GCSE English language/literature: writing about effects. (One)
Top Tip!
- Be specific!
- Avoid generalisations and vagueness.
- Never just say, ‘this makes us want to read on.’
- Read like a WRITER!
Let’s look at a specific opening from an AQA Anthology poem, Porphyria’s Lover and consider how it AFFECTS the reader’s expectations about what is to follow and who is addressing us behind the calculating anonymity of the ‘I’ pronoun. Think about the CONTEXT and the POV. And remember that first-person narrators are notoriously unreliable, sometimes because of their age or understanding, sometimes, as in the case of Browning and Agatha Christie’s famous novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, entirely deliberately.
The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning.
Look at the apparent ordinariness of the opening line, ‘the rain set in early,’ as it draws our attention to the physically uncomfortable environment of the poem and to what the speaker is specifically observing or drawn to observe. . The adverb ‘early’ communicates this evening is different from other evenings and is therefore worthy of comment. When we reread the poem we realise the irony of this foreshadowing, which surely suggests the murder of Porphyria is premeditated and not a sudden, spontaneous action of a ‘thing to do’ at all.
When the speaker begins to animate the weather we are alerted to a world of disorder and even chaos. This technique of animation is specifically linked to disruption and conflict and at this point, we are unsure why these effects are necessary and what they contribute to our understanding of the poem. We might assume that this use of pathetic fallacy could reflect the state of mind of the speaker who notices what he feels inside himself and projects these feelings onto the outside world. The evident violence of the animated weather generates a dismal, even macabre effect. Nature is disturbed as it is ‘sullen’ and full of ‘spite’, even intent on vengeance through vexation, but what for we wonder?
In case we are too soon alerted to the mentally unhealthy state of the speaker, he misdirects our assumptions at the end of this first quintain with the declaration of his apparent vulnerability or even victimisation. ‘Heart fit to break.’ How we wonder can such vengeful weather be a projection of such a sensitive, noble and vulnerable speaker?
We might then discuss the subversion of male/female roles, with the activity of Porphyria contrasting with the apparent passivity of the unnamed ‘lover’ indicting a possibly socially unequal, illicit relationship that dooms the nurturing Porphyria as she underestimates the veiled violence of the stealthily predatory and apparently patient, ‘lover.’ Note how the title would have subjected the figure of Porphyria to disapproval from a Victorian audience as the word ‘lover’ has clear connotations of a sexual, if not adulterous relationship. Yet as we read the poem our sympathies shift as the benevolence of the murdered young woman is contrasted to the callous, calculating observations of the speaker.
