9 Poe's Feminine Ideal Karen Weekes Poe's Vision of the Feminine Ideal Appears Throughout His Work, in His Poetry and Short Stories, and His Critical Essays, Most Notably “the Philosophy of Composition. ” Especially
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Poe's feminine ideal
KAREN WEEKES
Poe's vision of the feminine ideal appears throughout his work, in his poetry and short stories, and his critical essays, most notably “The Philosophy of Composition. ” Especially in his poetry, he idealizes the vulnerability of woman, a portrayal that extends into his fiction in stories such as “Eleonora” and “The Fall of the House of Usher. ” In these tales, and even moreso in “Morella” and “Ligeia, ” the heroines' unexpected capacities for life beyond the grave indicate that females may have more strength and initiative than the delicate models of his verse. The most significant trait of his ideal, however, is her role as emotional catalyst for her partner. The romanticized woman is much more significant in her impact on Poe's narrators than in her own right.
The concept of using females merely as a means to a (male) end appears explicitly in “The Philosophy of Composition, ” wherein Poe also supplies his philosophy of beauty: “When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect – they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul – not of intellect, or of heart – upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating 'the beautiful'” (E&R, 16). Thus the value of what is viewed lies solely in the response induced in the observer, and the subject takes complete precedence over its object. Scenic images in Poe's work fall more into the realm of the sublime than the beautiful, so instead, the inspiration for the experience of Beauty in all its melancholy extremity is “the death… of a beautiful woman” and, appropriately, “equally it is beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover” (E&R, 19). The woman must die in order to enlarge the experience of the narrator, her viewer. Poe indulged his “most poetical topic in the world” by repeating this idea obsessively: poems on the subject include
Poe's feminine ideal
KAREN WEEKES
Poe's vision of the feminine ideal appears throughout his work, in his poetry and short stories, and his critical essays, most notably “The Philosophy of Composition. ” Especially in his poetry, he idealizes the vulnerability of woman, a portrayal that extends into his fiction in stories such as “Eleonora” and “The Fall of the House of Usher. ” In these tales, and even moreso in “Morella” and “Ligeia, ” the heroines' unexpected capacities for life beyond the grave indicate that females may have more strength and initiative than the delicate models of his verse. The most significant trait of his ideal, however, is her role as emotional catalyst for her partner. The romanticized woman is much more significant in her impact on Poe's narrators than in her own right.
The concept of using females merely as a means to a (male) end appears explicitly in “The Philosophy of Composition, ” wherein Poe also supplies his philosophy of beauty: “When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect – they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul – not of intellect, or of heart – upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating 'the beautiful'” (E&R, 16). Thus the value of what is viewed lies solely in the response induced in the observer, and the subject takes complete precedence over its object. Scenic images in Poe's work fall more into the realm of the sublime than the beautiful, so instead, the inspiration for the experience of Beauty in all its melancholy extremity is “the death… of a beautiful woman” and, appropriately, “equally it is beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover” (E&R, 19). The woman must die in order to enlarge the experience of the narrator, her viewer. Poe indulged his “most poetical topic in the world” by repeating this idea obsessively: poems on the subject include