At the end of the tale, the narrator is driven to confession because of this sense. First he thinks he hears "a ringing in [his] ears" , then, this noise increases and becomes "a low, dull, quick sound" and finally, the narrator believes he hears "the beating of his i. Sight is also emphasized in the story. For instance, the killer spends seven nights observing his victim: But the most important reference to sight is the obsession the narrator has towards the old man's eye and this is what drives the narrator to murder him: Senses are thus at the center of the story and the narrator even refers to his madness as an "overacuteness of the senses" Since the tale centers on seeing and hearing, both senses located in the head, Poe prompts his reader to focus on the human head, but more specifically, on the human mind.
In the same way, "William and Mary" is also concerned about these two senses as the whole story is about an experiment aiming at conserving William's brain but also his eye and thus, his sight. Hearing is equally important in the story because it is a sense that William would have loved to keep as well: Because the victims' senses are attacked: Without their senses, the victims' bodies are not complete, they are dismantled and thus metaphorically dismembered.
Moreover, it has generally been assumed that the senses are the "guardians of one's soul" Hillman when they are not damaged: The citadel [of the soul] This conception thus reinforces the idea that because the victims' senses were attacked, their selves were attacked as well. Besides this kind of dismemberment, in the two stories, the characters are literally dismembered after their death as well. The present part of this essay will now argue that this violent method of mutilation is used in order to show man's complex nature, and more precisely his unconscious desire to steer clear of a part of his own identity.
As previously mentioned, Poe seems aware of a duality in man's nature when he for instance gives his definition of perverseness in "The Black Cat". According to him, everyone has a good and a bad side and sometimes, one side takes control over the other: I knew myself no longer. Indeed, in the stories, both protagonists have a double and are, in a way, the same person.
Many critics have seen in Poe's tale, a possible uncanny identification of the murderer to his victim: Similar sensory details connect the two men. The vulture eye which the subject casts upon the narrator is duplicated in 'the single thin ray' … of the lantern that falls upon his own eye; like the unshuttered lantern, it is always one eye that is mentioned, never two. One man hears the creaking of the lantern hinge, the other the slipping of a finger upon the fastening.
Both lie awake at midnight 'hearkening to the death-watches in the wall' … The loud yell of the murderer is echoed in the old man's shriek, which the narrator, as though with increasing clairvoyance, later tells the police was his own. Most of all the identity is implied in the key psychological occurrence in the story—the madman's mistaking his own heartbeat for that of his victim, both before and after the murder. Clarke 67 These details indeed seem to bring the two men who nonetheless appear as being completely different together and Halliburton furthermore suggests that the most crucial event in the story, that is to say the burial, also functions as a reminder of the inseparability of the two men: Before the reader is introduced to Landy, William's personality is depicted thanks to the focalization on his wife's thoughts.
For instance, the reader understands that William had never been a good and lovely husband and that he had always controlled his wife: The reader also discovers that she has been a submissive and loyal wife who has been "ironing a million shirts and cooking a million meals and making a million beds" 20 for the last thirty years of her life.
But William had never thanked her; instead, he was an unemotional strict man who just wanted to be obeyed: The man was incapable of acting otherwise. He had never done anything informal in his life" William's strict and coldhearted personality is echoed by Landy's personality, who just like William, appears as an uncompassionate controlling man. Indeed, Landy is also an insensitive man.
For instance, he uncarefully enters William's room: Landy stands out from the other visitors because, even though William is dying, he does not care and is a straightforward man. Moreover, he keeps on reminding William that he is going to die soon: In other words, he is apathetic despite the tragic situation. Landy can thus be seen as William's double: Landy also addresses William childishly by calling him "my boy" 23 and giving him orders "Don't interrupt, William.
Landy's strict behavior recalls William's behavior towards Mary which is emphasized at the end of his letter when William gives instructions to Mary: Be good when I am gone, and always remember that it is harder to be a widow than a wife. Do not drink cocktails. Do not waste money. Do not smoke cigarettes. Do not eat pastry. Do not use lipstick. Do not buy a television apparatus. Keep my rose beds and my rockery well weeded in the summers. And incidentally I suggest that you have the telephone disconnected now that I shall have no further use for it. William's hubris lays in the fact that he used to rule his wife's life and acted as a God to her, dictating to her the way she should behave.
