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The Psychological Context of Three Tales by Poe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Allan Smith
Allan Smith
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Extract

‘ The Black Cat ’ is one of Poe's neat little studies of obsession. Joseph Moldenhauer has said that these first-person tales of terror should be regarded less as studies of deranged minds than as controlled exercises in madness. We may take his point that there is little ‘ clinical ’ observation and that the obsession is seen from within, but may add further that the subjects of these tales are the irrational motives themselves, and therefore Poe does not need to create a motive for the motive. That is, ‘ The Black Cat ’ is a study of the ‘ murdering impulse ’ of the sort noted by Benjamin Rush in his Sixteen Lectures (1811) by whose account of a famous poisoner of cats it may have been suggested. It is not particularly a study of the effects of the ‘ murdering impulse ’ but rather of the impulse itself, which Poe simply cloaks in a non-specific narrator ‘ self ’. Poe's habitual use of the monologue or confessional form, and his claustrophobic interiors, are both calculated to produce a sense of internalized action, and the scenery of the tales is usually the chamber of the haunted mind, of which the poem ‘ The Haunted Palace ’ is only the most explicit version. The lack of a touchstone in ‘ real ’ surroundings, of an objective point of view, together with the sense of identification induced by first-person narration, combines to ensure that the internalized action is not seen from a position safely outside the distorted consciousness but, necessarily, from within.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , December 1973 , pp. 279 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

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2 Rush, Benjamin, Sixteen Introductory Lectures (Bradford and Innskeep, Philadelphia, 1811), p. 386Google Scholar.

My argument here, and throughout this article, is based not on the presumption that Poe read the works mentioned, although that is often possible and sometimes very likely, but that he was an intellectually aware member of his community and through magazine work and his interest in scientific and medical matters would be aware of many of the contemporary theories of the mind, as we are ourselves. I do not think it necessary to repeat the case for such assumptions; it has been made tellingly by a number of critics, notably Walker, I. M. in his article ‘ The “ Legitimate Sources ” of Terror in “ The Fall of the House of Usher ” ’ (Modern Language Review, 61 (1966), 588)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and by Jacobs, Robert in Poe : Journalist and Critic (Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, 1969), pp. 19–34Google Scholar.

3 Rush's account of the poisoner of cats, John Ward, assigns him to the category of ‘ perversion of the moral faculty ’ which seduces a sense to act with it. Op. cit., p. 440.

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38 This phrase was a catchphrase of the Common Sense school; a basic test of the validity of statements. Its incorporation here may indicate some additional satiric intent.

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