Date of Award
8-2011
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College/School
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department/Program
English
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Monika Elbert
Committee Member
Daniel Bronson
Committee Member
Jonathan Greenberg
Abstract
While it is clear that women play an important role in many of the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, in many of his stories that center around women, more specifically, “Morelia,” “Ligeia,” Berenice,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe, through his male protagonists, is conflicted over their characterization. On the one hand, these women are presented as extraordinarily powerful, which is manifested in either their intellectual or sexual dominance over their male counterparts. On the other, it is this dominance for which they are destroyed. In these tales the women must ultimately die—But why? In the case of Morelia and Ligeia, for example, the women’s superior intelligence is the symbolic key that could free them from their domestic “prisons” and give them an equal (or commanding) place in a world dominated by men. Similarly, Berenice and Madeline Usher are feared by their male counterparts, but these women are threatening not due to superior intellect but because of their sexuality. In “Morelia,” “Ligeia,” “Berenice,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the female protagonists are destroyed because their male counterparts fear and are threatened not only by the women themselves, but also by what they represent—intellectual and sexual dominance—which results in the loss of male authority.
File Format
Recommended Citation
Carpenter, Richard R., "Poe's Women : A Male Obsession with Fear" (2011). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 791.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/791