Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover,” “the first dramatic monologue by a major Victorian to see public light,” was “originally published in the Monthly Repository for January, 1836…. As the title Browning adopted for them in 1842 suggests “”Madhouse Cells”” both texts feature speakers in extremis” (Tucker 123). Browning’s madness theme is first scene in the title Porphyria’s Lover, for it is Porphyria herself who sexually dominates her romance with the poem’s speaker (Winchell 58). In fact, the poem continues the speaker’s “extreme” state of mind from the ironic title to its opening lines through the presented weather imagery. The male speaker sullenly waits on his strong-willed female lover to appear and notices that “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” (Browning 1-4). As the male speaker is forced into a feminized role by waiting for his lover, his insanity takes the form of stormy weather. The speaker’s objectification of moods onto weather provides an inkling of the poem’s resulting actions. The “sullen” wind “awakens,” tearing down phallic elms for “spite,” suggesting his idealized perceptions are under duress.”