William undoubtedly ruled his wife's life, disregarding her desires. Landy is a scientist, a rational man, who sees himself as having the power of William's afterlife in his hands: William even evokes Landy's look that seems to say "Only I can save you" In other words, Landy places himself as a kind of God to William and it accordingly shows his hubris.
As a result, by killing and dismembering his double, the narrator is actually unconsciously killing a part of his own identity and Benjamin Fisher suggests that "the protagonists' murder may represent [his] killing, or attempting to repress, key elements in what should be a balanced self" Just like the old man in Poe's tale, William's body is going to be mutilated by the neuro- surgeon, Landy, who dismembers it: The surgical act is fully explained to William from page 24 to 33 when Landy finally concludes: The dismemberment of William body is also conveyed metaphorically when William eats a grape and takes three seeds out of his mouth and places them on a plate: Even though this image seems innocent, it may foreshadow what is going to happen to William after he dies: As a consequence, by performing a surgical act that aims at dismembering William's body, it may be assumed that Landy's own scattered identity is revealed.
Because the two men are seen as the same person, Landy's dismemberment of William's body may imply that Landy is in fact mutilating his own self. In "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "William and Mary", both authors seem once again willing to expose the effects an unbalanced self can have on a body through mutilation. Mutilating and destroying a part of one self may also actually be the central concern of another tale: Indeed, what leads to this interpretation lies in Poe's ability to draw parallels between the cat, the narrator's wife and the narrator himself.
First cats are generally associated with women's attributes. In her psychoanalytical study of Poe's tales entitled Edgar Poe: Sa Vie, Son Oeuvre , Marie Bonaparte draws attention to the general interrelationship between a woman and a cat by referring to the popular belief that the cat is the symbol of the female sex organ: The relationship between the cat and women is also made obvious in Poe's tale thanks to the many common features the cat and narrator's wife share.
Through a series of humanized details that can be applied to a docile and affectionate wife but also to a cat, the cat may be seen as "a surrogate of his i. The most striking connection between the narrator's wife and the cat is the fact that both characters are victims of the narrator's violent behavior. The wife is for instance pictured as a wife who is mistreated by her husband: At length, I even offered her personal violence" Indeed, in this movie, Harry meets Michel who pretends to be one of his former friends and a strong relationship is created between the two men.
However, Harry eventually murders Michel's family because he thinks they prevent him from being free and expressing his creative side. Therefore, Harry may actually be Michel's double and embody his unconscious desire to be free from his oppressive family. At the end of the film, Michel kills Harry, killing then his double and a part of himself. Casulli 43 the first cat, Pluto, is also hurt by the narrator before being killed: The cat is thus representative of the narrator's wife but more generally of women, and it thus stands for femininity.
Furthermore, the narrator is himself associated with his wife and women in general, because of the features they have in common. The narrator underlines his own feminine traits such as "tenderness of heart," and "unselfish and self-sacrificing" love for his pets. This love for pets is also shared by his wife, underlining his feminine traits: I was especially fond of animals I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own.
Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. The cat may thus represent the narrator's feminine traits and that is the reason why he thinks he has to kill it. This tale may thus show once again a desire to kill a part of one self.
- Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age by Chronicle Books.
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The narrator chooses to kill the first cat because he cannot stand his feminine traits. He succeeds in killing it but another cat appears, meaning that his feminine traits also re-appear because they cannot be dismissed. For the same reason, the narrator wants to murder the second cat. But when he tries to kill it, his wife intervenes and he ends up killing her instead. Because the violence is directed at her, the narrator reaffirms his masculinity, but only temporarily because when he tries to kill the second cat at the end of the tale, he fails.
As just explored, the narrator in "The Black Cat" indeed tries to repress his femininity by killing the cat and his wife. However, instead of getting rid of his wife's corpse, he decides to hide it: The narrator nonetheless enumerates other possible ways of destroying his wife's corpse before proceeding to the concealing: At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying them by fire.
At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard — about packing it in a box, as if merchandise, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house. By preserving his wife's corpse and the cat, the narrator shows that he is actually unable to steer clear of the feminine part of his self. A battle between the feminine and the masculine is also a great concern in Dahl's "The Landlady" as the story presents a female character killing a male character and preserving his body.
