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Edgar Allan Poe and Female Victimization

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Edgar Allan Poe and Female Victimization EDGAR ALLAN POE AND FEMALE VICTIMIZATION Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Arts in English By Xi Li Dayton, Ohio December 2018 EDGAR ALLAN POE AND FEMALE VICTIMIZATION Name: Li, Xi APPROVED BY: Bryan. A. Bardine, Ph.D. David J. Fine, Ph.D. Advisory Committee Chairman Committee Member Associate Professor of English Assistant Professor Department of English Department of English Kara Getrost, Ph.D. Committee Member Lecture of English Department of English Tereza M. Szeghi, Ph.D. Andrew Slade, Ph.D. Associate Professor Associate Professor and Chair Director of Graduate Studies Academic Chair, UDayton Global Department of English Department of English ii © Copyright by Xi Li All rights reserved 2018 ABSTRACT EDGAR ALLAN POE AND FEMALE VICTIMIZATION Name: Li, Xi University of Dayton Advisor: Dr. Bryan A. Bardine This is an essay about feminist theories and five of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic stories: “Ligeia,” “Morella,” “Berenice,” “The Black Cat” and “The Oval Portrait.” Different than many essays that have similar topics and criticize Poe’s patriarchal thoughts, this essay examines the overlap between Poe’s gothic stories and feminist theories and analyzes Poe’s feminist ideas and thoughts. This essay argues that there is a feminist element in Poe’s stories, and describes the kind of feminist thought he holds. This essay introduces some feminist theories that are relevant to victimization in Poe’s stories. These theories are helpful to understand Poe’s five stories—mainly the women in these stories, and their relationship with patriarchal power. With the combination of these feminist theories, this essay analyses some different aspects of the stories (the female characters’ appearances, sex, the position of females in their family relationships, children, the dependence and independence females) and it tries to figure out the overlap between Poe’s stories and feminist theories to determine the kinds of feminist thought Poe holds. At the same time, this essay reviews previous essays about Poe and his female characters from scholars who studied Poe and women— iii such as their exploration of the images in Poe’s stories, and their positive or negative comments on Poe’s works. This essay tries to fill the research gap by using feminist theories to analyze Poe’s feminist thoughts and have a better understanding of the five stories and the female characters. This essay covers studies beyond the Western world and introduces some Eastern voices. Victimization regards women as victims of patriarchal power. With the help of theories about female victims that Virginia Woolf mentions in Three Guineas and “A Room of One’s Own,” Germaine Greer’s theory about victims in The Female Eunuch, victim feminism that Diane Long Hoeveler examines in Gothic Feminism, Karen Weekes’ opinions of the husband/inflictor and wife/victim in “Poe’s Feminine Ideal” and so on, this essay determines that although Poe represents some traditional and domestic women in his stories, he creates some independent females who pursue the agency of sex and knowledge at the same time, such as Ligeia and Berenice. Poe praises their beauty, charms or characteristics of all these women in his stories. Poe is aware of the pressure of patriarchal power on women: no matter what kind of woman—traditional or progressive—the women in Poe’s stories choose to be: they all suffer oppression from their lovers or destiny; in other words, Poe shows them as victims in a patriarchal world. Therefore, Poe did not ignore or loathe the progressive women in his stories and his understanding of females was similar to victimization. iv Dedicated to my parents v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful for Dr. Bryan Bardine, my advisor, who helped me to finish this thesis step by step and directed my work patiently. At the same time, I am appreciative to Dr. David Fine and Dr. Kara Getrost, who read my work and gave me a lot of kindly advice about the theory or arguments. My thanks are also in order to my parents, who supported me and encouraged me to finish the project, and Dr. Tereza Szeghi, who helped me to arrange my working schedule. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION .....................................................................................................................v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................................4 APPEARANCE ................................................................................................................18 INDEPENDENCE, DEPENDENCE AND INTELLIGENCE..........................................26 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................37 WORKS CITED ................................................................................................................40 vii INTRODUCTION As one of the most famous American writers, Edgar Allan Poe created several genres of literature: he is the pioneer of American Gothic literature, and the inventor of detective fiction and science fiction. Poe had multiple identities, too: he is a literary critic, a poet, an editor, and a novelist. However, though he made many contributions in different areas of literature, Poe’s most famous works are his short gothic stories–such as “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Masque of the Red Death.” Among all of his short stories, besides the horrific atmosphere, the most obvious element in Poe’s stories might be women. In his life, Poe had relationships with many women, and he lost many of them, including his mother and his wife, Virginia. Like his life experience, his stories contain many dead female characters. Because the female characters in his stories are so prevalent, these “dead ladies” invoke many scholarly discussions. However, although the keyword of the study of Poe’s stories is “female,” not many scholars use feminist theories to analyze and understand Poe’s female characters. This becomes an empty gap that is worth exploring. Besides reviewing the essays of scholars who study Poe and the female characters in his stories, this paper will fill this gap and use a feminist theory to analyze Poe’s works. Unlike many Western scholars who critique Poe’s thought as only patriarchal, this paper will try to understand the female characters in Poe’s stories and explore Poe’s feminist thought, too. 1 This paper selects five of Poe’s short stories— “Ligeia,” “The Black Cat,” “The Oval Portrait,” “Morella” and “Berenice,” and analyzes the female characters and their relationships with their husbands or lovers. Since all of the women in these stories died because of a mysterious disease (such as Berenice’s disease) or their male lovers’ persecution, it is obvious that these women become victims. Therefore, this paper will use feminist theory, which is relevant to victimization, to analyze and understand Poe’s stories and his opinions about feminism. Victimization has a long history among feminist theories. A kind of feminist theory, victim feminism, believes that women’s power or agency is suppressed by males, and they easily become victims in the patriarchal society or because of patriarchal power, and this victimization of women is also shown in Poe’s stories. In other words, victimization does not mean to blame women who become passive victims; it tries to let people notice the patriarchy’s persecution of women. Poe does not mean women’s nature is weak; the victimization of the female characters is because of the mistreatment by patriarchy. This paper will separate the analysis of the female characters and victimization into several parts, and it will explore whether females become victims by analyzing several aspects, such as the female characters’ appearances, sexuality, the position of the women in their family relationships, intelligence, and the dependence and independence of the women. Many feminists’ works contain the thought that females become victims because of patriarchal power. The root of feminism was already developed in the 19th century, the period that Poe lived, and some feminists, such as Mary Wollstonecraft (who died just 12 years before Poe’s birth), published her theory which argued that women become victims 2 in their families and are discriminated against by males. Thirty-three years after Poe’s death, another famous feminist—Virginia Woolf was born, and Woolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” explores how women become victims in academic or literary worlds. Many contemporary feminists also analyze female victims in their works, such as Germaine Greer, who explores how women become victims in sexual relationships, and Diane Long Hoeveler, who explores the female victims in Gothic literature. All in all, in order to have a better understanding of Poe and his thoughts of women, this paper will explore how to use victimization to analyze his stories about women. 3 LITERATURE REVIEW From East to West, between feminism and patriarchy, scholars’ opinions of Poe’s short gothic stories and their female characters are
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