The Fall of the House of Poe: And Other Essays

By Phillip L. Roderick

Why was Edgar Allan Poe unable to form either emotional or sexual bonds with the women in his life? Why did he worship at the grave of his friend's mother-a woman he may have loved but who he could have never been intimate with? Why did he marry his 13 year-old cousin and what impact did her tragic death have on his literary creations? Why do the female characters in his short stories endure disturbingly sadistic punishment and torture at the hands of an almost overtly mad husband or acquaintance?

Through both a feminist and psychoanalytic analysis, The Fall of the House of Poe attempts to explain Poe's morbid treatment of the female characters in his short stories by examining his own disturbingly tragic experiences with women throughout his short life. Ultimately this book elucidates unequivocally the acute psychological motivations for Poe's profoundly psychoanalytic tales of horror and imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 18, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595839698

Phillip L. Roderick

Phillip currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and teaches English at Grand Canyon University and Glendale Community College.

Book preview

Contents

The Fall of the House of Poe

An Examination of the Psychological Nexus between the Women in Edgar Allan Poe’s Life and the Female Characters in his Short Stories

Pirates, Philosophy, and Captain Kidd

An Examination of Poe’s Rejection of Capitalism via The Gold Bug

A Gold Bug, Parchment, and Coins

Poe’s Use of Symbolism in The Gold Bug to oppose the Paper Money Debate

Death, Destruction, and Revisionist History

Bierce’s Denunciation of the Glorification of the Civil War

Exorcising the Past

How and Why Toni Morrison Utilizes the Tropes of Memory, Remembrance, and Repression in Beloved

The Fall of the House of Poe

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An Examination of the Psychological Nexus between the Women in Edgar Allan Poe’s Life and the Female Characters in his Short Stories

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This, then, is the reason why woman has a double and deceptive visage: she is all that man desires and all that he does not attain…..He projects upon her what he desires and what he fears, what he loves and what he hates.

—Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Since his mysterious and ignominious death in October 1849, there has been no shortage of biographies, studies, analysis and examinations on the life, the loves, the poetry and the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Depending on the critic, Poe was either a deranged and pathetic man, unable to liberate himself from the vices of alcohol and opium, or he was a cunningly brilliant and gifted author who was not only the father of the short story, but of the American gothic tale as well. Perhaps the truth of Poe’s existence lies in the center of these two extremes, but either way, one thing is certain: Edgar Allan Poe provided generations of scholars, critics and literature fanatics a plethora of material with which to study and analyze his legacy.

Considering Poe’s popularity as a poet and author, combined with his reputation as a controversial and often vicious literary critic, it should come as no surprise that the examination of his life by various critics and scholars is tremendously exhaustive. Understandably, the majority of literary criticism of Poe’s works predominantly focuses on his themes of the ethereal, the mysterious, the morbid and the grotesque. From The Black Cat to The Pit and the Pendulum, Poe has provided a surfeit of material for those interested in the psychology of murder and death. However, less examined is a thorough and detailed psychological analysis of the nexus between Poe’s life experiences with women—from the loss of his mother, to the death of his beloved wife Virginia—and the female characters in his poetry and short stories. Certainly critics and scholars like Leland S. Person and Eric W. Carlson have analyzed Poe’s text in which women play a predominant role in the narrative. However, unfortunately, most Poe scholars reside in one of two camps: those who explore Poe’s troubled and tragic experiences with the females he encountered throughout his short life, or those who focus exclusively on the female characters in his narratives. In this thesis, I intend to bridge the gap between these two camps by not only exploring Poe’s relationships with women, but by examining the influence those relationships had on his literary creations. I will examine the characters, events and motifs in three of Poe’s most famous short stories where females are the predominant character: Morella, Berenice, and Ligeia. In addition, embedded within this analysis I will not only examine how the principles of Sigmund Freud‘s theory of psychoanalysis contribute to an understanding of Poe‘s inspirations for these narratives, but examine these motivations and inspirations from a feminist literary criticism viewpoint as well.

For purposes of organization and clarity, I am obliged to delineate briefly how this thesis will be organized. I have divided the thesis into primarily six main unmarked sections: the first section will examine Poe‘s intimate relationships with five of the more influential women in his life, the second and third sections will explore Poe and his works from psychoanalytic and feminist viewpoints, and the final three sections will consist of an analysis of Poe‘s three aforementioned short stories. Each of the latter three sections, dealing with the particular story, will examine and explore the connection between Poe‘s life experiences with women, and the female characters in each respective short story. In addition, embedded within each story analysis will be an exploration of the dimensions of each story from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, primarily utilizing the psychoanalytic interpretation of Poe by both Sigmund Freud and one of his most zealous and devoted pupils, Marie Bonaparte. Finally, also included in the examination of each story will be an analysis of the various hypothesis and assertions of a number of noted feminist critics who have provided an alternate viewpoint on Poe‘s motivations in his works that deal with female characters.

