What was the role of women in Poe's literature?greenspun.com : LUSENET : The Work of Edgar Allan Poe : One Thread |
HOW DID POE PERCEIVE WOMEN THROUGH HIS WORK?
-- Anonymous, June 06, 2002
Idealized: symbols of truth, hope and beauty. Beatrice, mother figures, goddesses.Real characters: haunting. Die and come back, untied strongly to their lover but only one can have a neverending bond with the man. Young. Mainly you never get inside the mind of the woman. Ligeia is the strongest and most outspoken but becomes the the strongest example of the obsessive haunting, returning from the dead in the body of his unloved second wife. Some coquettish females in some early light tales. French stories. Scherezade(satire). Despite their overwhelming ideality they often terrify and remain aloof from the male characters, who are preoccupied with their own feelings, fearful or resentful of their obsession. Lack of shared intimacy, victims, tragic deaths and in many important stories, no women characters at all. But see Tripetta in "Hop Frog" where real autobiography is symbolically rampaging through a caracature of Poe's fiction tales.
-- Anonymous, June 06, 2002