Porphryria's Love

In the poem “Porphyria’s Lover” written by Robert Browning there is a good use of irony. The speaker in the story sees Porphyria as Vain. An example of this in the story is when the speaker states “From pride, and vainer ties dissever” (Browning, line 24). When in actuality he is the one who is vain and ends up killing her. He thought that she would be too weak to give her love to him forever and then he decided to kill her so that she will always be with him. The speaker can see how much she loves him. Her love for him is shown in the poem when the speaker states “She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare” (Browning, Lines 16 and 17). The speaker soon realizes that he loves her too and yet he kills her. He kills her so that she can be with him forever and never leave him. The speaker refers to her hair several times during the story and then he uses her hair to strangle her. It was ironic how when she had put his head on her shoulder he seemed bothered but when he had put her head on his shoulder he was happy and completely in love with her. Porphryia wanted the speaker to know how much love she had for him and that she wanted to give herself to him and in the end the speaker felt he had done her wish. This was shown in the statement “Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard” (Browning, lines 56 and 57). The story did had good job of telling us what the speaker was saying about Porphryia but in the end he would do something different or feel different.