Billy Weaver, the young male protagonist of the story, is going to be killed by the mother figure he was desperate to have and that he finally found in the landlady. Jacques Sohier indeed refers to 21 The fact that the narrator wants to kill his feminine traits through the murder of the cat and his wife but fails and conserves them finally appears as a source of tension which may unsettle the reader. Indeed, this source of tension exists at the end of the story between what is written that is to say the literal meaning of the text: Casulli 45 Billy's will to find a home and a mother to nurture him: At the beginning of the short-story Billy Weaver is depicted as being desperate for a home fitted with all the qualities suggestive of snugness and pleasantness.
Being away from home, he yearns for the familiar place that a mother makes secure. In the same way, the lady killer also wants something from Billy; according to Sohier: To put it differently, the landlady may be looking for a son she never had.
Billy even assumes that "she had probably lost a son in the war, or something like that, and had never got over it" And this may be what drives her to keep the body of her victim. Dahl very much insists on this desire to keep her victim when describing his female character. He states that boarding houses remind him of "rapacious landladies" The adjective "rapacious" is relevant here because it suggests cupidity, or in other words, someone who does not want to share, who just wants to possess more. And this adjective does apply to the landlady in the story as she wants to possess her clients and, in order to do so, she kills and stuffs them.
The adjective is thus appropriate because the landlady is herself a killer and the clients are her preys. Later on, the landlady uses the word "nest" 12 to describe her house, equally highlighting this idea. Casulli 46 Billy also assumes that boarding houses have a "powerful smell of kippers" A kipper is a fish that has been cut and emptied.
Dahl thus repeatedly foreshadows Billy's fate and the landlady's sinister desire: The word "kipper" is also a homophone of the word "keeper" which may remind the reader of the landlady who accordingly wants to keep her victims' bodies. Poe's "The Oval Portrait" and Dahl's "Skin" also deal with a desire to keep a body or more precisely, a pure image of a body.
Indeed, in both stories, the young women are painted by someone who loves them. The artist in Poe's tale is the girl's husband: A study of Josie upon my back. Am I not entitled to a picture of my wife upon my back? Their will to portray these women may also be motivated by their will to preserve something that they know is going to expire: In "The Oval Portrait", the young girl's "rarest beauty" is underlined and in executing the portrait the artist has lost his bride, but he succeeded in creating an impression of her which will defy time; he has captured in his painting her most perfect beauty.
In Dahl's short story, the way Soutine wants to paint Josie is quite relevant as it shows Soutine's desire for his muse: Let her brushing her hair. I will paint her with her hair down over her shoulders and her brushing it" Casulli 47 This quote suggests that Josie has long hair that goes beyond her shoulders. And this striking image of the woman's hair is indeed a strong symbol because, as Anthony Synnott in "Shame and Glory: A Sociology of Hair" ; "long hair Soutine thus appears as being sexually driven to Jodie as his main focus when painting is on her hair and it underlines her sensuality.
However, because the artist knows a body is not meant to last, he chooses to represent Jodie in a painting to defy time and keep a perfect image of her. In "The Oval Portrait" and "Skin", both women are seen as extremely beautiful and, as Ralph Ciancio puts its in Literature and The Grotesque ; "the beauty of the body has often been considered evidence of the purity of one's soul" Therefore, because they are described as beautiful, their purity is also implied.
In both stories, the models' purity and innocence lie in the fact that they are both obedient and submissive to their husband. As Floyd Stovall argues in his paper entitled "The Women of Poe's Poems and Tales"; the women in Poe's fiction "are all noble and good, and naturally very beautiful Most remarkable of all is their passionate and enduring love for his hero" In this tale, it is said that the young woman agreed to be painted because "she was humble and obedient" In Dahl's story, although Josie is not enthusiastic about being portrayed because she thinks "It's a damn crazy idea" , she accepts "reluctantly" though.
In "Skin", Jodie's purity and innocence is defeated by others' selfish will to conserve something without regards to people's feelings. Indeed, this theme appears as one of the main concerns of the short story and the end indeed confirms this idea. The reader understands that Drioli has been killed and that the tattoo on his back has been sold and exposed: It wasn't more than a few weeks later that a picture by Soutine, of a woman's head, painted in an unusual manner, nicely framed and heavily varnished, turned up for sales in Buenos Aires.
