The Romantic Horror of the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

Kaye Kagaoan

In his introductory chapter to Romanticism and the Gothic, Michael Gamer claims that, due to its status as a relatively low art form, the gothic perpetually haunts, as an aesthetic to be rejected, romanticisms construction of high literary culture (Gamer 7). Still, Edgar Allan Poe incorporated horror and murder narratives in many of his seventy-some short stories as he addresses many of the central themes and concepts that dominated the Romantic period. Through and despite the use of gothic, the tales of Edgar Allan Poe are not merely a bunch of horror stories, but his unique way of exploring Beauty, Individuality, and the duplicitous faculties of human consciousness. This paper calls for a closer, more active reading of Poes stories as works of genius that must be held at the same calibre as those of his contemporaries. Although most of his work embodies the gothic aesthetic, Poes active dissociation from literary Gothicism should be taken into consideration when reading his stories. Darlene Unrues essay, Edgar Allan Poe: The Romantic as Classicist, claims that Poe uses Gothic machinery in his tales to symbolize states of mind in characters tormented by intimations of death, insanity, and other forms of annihilation and chaos that lead to no rational reconciliation (Unrue 114). Rather than the popular Romantic approaches to the self and individuality, Poe resorts to portrayals of selfdestruction, through which the reader may gain insight into the Romantic values that are embedded deeply within these horror narratives. Unrue also writes, The romantic writer who exalts nature, primitivism, solitude, and individuality and exults in subjectivity and emotion, recollected in tranquillity or not, stands decidedly apart from Poem who is indifferent to nature and primitivism, is miserable in solitariness, and frustrated by the restrictions of the subjective perspective (Unrue 113). Poes stories reflect this rejection of many of the Romantic canonical writers approaches to the self: the self is not merely a Self, but several Selves, and Poes narrators tread the line between acting as a subjective individual and a detached voice meant to speak towards some grim, universal Truth. Furthermore, Joseph M. Garrison shares a line from one of Poes written reviews in the essay, The Function of Terror in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe: In teaching what perfection is, how, in fact, shall we more rationally proceed than in specifying what it is not? (Garrison 145). This

question, though originally directed at Dickens Barnaby Rudge, serves as a helpful guiding principle in unearthing the deeply embedded Romantic values in Poes work. Poes stories often feature first-person narration, often with an unnamed narrator; by doing so, Poe involves his individual readers in addressing the various Truths that figure in his stories. The narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart, for example, focuses on relaying the story of the murder plot rather than revealing details that would make him come across as a distinct individual, going against the growing importance of particularity that dominated early English novels. Instead of making claims to realism and historicity, Poes narrators come across less as a fully fledged person, in fact, than as a disembodied voice, sheer nervous energy seeking to order itself by trying to maintain control over the tale being told (Auerbach 21). Poe is less interested in establishing the narrators existence, focusing instead on the essential idea of mans inherent dualities of consciousness; when the narrator simply goes by the pronoun I, the reader becomes implicit in the narrative, as the use of I blurs the boundaries between author, narrator, and reader. Even in William Wilson, the eponymous narrator informs the reader that his name is an arbitrary choice: Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation (William Wilson, italics mine). This narrators identity is as veiled and vague as the others, and, therefore, can still stand for anyone. In The Imp of the Perverse, the narrator does not introduce himself until about halfway into the story, beginning instead with an essay-like commentary into Mans primal impulses: In the consideration of the faculties and impulses of the prima mobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them. In the pure arrogance of reason, we have all overlooked it. Through the deceptively objective narration, as well as the use of the first-person plural pronoun we, the narrator makes sweeping universal claims while including the reader as part of the collective we. Thus, when horror, murder, and madness befall Poes narrators, the reader is held as a complicit figure, one that is equally capable of being subject to the essence of the insanities in these stories. Halfway into The Imp of the Perverse, the narrator begins to relay his story; this seeming duality of narration mirrors the duality of reason and impulse in the story, as well as the pervasive dualities of consciousness that come up in many of Poes stories. In the essay Ordinary Sinners and Moral Aliens, Jean Murley suggests, Many of Poes tales make the point that human beings contain an irresistible impulse for contradictory behaviour which then creates the possibility of evil 2 Kaye Kagaoan, 2014

to occur (Murley 192). There is a definite air of horror in this observation, especially when Poes readers find themselves complicit in the narratives of evil as something that is both inherent in and external to the human mind (Murley 193). This trend in Poes stories illuminates the grotesque capacities of Man; in The Imp of the Perverse, the narrator states that Man denies the existence of primal impulse in the pure arrogance of reason, that We have suffered its existence to escape our senses, solely through want of belief of faith; - whether it be faith in Revelation, or faith in the Kabbala (Imp). The narrator does not exhibit a preference for either reason or impulse, but reminds the reader that the duality is there, and that this duality can drive Man to perform in innumerable, horrific ways, such as committing murder. Neither does the narrator suggest that the capacity for evil stems from impulse, since he takes pride in the thorough deliberation that went into planning the murder. The same can be said for the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart, who denies his madness: You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded with what caution with what foresight with what dissimulation I went to work (The Tell-Tale Heart). The murderous narrators in both Imp of the Perverse and The Tell-Tale Heart appear to claim that their Reason, rather than Impulse, played a significant role in committing their respective murders. Poes narrators suggest that the same Reason that enables logic and intellect is also capable of producing Evil; meanwhile, these characters also feel a need to address if only to reject their madness. The narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart justifies his state of mind through his ability to hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? (Tell-Tale). An acute sense of hearing, in this narrative, seems analogous to a strong sense of consciousness, and, therefore, the narrators means of justifying his sanity. However, in addressing the recurring theme of madness in Poes stories, Murley decides that the emerging definition of madness contained the notion that reason and the irrational can coexist within the same mind (Murley 194). Thus, madness and the capacity for evil are not limited to a mental alien. Rather, this propensity can possibly emerge in anyone. Poes stories do suggest that there is no real type of person who is capable of evil and the perverse, since his stories narrators, despite having similar tragic outcomes, encounter and enact their narratives in different ways. In both The Tell-Tale Heart and The Imp of the Perverse, the narrators claim to have sensory acuteness the narrator of Tell-Tale posits, And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? (Tell-Tale). Yet this narrators sensory acuteness not only permits him to commit an act of murder, but also drives him 3 Kaye Kagaoan, 2014

