, / It tore the elm-tops down for spite, / and did the worst to vex the lake” (Browning 713 lines 2-4). His personification of the storm outside is the first sign of his hallucinating, a symptom of acute porphyria shown in attacks. A symptom that goes along with his hallucinating in this section is also constipation. The line “and did the worst to vex the lake” hints at a disturbance of the speaker’s stomach acids, causing constipation and also abdominal pain, more signs of an attack (Browning 713 line 4).

            Another symptom that the speaker has in the beginning of the poem is irritability and depression, which is seen mostly through his reaction, or lack thereof, when Porphyria walks through the door. His irritability and depression is shown in the use of the description “cheerless” in line eight when talking about the grate near the fireplace when Porphyria fixed the fire. His irritability is also shown through his lack of reaction towards her in lines thirteen to twenty-one as she sits on his lap and “murmur[s] how she loved [him]” (Browning 713 line 21). His lack of response to her at this point shows an irritation or annoyance that he has with her and her freedom from him.

Along with being irritable, the description of Porphyria in the beginning of the poem hints at the speaker’s nausea, something that can be defined as loathing or revulsion towards something. This sense of nausea or revulsion that the speaker has towards Porphyria can be seen in the lines 11-13: “Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,/ And laid her soiled gloves by, untied/ Her hat and let the damp hair fall,” (Browning 713 lines 11-13). The use of the wording “soiled gloves” alludes to the idea of fallen women, those who have sex outside of marriage, which would be displeasing to the speaker since he wants her for himself. The image of Porphyria letting down her hair also causes repulsion in the speaker, as loose hairs is mostly associated with whores in the time period, if a woman did not have her hair tied back she was seen as being impure, which the speaker also hints that she was not pure in line 36 when he describes at a certain moment that she was pure and that he needed to do something to keep her that way.

            Browning also uses a lot of color play and very colorful, per se, emotional diction right before the speaker decided to strangle Porphyria. First, Porphyria’s hair is described as yellow in color, which is typically associated with sunshine and happiness. The interesting fact with Porphyria’s hair being yellow and the disease porphyria is that in some cases people with the disease, sunshine can “cause lesions on sun-exposed skin” (Cárdenas et al 367). Lesions can generally be found in an area of damaged skin through either injury or disease. In the case of strangulation, which the speaker uses to kill Porphyria, lesions can be left in the damaged skin tissue. With the use of Porphyria’s yellow hair, a color directly associated with sunlight that can cause lesions on people who have porphyria, the speaker shows a third symptom of being under the influence and having the disease.

            The color green has a direct association with nausea and sickness overall. The interesting idea with the color green in this poem starts with Browning’s use of the word “yellow” to describe Porphyria’s hair color rather than just calling it blonde. Her yellow hair mixed with the fact that she emerges from a storm outside into the cabin, which water is generally associated with the color blue creates the color green and subtly hinting at the nausea and sickness that the speaker has. The projection of the color green and the link to nausea is the cause of Porphyria’s death, which can be described as a symptom as well. Vomiting is another symptom of an acute porphyria attack, and also something that can be caused by nausea. In the sense of the definition of vomiting being “to eject violently or abundantly” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the speaker’s loathing or nausea towards Porphyria causes him to vomit or “eject violently” (“Vomit”).

            Another color that is present through the diction of the poem is the color red. One way in which the color red is associated directly with the speaker’s acute porphyria attack is in the wording in line 28, “one so pale” where paleness generally is linked to a loss of blood and also a sign of sickness before someone vomits. Red is also connected to the poem in the multiple uses of the word “passion”, “heart”, and the overall action of the speaker killing Porphyria. For example, before strangling Porphyria, the speaker describes her as “Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor,/ To set its struggling passion free” (Browning 713 lines 22-23). The color red in the sense of the disease also relates to the poem in the symptoms of tachycardia and hypertension. The connection of a faster-then-normal heart beat and high blood pressure ties in with Porphyria’s death, as through strangulation both of these symptoms are present. Not only would Porphyria be experiencing these symptoms as she is being strangled but arguably the speaker would experience the same symptoms more as a result of adrenaline as Porphyria might have fought back, causing his heart rate to increase and his blood pressure to rise in the struggle.

The sense of pride that the speaker suggests gets in the way of Porphyria and his loves in the lines: “From pride, and vainer ties dissever,/ And give herself to me forever” has a connection to the color red in significance to Porphyria’s death and the disease of the speaker (Browning 713 lines 24-25). Porphyria is a word derived from the Greek work porphyra, which means a purple pigment. Purple directly relates to lines twenty-four and twenty-five in the fact that the color is associated with pride and independence, two things which the speaker expresses is getting in the way of them being together. The color purple also connects to the speaker having the disease in the fact that a symptom of the disease is purple urine or feces. The speaker’s killing Porphyria was not only in a sense, him vomiting, but also a release of constipation, the feces in the sense, was Porphyria herself as he released the binds of her hair around her neck after strangling her.

