Porphyria’s Lover and the Farmer’s Bride.

Within Porphyria’s Lover and The Farmer’s Bride, romantic love is presented differently - the narrator of Mew’s poem longs for his distant wife throughout, whereas the narrator of Browning’s dramatic monologue clearly obtains his lover’s affection, but is so obsessed with the idea of owning her that the result is her murder. The opening lines of Porphyria’s Lover immediately present the troubled emotions of the male speaker. Browning uses pathetic fallacy from lines 1-4, describing the ‘sullen wind’ and the ‘vex(ed) lake’ to mirror the emotions of the speaker – he is unsure whether his lover will ‘come through wind and rain’ to visit him. This may be due to the difference in class between the two lovers; Browning highlights the Victorian class system as the speaker ‘listened with heart fit to break’, maybe indicating that he is unsure of her intentions. Therefore, when she does arrive, his obsessive love takes over – he is no longer longing to have her near, but instead longs to keep her forever. This is different to The Farmer’s Bride, as the male narrator is shown to have already obtained his lover through marriage. However, unlike Porphyria’s Lover, the relationship is presented as distant. Even after they are first married, she is described as ‘like the shut of a winter’s day’. Mew uses the simile to show that she is cold and distant to her husband. The connotations of winter suggest that she is cold and possibly heartless, and the verb ‘shut’ indicates that she will not let him in, either physically or mentally. Romantic love, therefore, is shown to be different in these poems – although the speakers both long for their lovers, the consequences for each relationship are very different.