Yellow Hair In Porphyria's Lover By Robert Browning

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Using first person point of view, Robert Browning is allowing the reader to enter the mindset of whom the poem is named after, Porphyria’s Lover. By using this perspective, Browning is allowing the audience to experience the lover’s lust, aspiration, and regressing hope, as well as his exceedingly complimentary descriptions of Porphyria. However, there is one reoccurring abnormity of the lover’s description of Porphyria- her “yellow hair.” This term, quoted three times in the only sixty-lined poem, stands out amongst all other descriptions due to its simplistic nature compared to the other intricate descriptions. Used twice in lines sixteen through twenty, Browning writes, She put my arm around her waist, And made her smoother white shoulder …show more content…
One must wonder, however, why Browning repeatedly uses the term “yellow hair.” For it was not a case of a more proper term being absent from his vocabulary; according to Google Books, the term “blonde” was not only being regularly used, but reached its peak of usage the year Porphyria’s Lover was published, in 1842. One could, nevertheless, say that Browning’s use of the term “yellow hair” is used more in a rhyming sense since he does use the “yellow hair” in line twenty, to rhyme with “cheek lie there” from line nineteen. Why, then, does he not use a more complimentary adjective than the word “yellow?” An argument for a better world choice could be “golden” since both contain the same imagery, except with a better connotation, since the term “golden” is often associated with higher wealth and power. However, since Browning does not use either of these terms to describe Porphyria’s hair, the reader must come to understand why he did choose to use the descriptive word …show more content…
Brightness, Boldness, and happiness, are some of the traits people have used to compare with the color yellow. The sun, stars, daffodils, and sunflowers are all things one could find in nature that exhibit the color yellow in a beautiful, natural, way. Using the context of Porphyria’s Lover, it is safe to assume that the lover would describe Porphyria using any of these adjectives or imageries. Does her lover, however, find all of these descriptive words as complimentary? Take a look onto the word “boldness,” and how that word could be used to describe the changes of women at this time. The Victorian age, from which age this poem was written in, was a time of changes England. Women were taking on roles not previously allowed to have; they were becoming more outspoken of their thoughts and feelings, especially with poetry as means of communication. Although some men embraced the emergent power of women in England at this time, most found the change distasteful. This age was named after Queen Victoria, who was, ironically enough, often captured in various shades of yellow. One could therefore infer that from the prospective from the lover, Porphyria could either be seen as royalty- or as a representation of the growing power of feminism being established during this time. To come to a conclusive decision, one must look at the final use of the color yellow, used in Porphyria’s Lover. “In one
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