By depicting characters with outstanding skills in concealing their true intentions, especially in "The Landlady" and "Skin", Roald Dahl manages to represent the untrustworthiness of human nature. Bodies in pain abound in Poe's and Dahl's writing, whether they are being let to die, dismembered or killed and preserved.
These neglected and mutilated bodies, as this part just explored, may stand for an externalization of the characters' unbalanced minds. Thanks to the Gothic genre and, more precisely the motif of mutilated bodies, Poe and Dahl try to describe inner states of consciousness. Although the concept of trauma has only been recently applied to literature, it has, according to Elissa Marder's essay entitled "Trauma and Literary Studies: The study of trauma within literature can enlighten one's comprehension of Poe and Dahl's works.
Literary trauma theory is thus the representation of one's traumatized unconscious as it is supposed to analyze the manifestations a traumatic event has had on an individual's psyche and creative mind. This idea of an unconscious being represented in literary forms is also at the center of Charles Mauron's psychocriticism. What Mauron calls an "obsessive metaphor" 9 is actually a network of obsessive images that need to be confronted to an author's life in order to elucidate his "personal myth" 9 and thus to discover his "unconscious personality" Consequently, Charles Mauron's psychocriticism may be considered as a predecessor of the trauma theory in literature because the two concepts essentially foregroud the same idea: This third part's aim is thus to demonstrate that Poe and Dahl's fiction are filled with obsessive images whose study may lead to an understanding of the authors' personal myths which may have suffered an unconscious transfer into their fiction.
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The first stage consists in superimposing different texts from the same author in order to detect repetitive images that seem to obsess the author The aim of the second stage of the method is to identify the "mythical figures and dramatic situations" that these images convey The third stage must then enable a critical reader to uncover the author's personal myth and finally the last stage involves a confirmation of this information based on the author's biography Therefore, according to Mauron, works of fiction are supposed to reflect an author's unconscious and psychocriticism is an useful tool to discover it.
Before identifying the "obsessive metaphors" in Poe and Dahl's work, an explanation of Mauron's expression itself should be carried out. In "obsessive metaphors", the word "obsessive" refers to the frequency in which the images appear. From Mauron's point of view if these images appear too often, they become obsessive as they are repeatedly22 used and they may reveal that the author is haunted by them. Charles Mauron also alludes to these repetitive images as "metaphors". In other words, the images that keep on appearing in an author's text that is to say the different mutilations of the body should not be understood in their literal meaning and instead they imply something else.
The different mutilations of the body in Poe and Dahl's work may thus be considered as "obsessive metaphors" as they are repeatedly dealt with in the stories under consideration and they stand for something else than their literal meaning. Poe and Dahl seem to share a similar "personal myth" as they both express the same obsessive images. Live burials, dismemberment and the conservation of bodies may indeed imply something else because those events are quite irrational as they are unlikely to happen. According to Fisher, Poe was aware of the symbolic value of these terrifying motifs: Poe and Dahl's stories about live burials probably do not evoke the real fear of being buried alive but instead this motif becomes a symbol that may reveal their unconscious personality.
It might indeed evoke a fear of confinement in general, or in other words, a feeling of claustrophobia. When confronted to the authors' biographies, the motif of live burials as a symbol of the authors' fear of confinement may indeed be validated. Poe's fear of confinement probably stems from his financial situation and his restricted professional career as a short story writer. According to many Poe specialists, including Fisher; "Poe's major demon, so to speak was poverty. More than any other cause, hardships and worries regarding scanty financial means troubled Poe's life" 4.
In "The Black Cat", the fact that the narrator is himself in a desperate financial situation may reflect Poe's own situation: Throughout his literary career Poe regarded himself as first and foremost a poet and only secondarily a writer of short stories. He had turned to the writing of fiction when he realised that his earnings from poetry would be insufficient for his modest needs, but in the last analysis he felt this was a distraction from his central artistic concerns.
