CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRID:;E A RARE AND RADIANT MAIDEN THE PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN THE WOfl.KS OF. EIGAR ALLAN POE a thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts with Honors in .. English by Susan Injejikian August, 1980 The thesis of Susan Injejikian is approved: California State University, Northridge Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind is the most melancholy? Death -- was the obvious reply. 'And when,' I said, 'is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?' From what I have already explained at some length, the answer here, also, is obvious -- When it closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestion­ ably, the most poetical topic in the world -- and equally it is beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such a topic are those of the bereaved lover. Edgar Allan Poe The Philosophy of Composition Vol. 14, p. 201 iii (1) Whether or not there lies any truth in the popular myth of Edgar Allan Poe's life, one of obsc~re poverty, plagued by debt and tormented by dependence upon drugs and drink,1 Poe seems to have been blessed with a rare variety of soul and personality that gained him the love of many women and allowed him diverse and rewarding relations with members of that sex. However, many of the women who were dearest to him -- including his mother, his foster mother, and his young wife -- died painful, lingering, premature deaths. Thus, among other associations, Poe came to equate the image of a beautiful, beloved female with something transient, insubstantial, and inevitably taken away too soon. This motif recurs throughout the body of Poe's works, from the simplest lyric to the most elaborate Gothic horror tale. To what extent Poe drew upon his personal biographical experiences for his artistic visions of women can only be speculated upon. But it is plain that he shares, with male authors of every age and culture, an awareness of the eternal struggle between the archetypical images of Woman: virgin and temptress -- Aphrodite and Mary. But more than many writers, he uses this struggle as an allegory for even greater disparities: body and soul, soul and intellect, reality and fantasy. It is useless to attempt to gauge Poe's literary attitudes toward women in terms of Transcendentalism, or any other American literary movement. His poetry, and to a lesser extent, his fiction, are unique in that they rely very little on the attitudes of the outside world.2 Out of space and out of time, Poe's thought was more that of the Southern cavalier than the Yankee cynic. He could easily {2) be classified as a Romantic, though his style bears more resemblance to German Romanticism than to the English or American variety.) Never- theless, let us explore the evolution of the female image in literature just prior to and during Poe's time. The theme of seduction and the popular figure of the alluring but virtuous young maid began in the Pastoral tradition of Renaissance poetry and became most popular in the 18th century, with the novels of Richardson and the dramas of Wycherly.4 But by the beginning of the 1800's, middle class morality had thoroughly permeated popular literature, and soon Victorianism prevailed. Bawdry went out of style, at least in books, and the seduction theme was no longer fashionable. The solution, as Edward H. Davidson suggests, is the concept of death as a euphemism for seduction: ••• an age which eschews one representation of Eros will find a substitute Eros. If a middle-class and commercial morality prevented the exposition of seduction in life, it found an equally titillating theme in "death as seduction." Or, to state the idea in other terms, if the woman could not be presented seductively in life, she could be displayed in erotic postures and in seductive disguises in death. Death became a means of enticement: death was the great seducer, and the "ruined" girl was laid out for burial in the landscape of ruin and decay." 5 It is easy to understand the popularity of the theme of death in Poe's time. Americans were more complacent in the first few decades of the 19th century than at almost any other time. The Industrial Revolution and the recent advances in medicine had freed them from the terror of death that had been omnipresent in the preceeding century. Not until the Civil War did death once again become such a common (J) reality to Americans. Hence the romance and dramaturgy of death -- of fictive death, at least -- was avidly consumed by the reading audience of the day.6 The concept of the unity of love and death was not entirely novel. The French, calling the orgasm "petite mort," knew of the strange, ecstatic fulfillment of dying, and conversely, that each moment of sexual climax is a kind of preview of death. The figure of the lovely, timid bride was not far removed from that of the sacri- ficial virgin. Marriage was a large part of the ultimate life fulfillment for the American girl in 18JO. But death in childbirth was a common occurrence and each bride knew, beneath her blushes, that death was part of the bargain when a young girl married. Poe understood this parallel of marriage and death, and the similar appeal of the bride and corpse. Its influence shows up in his prose: a~ obviously as in such details as the "pall-like canopy" over the marriage bed in "Ligeia" and as evasively as in this passage from "Morella": And in the contour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair, and in the wan fingers which buried themselves therein, and in the sad, musical tones of her speech, and above all -- ohl above all -- in the phrases and expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and the living, I found food for consuming thought and horror -- for a worm that would not die. * * * * * (4) Elizabeth Arnold Poe was an actress. Frail, intense, with a slight figure and large, wide-set eyes, she proved consumptive and died in December, 1811, at the age of twenty-four. Her second son Edgar was not yet three years old. David Poe, also an actor, had disappeared the year before. One child, William Henry, had been left with his grandparents because of his parents' destitute circumstances, and a daughter, Rosalie, was born in 1810.7 Though it would seem that she was the center of his universe, it is difficult to estimate the extent of Edgar's memory of his mother, conscious or unconscious. We only know that she spent her last months in cheap lodgings in Richmond, Virginia, growing thinner and racked with a tubercular cough, though no doubt still beautiful and clad in theatrical finery. In The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Marie Bonaparte introduces a tidy; psychoanalytical interpretation of Poe's treatment of women. This theory revolves around the image of the dying Mrs. Poe and its indelible picture in the mind of her younger son. The sub­ conscious effect of this tableau, Bonaparte explains, operating with a strong mother-fixation and a lifelong desire to remain faithful to this ultimate first love, cemented the concepts of love and death in Poe's mind. Henceforth, his ultimate, indeed, his only vision of beauty would be coupled with illness and death. This not only explains the morbid flavor of his writing, but also his peculiar attraction to Wirginia Clemm, who seemed marked for death at an early age. Thus, Elizabeth Arnold Poe is the culprit. One of the local women who aided Mrs. Poe in her last days was (5) Frances Keeling Allan, the childless wife of John Allan, a Richmond tobacco merchant. She returned, with the orphaned Edgar, to her husband's mansion. Edgar appears to have had an excellent relationship with Mrs. Allan, who in conspiracy with her cousin, Edgar's beloved Aunt Nancy, protected the boy from his stepfather's wrath. Throughout his youth, Poe was faced with repeated threats of disownment by John Allan, and only his foster mother's petitions persuaded Allan to relent and finance another educational or military project for his ward. She died, however, in 1829, when Poe was twenty. Allan refused to eummon Poe from his post as sergeant-major at Fort Monroe, Virginia to his "mother's" deathbed until it was too late. It was during his teens, while studying at the English and Classical School in Richmond, that the young Poe began to dabble in verse. One of his first subjects was the mother of one of his school- fellows: Mrs. Jane Stanard, who at twenty-eight, was twice Edgar's age. She is said to have encouraged the boy's poetic pursuits, and came to be his inspiration for the celebrated "To Helen," that reverent and ecstatic celebration of ideal, classical womanhood. Soon after they met, however, Mrs. Stanard lost her reason and died. Another woman who was to figure very prominently in Poe's life in terms of a mother-son relationship was Maria Clemm, Edgar's paternal I aunt, and the mother of his cousin-wife Virginia. Poe first came to live with Mrs. Clemm 1n:lBa9, after breaking with John Allan for the last time. Virginia was seven; Edgar was twenty. Poe lived with the Clemms on and off for the rest of his life. When his health and fortunes were at their lowest ebbs, "Muddle," as he (6) called her, repeatedly came to her nephew's aid, though her slim allowance as a seamstress was hardly sufficient for herself.