Biographical Fallacy In Edgar Allan Poe's Poetry

To accept the view that Poe’s life entirely directs his art would be to commit the biographical fallacy, the belief that a literary work must be interpreted as a mirror of the author’s real life experiences. While Poe certainly infused elements of his biography in his oeuvres, to commit the biographical fallacy limits finding meaning to his works. By discarding the biographical approach to “access” feminist interpretations of Poe’s works, I posit instead a formalist approach whereby Poe’s portrayal of passive women does indeed serve to expose and hyperbolize this socially sanctioned passivity in “Berenice” and “Ligeia”.

Through Berenice’s and Rowena’s resounding silence throughout the entire plot, Poe exposes this socially sanctioned passivity
The name Egaeus is significant as Egaeus is verisimilar to Egeus, the name of Hermia’s father in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Egeus represents the institution of patriarchy and male control, forbidding Hermia from marrying her true love, Lysander. Instead, Egeus forces her to wed Demetrius. Egeus goes as far as to invoke Athenian law, threatening to condemn his daughter to death or to a life of celibacy as a nun if she defies him. Like Egeus, Egaeus is not cognizant of love as part of the human condition and is unable to love. This is the impetus for destruction in “Berenice”, where Egaeus restores patriarchal order, but to questionable success. Despite Egaeus’ supposed triumph in pulling out Berenice’s teeth, the fact that Egaeus actually succumbs to the influence of the teeth shows the victory of the physically passive but psychologically haunting
From a formalist perspective, the portrayal of Berenice and Rowena in “Ligeia” possesses modern feminist undertones. Their socially sanctioned passive behavior and silence in the face of torment and oppression reveal a strong will, unable to be silenced by the hegemonic male narrator who is naturally advantaged and empowered by Victorian society. Initially portrayed as helpless and weak, these women were confined by societal impositions and oppressed by men, but their astounding resilience and equivocal deaths place feminine power (and women) in a superior position in relation to the male narrator. Furthermore, Poe also underscores how the immoderate feminizing and poeticizing of women results in an inability to reconcile expectations and reality, leading to chaos and turmoil for the male narrators who perpetuate the social sanctioning of