Because Poe could not support his family just by writing poetry, he had to write fiction and may have felt imprisoned in a role of short story writer. Roald Dahl's fear of confinement may also be found when reading the author's biography. As Donald Sturrock reveals; the author's schooldays were dreadful and his "pleasures of youth had been stifled by an unfair system that was devoid of affection and feeling … " Dahl was bullied at school: Indeed, in his book entitled Boy: This book is a very violent one because Roald Dahl describes the tortures and the different kinds of bullying he had to face when he was younger: Accordingly, Dahl's feeling of claustrophobia may come from his schooldays because he felt he could not escape the tortures and his tormentors even though he tried many times.
And that is probably one of the reasons why he wrote short stories about bullied women who take their revenge. In "William and Mary", for instance, one object appears as an item symbolizing power. Indeed, the "cigarette" 13 seems to be an effective image which is only used by those in control. Casulli 53 As previously mentioned, Landy is in control because he addresses William as if he were a child, he gives him many orders and William obeys. During his speech, Landy also proposes a cigarette to William: The fact that Landy decides to "lit it i.
Likewise, at the end of the story, the reader discovers that William did not want Mary to smoke either, but when visiting him at the hospital, a revengeful Mary appears and this image of a victorious woman defeating her former controlling husband is conveyed by the cigarette she is smoking right in front of him: Then very slowly, deliberately, she put the cigarette between her lips and took a long stuck. She inhaled deeply, and she held the smoke inside her lungs for three or four seconds; then, suddenly, whoosh, out it came through her nostrils in two thin jets which struck the water in the basin, and billowed out over the surface in a thick blue cloud, enveloping the eye.
The recurrent images of dismemberment in Poe and Dahl's stories may also be an obsessive metaphor. The motif of dismemberment may be linked to the fear of castration because, in both cases, the body is sliced into pieces. According to the online Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales, the word "castration" refers to an operation aiming at removing the testicles or the ovaries of an individual in order to prevent him or her from reproduction: However, in Poe and Dahl's fiction, this fear of castration does not have to be a literal fear of castration.
Metaphorically, as the Collins Concise Dictionary highlights, a man can be castrated by losing his "vigour and masculinity" and the recurrent image of dismemberment in Poe and Dahl's stories may indeed represent the fear of losing one's manhood. As previously dealt with, Poe's fear of losing his masculinity may come from his chaotic financial situation because he was 24 http: Therefore, the dramatic financial situation of the narrator in "The Black Cat" reinforces his feminine traits as it was a man's role at the time to provide his family.
Because the narrator cannot properly fulfill this role, he is in a feminine position and is emasculated and that may echo Poe's fear of castration. Moreover, as Hammond underlines: That he was deeply devoted towards her there can be no doubt, but controversy persists as to whether he regarded her as a dearly-loved sister or as a wife in the conventional sense" To put it differently, Poe's marriage has been regarded by many biographers as a chaste one, especially by Joseph Wood Krutch who insisted that "Poe and Virginia did not have a normal married life and that 'prolonged illness made sexual relations with her impossible after she reached maturity'" qtd.
Poe's unconsummated marriage thus reinforces the motif of dismemberment as a symbol representing his fear of castration, his fear of not being manly enough. As far as Dahl is concerned, the motif of dismembering a body may also symbolize his fear of castration. The fact that the author was constantly humiliated and tortured by his schoolmates and teachers may have developed his fear of castration as he was not in a manly position and did not dare to confront his troublemakers to stand his ground.
Moreover, as a child, Roald Dahl witnessed many deaths that could have played a role in the author's fear of losing his manhood. Indeed, his father, Harald, died when Dahl was only three years old and his mother, Alfhild, had to struggle to support her family: Casulli 55 Two days later, he i. The funeral was grand and formal. Others wept but she i. Much rested on her shoulders.
She was thirty- five years old and have five children in her care A sixth was on the way. She was already looking forward. She intented to concentrate her energies on the living rather than the dead. Sturrock 39 In other words, Dahl's father died and could not assume his role, probably leaving Roald Dahl with a desire to do what his father could not: Growing up without a father figure may indeed have affected Dahl because, according to David B.
