Purity of Love and Death

Scott Hanley
In the 1836 poem, “Porphyria’s Lover,” by Robert Browning, a connection is drawn upon between the nature of love and death. In the poem the speaker decides to murder his love because that is the only way to preserve her in her moment of purity. “That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good:” 36-37. The speaker decides that because of his lovers actions; traveling through storm, building a fire to keep the cottage warm and bearing a shoulder for him to rest upon, “Porphyria worshipped [him];” 33. In order to preserve this moment in which Porphyria loved the speaker entirely, she is murdered in an attempt to conserve her as she was for all eternity. A relation is made between love and death here and is seen to be acceptable as the last line in the poem indicates, “And yet God has not said a word!” 60. The murder takes place halfway through the poem with the latter half portraying the speaker and his dead lover sitting together. A link can be concluded from this poem; to capture a person in his or her purity, one must die in that state to be forever imprisoned as so.

In contrast to this notion of death preserving ones emotions in time, the revised 1842 poem, “The Lady of Shalott,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson portrays a women jailed in life who finds a liberty shortly before the inevitable curse of death. Love caused both women to meet their certain deaths and both experienced a kind of purity through out their lives; purity was accomplished after death in Porphyria’s lover’s case and before death in the Lady of Shalott’s case. In her tower, the Lady of Shalott felt entangled in her own weaving. She is advised to stay, “She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay….She knows not what that the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she,” 39-44 One could argue that the Lady of Shalott is in her purest nature through out the first half of the poem because she has been locked in a tower away from the impuritys and adulterations of society. While the Lady of Shalott felt unsatisfied in her pure form, being stuck in her fortress of solitude, “I am half sick of shadows,” 71, Porphyria’s lover would also no doubt have felt unsatisfied in her purest form because she was murdered and therefore not alive.

When the curse of death fell upon the Lady of Shalott, Lancelot was quoted, “She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott.” 169-171 At the end of both poems there is reference to God which the reader can interpret as a statement of the condition of death when love is involved. Both characters in the poems meet there end because of love. The women in Porphyria’s lover is murdered by her lover whom she clearly loves back, and the Lady of Shalott leaves the tower knowing fully she will die, but her love for Lancelot is too strong. The connection of love and death is made in both poems and, with the mention of God, it is seen to be acceptable. Acceptable in the sense that God does not do anything to demonstrate his detest with the murder in Porphyria’s lover, and the Lady of Shalott is finally seen by Lancelot and he asks God to take care of her soul.

Both poems deal with love and death and a form of purity that arises from different cases in each epic. Porphyria’s lover is in her purest nature when she is dead and the Lady of Shalott is in her purest nature when she is alive and stuck in her tower.