            A major symptom that the speaker had while and after strangling Porphyria is psychosis. Psychosis is generally a loss of contact with reality, which can be associated with delusions which is basically having false ideas about what is taking place or who someone is. This symptom is most obviously something that starts to be noticeable in line 36 where the speaker says “That moment she was mine, mine, fair” (Browning 713 line 36). Psychosis is shown in the line through the speaker’s repetition of the word “mine”, which is only the first instance that the speaker repeats himself. When strangling Porphyria, the speaker says “No pain felt she;/ I am quite sure she felt no pain”, again repeating himself (Browning 713 lines 41-42). The repetition of what he thinks/says is a general example of people who are seen as not in the right mind, or otherwise psychotic. The overall fact that the poem is expressed in a monologue is also something that might suggest psychosis. The speaker either might be confessing his deeds to someone, but perhaps more likely in his state is that he is talking to himself about the night, at a loss for reality. His state of psychosis can also be seen in the fact that he is seen laughing as he opens the eyes of his dead lover in line 45 of the poem.

            Hallucination comes back in as a major symptom of the speaker’s having porphyria and going through an acute porphyria attack in the end of the poem when he describes how he acts around his Lover’s dead body. The main put off to the fact that the speaker is hallucinating is the fact that he is seeing things that are not there. In line 47-48 it says “About her neck; her cheek once more/ Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss” which of course is a hallucination because Porphyria is unable to blush under his kiss because she is dead (Browning 713-714 lines 47-48). The speaker’s act of lying with Porphyria’s body shows him as believing she is still alive and willing to be there with them though the reader knows that the speaker just killed her, which is another bit of evidence for the speaker’s hallucinations.

A victim of a porphyria attack might also experience seizures. In the speaker’s killing of Porphyria, his use of strangulation would cause her body to jerk in a manner that could also be considered a seizure without the strangulation. The manner in which her body and muscles would spasm as a result of the speaker strangling her could also be arguably linked to an anxiety attack, anxiety being another symptom of an acute porphyria attack. The jerking of Porphyria’s body also gives the image of the speaker’s retching, an attempt to vomit, or eject violently in the sense of the word used previously, as his vomiting is directly linked to his strangling Porphyria. Seizures and anxiety attacks generally lead to muscle weakness, again, another symptom of an attack. Muscle weakness is alluded to at least three times in the poem. The first time is when Porphyria made the speaker put his arm around her waist. The second time can be seen in the line “Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor,” (Browning 713 line 22). The last part of the poem that gives the impression that the speaker is experiencing muscle weakness is the ending of the poem where the speaker and Porphyria’s corpse sit together and “have not stirred” all night (Browning 714 line 59).

Near the end of the poem, the speaker’s detachment with reality can be seen more thoroughly and Browning gives hints to whether or not any of what happened is real. The speaker’s fight with reality can be seen in line 55, where he says “And I, its love, am gained instead!” (Browning 714 line 55). The use of the word “its” in reference to Porphyria, and in the lack of use of gender or any other wording that would otherwise refer to her as being human is a hint that perhaps there was no woman at all. He uses the word “it” before this in lines 53-54 as well, as the speaker claims that Porphyria is with him at this point by her own free will and that he has rid her of all things he previously scorned in the beginning of the poem. The switch between the use of the word “it” and “she” or “her” shows how in and out of reality the speaker is and also hints at the fact that the speaker might not have killed anyone, but rather it was all a hallucination, a result of the battle of the disease in his mind, a disease with the very same name as the woman, Porphyria.

In the subtle hints that Browning uses to tell the reader that the speaker did not kill anyone, and in fact, there was no woman named Porphyria, he shows how the speaker is affected by a disease and how an acute porphyria attack makes him hallucinate and believe that he killed a woman. The detachment from reality shown in the ending’s mixed use of “it” and “she” in reference to Porphyria shows that the whole poem was merely a result of the speaker’s attack, a battle with his illness. At the end of the poem, the speaker says: “And thus we sit together now,/ And all night long we have not stirred,” which alludes, as previously discussed, to muscle weakness, most likely a result to a seizure or anxiety attack that the speaker had as a result of his illness (Browning 714 lines 58-59). The lines not only suggest that the speaker had a seizure or an anxiety attack, but also that he was sitting at the end of a battle with his disease under control for the time being, rather than the body of a woman. Therefore, having not actually murdered a woman by the name of Porphyria, the line “And yet God has not said a word!” goes along with the idea of a crisis of faith not in the sense that he got away with murder, but that the disease the speaker is battling causes him pain and God has done nothing about it, that he has not healed him.

           

Works Cited

"Vomit." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2015.

Browning, Robert. "Porphyria’s Lover." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 1785-2013. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W.W.  Norton, 2013. 713-14. Print.

Cárdenas, Gabriela Elizondo, et al. "Psychiatric Complications of a Late Diagnosis of Acute Porphyria in an Affected Male." Salud Mental 32.5 (2009): 365-369. MLA. Web. 2 Mar. 2015.