Lynn who wrote an article entitled "The Husband-Father Role in the Family" , a child, and especially a boy, needs a father in order to learn how to be a man: The man of the house is the model of the boy's future potential as a man. The boy in effect says of his father, 'So that is what it is like to be a man'" Because of his father's death, Dahl probably became unconsciously afraid of losing his own masculinity, just like the male characters of his stories whose powers are destroyed after their death. For instance, William in "William and Mary" is, at the end, considered as a child by his wife who eventually takes the power back: He's exactly like a little baby'" This comparison to a baby obviously undermines and even kills William's masculinity and it may reflect Dahl's own unconscious fear of castration Therefore, according to Charles Mauron's theory, the recurrent images of a body being dismembered in the short stories under consideration can be considered as obsessive metaphors, expressing the authors' unconscious fear of being emasculated.
The last method of mutilating the body in Poe and Dahl's tales, that is to say the conservation of the body, can also be considered as an obsessive metaphor and it may express the authors' fear of losing something, and more precisely someone they care about.
Both authors' lives were indeed fraught with personal dramas. Poe and Dahl were surrounded by death and this fear of 25 Dahl's fear of castration is also made extremely explicit in one of his other short stories entitled "Georgie Porgy". Indeed, in the story, a sexually repressed vicar is seduced by a woman who eventually swallows him whole. Casulli 56 losing someone may thus stem from the painful experiences they had to face. As it is generally known, Poe "lost an unusual number of beautiful, relatively young, nurturing females in his lifetime: As a child, Roald Dahl also witnessed many deaths in his family: Because the authors encountered death very early in their lives, they may have been afraid of losing another loved one or being all by themselves.
Unconsciously, these fears of loss and solitude found their way into their fiction, and more precisely in the obsessive metaphor of preserving a body. Poe and Dahl's fiction are thus filled with many obsessive metaphors that reflect their personal myth and their unconscious personality. Because these obsessive metaphors echo the authors' unconscious which was, itself, troubled by the terrible crisis that dominated their lives, Poe and Dahl's stories may nowadays be considered as "trauma narratives". A definition of this word should thus be carried out.
According to The Oxford English Dictionary, the word "trauma" means two things: This definition is thus relevant in this paper's context as the theme of the mutilation of the body implies a physical wound but also because, as mentioned in the introduction to this third part, it is linked to the psyche, the unconscious.
Something traumatic can thus be physical but, more importantly, it can be psychological because it cannot be forgotten. In her essay on trauma and literature, Elissa Marder also draws attention to the fact that "there is no specific set of physical manifestations identifying trauma, and it almost invariably produces repeated, uncontrollable, and incalculable effects that endure long after its ostensible 'precipitating cause'".
In other words, a traumatic event is not "experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly" qtd. This idea is also shared by a French psychologist and psychoanalyst named Marc Belhassen in Les Traumatismes de l'Enfance who states that the effects of a traumatic event only manifest themselves after its occurence: The numerous and violent deaths Poe and Dahl witnessed throughout their lives can therefore be considered as "traumatic". Marc Belhassen also identifies death as a traumatic event because it remains one of the most painful experiences of one's life: Moreover, the author suggests that death can be even more traumatic if it is experienced at a young age: Accordingly, in Poe and Dahl's cases, the many deaths they experienced while they were young were traumatic and may have affected the authors' psyche.
In other words, both authors' short stories exhibit the deep sense of loss that they experienced throughout their lives, making their fiction "trauma narratives". Indeed, his wife had tuberculosis and he constantly watched her coughing up blood: On the evening of January 20, the day after Poe's thirty-third birthday , while the undernourished and debilitated Virginia was singing and playing the piano, she suddenly broke a blood vessel and began to hemorrhage in a terrifying way.
The blood gushed from her mouth and her life was in danger. She partially recovered, only to sink, like a drowning survivor, again and again. In this regard, The Oval Portrait but also many of his other tales reflect Poe's own life. But many experiences in his own life also probably caused Dahl to be fascinated by the body and write about it: Accident and disease-prone throughout his life, Dahl's childhood was packed with grisly medical encounters and Boy is full of hair-raising and mostly true accounts of these.
