Russell Rutter L-SAW 2009

Both Edgar Allen Poe's poem "For Annie" and Robert Browning's poem "Porphyrias Lover" create complex connections between sex and death. In "For Annie" the masochistic narrator sees sexual passion as an agony to be endured and embraces the state that follows as an approximation to death. He is a masochist, who takes pleasure in imagining himself dead and resolves his own sexual fears by imagining a situation in which he is still and unmoving, while his lover takes on a maternal role. In Robert Browning's "Porphyrias Lover," on the other hand, the speaker is sadistic, resolving his issues by murdering his lover and rationalizing his actions in terms of an imagined post-sexual state. Both speakers believe they are moral figures and victims of their own desires, but both reveal in their diction and imagery the real sexual nature of their problems. In both poems, moreover, death becomes a metaphor for contentment whether it is forced on another or a state achieved for oneself.

The opening lines of "Porphyria's Lover" establish a tone of gloom and violence that continue throughout the rest of the poem. The wind is personified as a destructive human force, motivated by the same "spite" that the speaker will show in his murder of his lover. (Line 3) Porphyria's entrance in the sixth line begins a ten line sentence that ends with the moment she calls on the speaker. The last word of the sentence is "me"; the speaker stresses the fact that the he himself is the goal to which she is moving, and he remains the center of her attentions in the lines leading up to her murder. (15) Porphyria pays attention to her lover, attempting to soothe him in a way that suggests she is perhaps aware that he is angry with her; he, however, does not communicate with her. Porphyria is presented as the dominant partner in the relationship. It is she who places the speaker's head on her shoulder; she seems comfortable, moreover, baring her shoulder in front of him and by "murmuring how she loved me," takes on the role of caregiver. (21) The reference to the "gay feast," given the common use of "gay" at the time to describe a "fallen woman," suggests that perhaps she is a prostitute, used to intimacy with men, and that she has taken time to visit the speaker out of affection rather than for money. (27) The speaker, at this point in the poem, is clearly the weaker of the two. Even the title suggests that he is defined by his relation to her, rather than having a separate identity of his own; we know her name but never discover his own.

The speaker, however, is apparently transformed by his act of sadistic violence toward his lover, an act that he presents as something that he thinks of on the spur of the moment rather than a premeditated act: "I found /A thing to do." (37-38) The blond hair that Porphyria has used to comfort the speaker earlier becomes the means of her death, as "all her hair/In one long yellow string I wound...And strangled her." (38-41) When she is alive, the narrator seems impotent and unable to please her. He describes himself as "one so pale/ for love of her, and all in vain." (28-29) However, once she is dead, the speaker rapidly takes on a dominant role. Her kindness to him and the vulnerable position in which she places herself, thus become the cause of her death.

Once she is dead, the speaker is no longer afraid to have contact with her, taking the initiative in their sexual contact: "this time my shoulder bore/ her head, which droops upon it still." (50-51) To the speaker, she resembles a painting, still and beautiful, and he describes her from a comfortable objective distance, dwelling on the details of her features and imaging her thoughts. After her death, moreover, the speaker's language becomes unconsciously sexual, with language that could equally well describe her vagina. Porphyria has a "smiling little rosy head," and when he opens her eyes, it is a preliminary to penetrating her: "as a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids." The narrator's kiss becomes "burning," a word that emphasizes his own passion and life and creates contrast with the cold lifeless form that he is embracing. (52, 43-44, 49) Browning's poem thus becomes a sadist fantasy, where the speaker overcomes his own fears and inadequacies by killing the person he loves and inventing the specious reason that he did so to save her from herself. At the end of the poem, however, Browning shows the deep-rooted insecurity that lies beneath his speaker's confident exterior. While the speaker is suggesting that he is immune from any divine retribution for his crime, the last line is ambiguous. The speaker seems happy that G-d has not yet "said a word," but the reader is left to think about the divine vengeance that he knows is certain to happen.(61)

In Poe's "For Annie," by contrast, the narrator finds comfort in his death-like state and feels closer to his lover by imagining that it is he who has died. Though on a literal level the poem can be read simply as Poe's gratitude to the woman who nursed him through an illness, the poem has clear sexual undercurrents. The illness the speaker experiences is described as "Living," with the implication that it is life itself that he is seeking to escape from. (5) In the second stanza he describes himself as motionless, with the repetition of the word "length" suggesting that he is stretched out like a corpse. (10) In the third stanza, similarly, he repeats the word "dead." (16) The illness from which he has recovered, moreover, is described in overtly sexual terms: he pictures the "moaning and groaning,/ The sighing and sobbing...that horrible throbbing." (19-22) His diction suggests the sounds and feelings of a sexual act. This interpretation receives additional support when Poe ascribes his pain to "the torture of thirst/ For the naphthalene river/ Of Passion accurst." (34-36) Passion is something he wants to remove from his life, and he finds release from passion in the waters from a hidden "cavern not very far/ Down under ground," an image that seems to suggest his lover's vagina. (43-44) Poe seems to have undergone a petite mort, reaching a death-like state through the act of orgasm. However, for Poe it is this state, rather than any sexual pleasure, that is the object of his desires.

In contrast to Browning's speaker, who finds pleasure in dominating his lover, Poe finds masochistic pleasure in the complete powerlessness that he has managed to achieve. He describes himself as covered by her hair, presumably as she leans over him, but he manages to transform the experience into yet another fantasy of death: "drowned in a bath/ Of the tresses of Annie." (71-72) At the same time, Poe seems to infantilize himself. He pictures himself being lulled to sleep, as she "fondly caress'd him" like a mother taking care of a child at night. (74) He also is drawn to the "heaven of her breast," as if is still being fed and finds comfort from his mother's touch. (78) Annie also "pray'd to the angels/ To keep me from harm," like a mother praying over her child as she puts him to bed. (81-82) The warmth and happiness that he feels, however, contrasts sharply with the imagined response of the addressee in the next to last stanza of the poem. The fact that Poe addresses an unnamed observer directly is important. Part of his joy comes from the fact that he is observed, just as the speaker of "Porphyria's Lover" feels the need to unburden himself to his addressee. At the same time, Poe's speaker, too, seems aware of the horror that his actions will provoke in others; the addressee will "shudder to look at me/ Thinking me dead." (93-94) Finally, Poe closes his poem with images of light, comparing his state to something that is immaterial and intangible. He is now far removed from the act of sex, and associated with the heavens rather than the physical world that tortures him here on earth.

Both Browning and Poe share a common fascination with sex and death, and both poets assume the role of the speakers of each of their poems to explore their own sexual feelings and inadequacies. For Browning, the feeling of being undervalued and impotent reveals itself in a fantasy in which he murders his lover. Only when she is dead and lifeless can he assert himself sexually and initiate any intimate contact. Poe, on the other hand, finds sex itself painful and torturous, an unpleasant necessity to be endured in order to reach the passionless state that follows. For Poe, the act of sex frees him from the role of an adult male, allowing him to become an infant again and to retreat from the world. He revels in the passivity that he has found, lying still and helpless, overwhelmed with a masochistic joy that he wants others to see.

Bibliography:

"Porphyrias Lover"-

Browning, Robert. "Porphyria's Lover." Poetry Online. <http://www.poetry-online.org/browning_robert_porphyrias_lover.htm>.

"For Annie"-

Poe, Edgar Allen. "For Annie." The Oxford Book of English Verse. Bartleby. <http://www.bartleby.com/101/696.html>.