to a confession at the end of the story. The same can be said for the Imp narrator, who, despite acknowledging the duality of Reason and Impulse, still commits his murder, temporarily relishes in his success, and eventually confesses to his crime. Meanwhile, the narrator of William Wilson is completely oblivious to the significance of his consciences manifestation as a double. William Wilson initially takes pride in his independence, and that, at an early age, he was left to the guidance of [his] own will, and became, in all but name, the master of [his] own actions (William Wilson). Therefore, when he begins to encounter a doppelganger that thwarts his ambitious pursuits, he seeks out to kill the double, only to find that he has killed himself. There appears to be no satisfying way of approaching evil, or consciousness, without resulting in some form of self-destruction, which may be Poes way of critiquing the pursuit of knowledge that was popularly addressed during the Romantic period. The significance of the double in stories such as William Wilson and The Tell-Tale Heart further illustrate a horrific concept about the Self that it is in fact multiple selves that make up individual consciousness. Since Poe was a writer who had an apparent preference for fantasy over realism and beauty above truth in a hierarchy of aesthetic values (Unrue 113), The Tell-Tale Heart does not have to be interpreted as a literal murder tale. Rather, when considering the prevalence of duplicitous consciousness in Poes stories, The Tell-Tale Heart can be interpreted as a tale about a character whose acute consciousness of his own dualities leads to his self-destruction. Jonathan Auerbach writes, By identifying, almost arbitrarily, all object and passion with the old mans Evil Eye, the narrator seeks to transfer his guilty desires bodily onto his victim and then kill this other evil I for good (Auerbach 45). Thus, Poe works not only with the internal dualities of the mind, but also the duality of mind and body, and The Tell-Tale Heart illustrates some transference of the narrators internal struggle from the mental to the physical. Though the narrators of The Tell-Tale Heart and William Wilson have contrasting awareness of the dualistic values of the self, both seek out to destroy their doubles, implying an inherent will to reject the conscience, or the other Self. The other side of the individuals consciousness becomes the enemy, and any attempts at reconciling the duality, in the case of Poes stories, only prove to be destructive. Poes stories therefore leave an unsettling insight that the many dualities of the human mind are irreconcilable and permanent: the Self is so multifaceted that anyone, even the reader, is capable of madness. Despite Poes horrific revelations on the darker capabilities of the mind, the Gothicism present in his work does not reduce the Poes relevance as a Romantic writer. According to 4 Kaye Kagaoan, 2014

Garrison, An investigation of Poes occasional references to the functions of terror and horror in imaginative literature seems to indicate that he deliberately dramatized these effects in order to teach his reader to navigate the tempests of the human condition without losing the spiritualizing principle (Garrison 146). This sentiment, which acknowledges the power of Poes imagination and values the preservation of the spirit, deems Poes work as recognizably Romantic. Garrison continues, Horror and Terror are legitimate effects when they are calculated to compel the reader to turn his attention and affections from a debilitating and terrifying analysis of the human condition to an alternative an ideal (Garrison 148). Poes use of horror as the veil to conceal his Romantic pursuits only solidifies his place as one of the most original writers of the Romantic period.

Works Cited Auerbach, Jonathan. Romance of Failure: First-Person Fictions of Poe, Hawthorne, and James. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 20-70. eBook. Gamer, Michael. Romanticism and the Gothic - Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 7. eBook. Garrison, Joseph M. (Jr.). "The Function of Terror in the Work of Edgar Allan Poe." American Quarterly. 18.2 (1966): 136-150. Web. Murley, Jean. "Ordinary Sinners and Moral Aliens: The Murder Narratives of Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allan Poe." Understanding Evil: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2003. 181-199. Web. 12 Feb. 2014. Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Imp of the Perverse." EDGAR ALLAN POE: Tales, Sketches and Selected Criticism. The University of Virginia, 4 Jul 1999. Web. 12 Feb 2014. <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/POE/imp.html>. Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." EDGAR ALLAN POE: Tales, Sketches and Selected Criticism. The University of Virginia, 4 Jul 1999. Web. 12 Feb 2014. <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/POE/telltale.html>. Poe, Edgar Allan. "William Wilson." EDGAR ALLAN POE: Tales, Sketches and Selected Criticism. The University of Virginia, 4 Jul 1999. Web. 12 Feb 2014. <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/POE/w_wilson.html>. Unrue, Deborah Harbour. "Edgar Allan Poe: The Romantic as Classicist." International Journal of the Classical Tradition. 1.4 (1995): 112-119. Web.

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