Before delving into a detailed analysis of each respective short story, and to provide the proper background necessary for a complete understanding of Edgar Allan Poe and his obsession with women in his short stories, I wish to first examine Poe not as a literary genius, but as a human being—a human being plagued by a series of tragic lifelong experiences with women, to discover the ways in which these experiences served to influence his works. By so doing, I intend to demonstrate that Poe‘s life and his works are interconnected, since an understanding of these experiences will help to elucidate the reasons he wrote his short stories—particularly the short stories that deal with women. In addition, to reinforce my thesis and to provide both breadth and depth to the analysis, I will examine both psychological and feminist viewpoints of Poe and his works, in general terms, which will prepare the reader for the analysis to come.

Though many factors clearly contributed to the characters, events and motifs of Poe‘s short stories, both literary critics around the world as well as a number of Poe biographers generally agree that Poe‘s works were motivated primarily by experiences he had in his youth and throughout his life with women. Indeed, Edgar Allan Poe endured a series of tragic and disappointing experiences with women throughout his brief life. Though the precise psychological reasons for this will be explained in greater depth in the psychoanalytic sections of this thesis, suffice it to say for now that Poe‘s disastrous experiences with women were the primary impetus behind the three short stories dealing with women examined in my thesis: „Morella, „Berenice, and „Ligeia." As will be evident, the female characters in these three short stories coincide with the experiences he had with primarily five main women in his life: Elizabeth Arnold Poe, Virginia Poe, Helen Stannard, Frances Osgood and Helen Whitman. Poe‘s encounters with each of these women will briefly be examined here to provide the proper background necessary for understanding Poe‘s intricate dealings with women in his short stories.

Though Poe‘s time with his mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, was brief—she died when he was nearly three years old—both logic and evidence suggest that his mother‘s death was the preeminent event that affected not only his subsequent relationships with women, but motivated the creation of the women in his short stories as well. Indeed, as will be demonstrated, every short story analyzed here deals directly with Poe‘s thoughts and memories of his mother—a mother he never really knew or remembered, but nevertheless a mother who haunted his unconscious his entire life. Even in his short stories where females‘ roles in the narrative are rather obscure, Poe‘s thoughts of his mother‘s death can be prominently found in the plots and themes of his stories. For example, Silverman suggests that „The fifteen-year-old baron of ‚Metzengerstein‘ has been orphaned in early life: ‚His father, the minister G…., died young. His mother, the Lady

Mary, followed him quickly. Silverman continues, „Poe‘s tales contain many such coffin-viewing scenes, and numerous boxes, crates, and coffin-like enclosures (Silverman 16). Moreover, asserts Una Pope-Hennessy in her book Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography, the heroines in Poe’s short stories examined here are young and stricken with moral illness. The ladies Ligeia, Rowena, Berenice, Morella, Eleonora, Madeline, all die mysteriously before the eyes of heroes who are but helpless spectators of their dissolution (Pope-Hennessy 143). In addition, these female characters bear striking physical similarities to Elizabeth Poe. Before her demise at the hands of tuberculosis, or consumption as it was known in those days, one of Elizabeth Poe’s friends, a Mrs. Richards, frequently commented on Mrs. Poe’s evident refinement of manner…and the exquisite neatness of herself and her surroundings (Carlson 7). Like the characters Berenice, Morella and Ligeia, Elizabeth Poe possessed beautiful, large eyes or orbs, a protruding forehead, long flowing hair, and an exquisitely beautiful musical voice. In addition, like Berenice and Ligeia, Elizabeth Poe was a woman of great intellectual capacity (Carlson 7). Though Poe was too young to retain a physical remembrance of his mother, he relied on the testimony of those who knew her to provide him with her physical and mental characteristics that he would later weave throughout his short stories. In addition to the testimony of her features, Poe possessed a clay miniature of his mother that represented the only earthly possession he would ever receive from her. He made use of this miniature to provide him a description of his beloved mother which he would then use to formulate the physical characteristics of his female characters. Evidently Poe cherished this miniature of his mother to such a large degree that he only relinquished it to a dear friend on his deathbed.

While the death of Poe’s mother was perhaps the most devastating event in Poe’s life, no less significant was the protracted five-year illness and eventual death of his beloved wife Virginia. Much speculation exists as to the validity and even the sanity of Poe’s engagement and later marriage to his young cousin, Virginia Clemm. The extent of his love for her is unknown. Some critics and biographers argue that their love was genuine, but the body of evidence suggests that theirs was a marriage not of love, but rather of convenience. Either way, one thing is certain: Virginia Clemm Poe possessed physical and mental characteristics which had a significant influence on the female characters in his stories. Like Ligeia, Morella, Berenice and Eleonora, Virginia had a voice of wonderful sweetness, and was an exquisite singer. Furthermore, like these female characters, Virginia was A lady angelically beautiful in person, and not less beautiful in spirit. No one who remembers that dark-eyed, dark-haired young girl could ever forget her grace, her facial beauty, [and] her demeanor (Ingram 179). While

Virginia clearly possessed physical characteristics that resemble those of Poe’s most famous female protagonists, the platonic nature of her marriage to Poe itself is another indication of the similarities between Virginia and these female characters. Though difficult to fathom, the reality is that the consummation of Poe