Response to Porphyria's lover

Robert Browning's 'Porphyria's Lover' is told as a dramatic monologue and is one of his most famous poems. The reader is told the story through a biased account as it is only told from the narrators perspective and not, for example, Porphyria's. The story is told in the past tense until line 57 when it changes to the present tense. It is an interesting story that starts with the narrator and what the reader can guess to be his lover or his wife meeting at a cottage. All seems to be well until there is a turn in the poem at the line 'A sudden thought of one so pale' the narrator then goes on to strangle the woman.

The title; 'Porphyria's Lover' immediately suggests either Porphyria is having an affair and the narrator is her husband or that the man describing her is her lover. Throughout the poem Browning has left many questions unanswered such as when Porphyria calls the narrator why does he not reply?
or why when Browning goes to such lengths to describe the weather he simply uses the word 'yellow' to describe Porphyria's hair? The weather described at the beginning of the poem could be seen as a forewarning because during the start of the poem there is a very dark setting which changes as soon as Porphyria arrives when she is described as making 'all the cottage warm' a more relaxed atmosphere until this again changes at line 40-41: 'three times her little throat around/And strangled her'. The way Browning has so simply put it appears to suggest that the narrator feels like he has not done anything wrong.

The poem has a consistent 'ABABB' rhyming pattern and has four stresses to a line, known as 'iambic tetrameter'.

The narrator is clearly confused and not fully aware of his actions because he describes the idea of strangling Porphyria as a 'sudden' thought and not a premeditated action.