In this paper, it will be argued that this emphasis on visual sensations is directly related to the violence against women as it exposes the murderers’ motives and drives, their course of action as well as their attempt to then distort the reader’s view of the truth in order to cover their involvement. For the discussion of this thesis Poe’s short stories “The Oval Portrait,” “Morella”, “Berenice” and especially “Ligeia” will be considered.
Many of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories deal with a fixation on dying women as he famously states in “The Philosophy of Composition: “death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world” (1621). The death of those women is often violent as they are murdered by a male character as a result of an “emotional estrangement between the male protagonist and a fated female” (Kennedy 118). Interestingly, the characters and the circumstances surrounding those deaths are described with an emphasis on the “lexical field of sight” (Marín-Ruiz 58) so that already “a cursory exposure to Poe’s fiction leaves a strong impression of his recurrent emphasis on the eye” (Scheick 80). Detailed accounts of eyes, glances, gazes and vision keep reappearing in the selected stories, so that sight becomes one of the key elements of the tales.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Symbolic Meaning of Sight
2.1. Ethereal Beauty
2.2. Superior Knowledge and Imagination
2.3. Will Power and Passion
3. The Distorted Vision of the Narrator
3.1. Monomania
3.2. Opium
4. Visual Trickery and Optical Illusions
5. Conclusion
Research Objective and Thematic Scope
This paper examines how the emphasis on visual sensations in selected short stories by Edgar Allan Poe is intrinsically linked to acts of violence against women. It investigates how male narrators use their distorted perceptions—influenced by psychological conditions like monomania and drug use—to manipulate the reader and conceal their involvement in the deaths of the female characters.
- The symbolic representation of sight, specifically regarding beauty, knowledge, and will power.
- The role of psychological impairment and monomania in the narrators' unreliable perspectives.
- The influence of opium consumption on the distortion of reality and memory.
- The use of visual trickery and optical illusions (anamorphosis) to facilitate manipulation.
- The correlation between the male characters' distorted vision and their violent actions against women.
Excerpt from the Book
3.1. Monomania
Many scholars, among them Engel and Gargano, have attributed some of Poe’s characters’ impaired sight or their inability to perceive the reality around them to “monomania.” The OED defines monomania as a “form of mental illness characterized by a single pattern of repetitive and intrusive thoughts or actions.” A person’s behavior when suffering from this illness is further described by “an exaggerated or fanatical enthusiasm for or devotion to one subject; an obsession, a craze” (OED, “monomania”). Basler defines this preoccupation as an “idée fixe” which is a theme of obsession to be encountered in a variety of Poe’s stories. In these stories, this form of extreme obsession results in a significant “power of the psychical over the physical” (364). It is noteworthy that the stimulus for this obsession is given by a visual sensation. Poe is said to have been influenced by David Brewster who asserts that “imagination and memory generate actual impressions upon the retina, from whence they travel through the optic nerve to the brain. These impressions are actual, and they can be more vivid than what the retina perceives of the world through the eyeball” (Scheik 88). Monomania does thus not only cause a simple hallucination but is powerful in creating an obsessive imagination projected upon the characters’ retinas.
One of Poe’s stories which comes to mind with regard to a possible state of monomania is “The Oval Portrait” as the inability to see reality due to a crazed mental state focusing on one specific object becomes the key aspect of the tale. Staying in line with the argument of this paper, this lack of sight is directly related to the death of the female protagonist. “The Oval Portrait” presents the reader with a story within the story. The narrator stays a night in the abandoned house of a painter whose works of art he reads about in a book. This book tells him how this said painter’s obsession with portraying his explicitly beautiful young wife in a painting leads to the gradual decay of his wife as her depiction in the painting proceeds.
Summary of Chapters
1. Introduction: This chapter outlines the focus on visual sensations in Poe’s stories and posits that this emphasis is a tool used by narrators to mask their violent actions toward women.
2. The Symbolic Meaning of Sight: This section explores how the eyes of female characters are depicted as symbols of ethereal beauty, superior knowledge, and an unwavering will power that transcends the narrators' capabilities.
3. The Distorted Vision of the Narrator: This chapter analyzes how monomania and opium consumption result in the unreliability of the narrators, who become detached from reality and obsessed with their own internal projections.
4. Visual Trickery and Optical Illusions: This section details how characters use deliberate visual manipulation and environmental composition to distort the reader's perception and facilitate violent outcomes.
5. Conclusion: This chapter synthesizes the findings, confirming that the interplay between sight, psychological illness, and narrator unreliability explains the underlying violence against women in the analyzed tales.
Keywords
Edgar Allan Poe, Visual Sensation, Monomania, Opium, Violence against Women, Narrator Unreliability, Ligeia, Berenice, The Oval Portrait, Anamorphosis, Psychological Distortion, Optical Illusions, Will Power, Symbolic Sight, Transcendentalism.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this academic paper?
The paper explores the recurrent emphasis on visual sensations in specific short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and argues that these sensations are fundamentally linked to acts of violence against women.
What are the central themes discussed in the work?
The primary themes include the symbolism of sight, the psychology of monomania, the influence of opium on perception, and the deliberate use of optical illusions to manipulate reality.
What is the author's primary research objective?
The objective is to demonstrate that the narrators' distorted vision, caused by obsession and substance use, is a strategic attempt to hide their role in the deaths of the female protagonists.
Which scientific or psychological frameworks are utilized?
The author employs concepts of monomania (defined as an "idée fixe"), Newtonian theories of indirect vision, Platonic concepts of inner light, and the artistic technique of anamorphosis.
What topics are covered in the main section of the paper?
The main sections analyze the symbolic meaning of women's eyes, the narrator's psychological decline, and how environmental composition is used as a tool for "visual trickery" to enable violence.
What keywords characterize the study?
Key terms include visual sensation, monomania, narrator unreliability, anamorphosis, and psychological distortion within the context of Poe's literary works.
How does the author interpret the narrators' unreliability in "Ligeia" and "Berenice"?
The author suggests that the narrators' claims of supernatural occurrences are manifestations of their monomania and drug-induced hallucinations, which they use to frame themselves as passive observers rather than perpetrators.
What role does the "anamorphosis" effect play in the story "The Oval Portrait"?
In "The Oval Portrait," the author interprets the play of light and shadow as a form of anamorphosis, which distracts the narrator and leads him to perceive a "life-likeliness" in the painting, thereby mirroring the painter's own fatal obsession.
- Quote paper
- Amelie Meyer (Author), 2012, Aspects of Visual Sensation in Edgar Allan Poe’s Depiction of Violence against Women, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/537939