His nose is 'cut clean- off' in a car crash and stitched back on by a doctor at home on the kitchen table. Then, on holiday in Norway, a doctor with a 'round mirror strapped to his forehead' and a nurse 'carrying a red rubber apron and a curved enamel bowl' remove his adenoids without anaesthetic. Sturrock 56 Moreover, as previously mentioned, Dahl was bullied at school he was beaten up and his body was thus an object of torture. The fact that the authors watched many bodies including their own being tortured may also be seen as traumatic because according to Belhassen: Thanks to Mauron's theory, the different methods of mutilating the body in the authors' short stories stand as "obsessive metaphors" and it accordingly leads to the authors' personal myth: Poe and Dahl may have been haunted by their fears of confinement, castration and loss and those fears stems from their own lives which have been fraught with personal drama.
Therefore several autobiographical elements can thus be found in their tales and Poe and Dahl's fiction may now appear as trauma narratives. Furthermore, as Elissa Marden highlights; "To be traumatized is precisely to be possessed by an image or event" located in the past.
Therefore, the traumatic past of the authors seems to haunt them and, it may emphasize the fact that their fiction can be considered as trauma narratives because they may represent the authors' past which affected their unconscious. A traumatic event has a "ghostly quality" qtd.
Ghost story
Poe and Dahl accordingly seem haunted by the traumatic events they faced. The fact that many characters in their tales are haunted may furthermore highlight the traumatic quality of Poe and Dahl's writing: The cats in Poe's "The Black Cat" indeed haunt the narrator throughout the tale. Firstly, the first cat, Pluto, appears as a haunting presence because it physically follows the narrator everywhere: It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets" Then, after the fire which destroyed his house, the narrator visits the ruins and notices, on the only remaining wall, the outline of a hanging cat: There was a rope about the animal's neck" The narrator once again seems obsessed by the cat.
Finally, the second cat also terrorizes the narrator who becomes so haunted that he has bad dreams about it: During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight — an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off — incumbent eternally upon my heart! Thus, the narrator is actually haunted by a feminine presence. Moreover, the prefatory remarks in "The Black Cat" underline the fact that the narrator has been traumatized by his past.
Indeed, when the narrator says: Thanks to these prefatory remarks, the narrator is also suggesting a situation that can be linked to the author himself. The narrator may thus appear as Poe's double and, because the narrator is burdened by his past, Poe may similarly be burdened by his, emphasizing the trauma quality of his fiction. This haunting is made explicit thanks to the use of the previously explained Gothic notion of the uncanny. The landlady appears as haunting because Billy is inevitably driven to follow her: The compulsion or, more accurately, the desire to follow after her into that house was extraordinarily strong" Throughout the story, the reader becomes also aware that Billy is not the only haunted character of the story.
Indeed, the landlady herself seems haunted. For instance, she seems fascinated by Billy's body and skin. She is obsessed by his skin and expresses a desire for a perfect skin, a baby's skin "without a blemish" Her obsession for perfect skins is so haunting that she is driven to murder to satisfy it.
Poe's narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" is similarly "haunted And this I did for seven long nights In "William and Mary", Mary is also haunted by an eye: When he was alive, she already felt observed by his "pair of eyes" 20 and now that he is dead she still feels the presence of his eyes: And even now, after a week alone in the house, she sometimes had an uneasy feeling that they were still there, following her around, staring at her from doorways, from empty chairs, through a window at night" Both protagonists in Poe and Dahl's tales are haunted by the presence of an evil eye.
Montresor is indeed so haunted by Fortunato's behavior that he decides to kill him. Furthermore, at the end of the story, the reader learns that fifty years have passed since Montresor murdered Fortunato: Yet, as Hays highlights, Montresor remembers this story and that shows that this crime continues to possess him and remains the obsession of his life: Therefore he relates a narrative-- one of the most wonderfully detailed among Poe's tales-- in which he relives the crime, so bound by his memories that he clearly reproduces the dialogue from that long-past event.
Fortunato may not return in ghostly form to torment Montresor, but is impact is nonetheless inescapable. Montresor is thus traumatized by this expericence as he cannot forget it. Fred Botting in a handy and explanatory guide to the Gothic entitled Gothic draws attention to the fact that a haunting presence of the past in the present recalls Gothic atmospheres as "Gothic atmospheres — gloomy and mysterious — have repeteadly signalled the disturbing return of pasts upon presents Mrs Foster in Dahl's "The Way Up to Heaven", besides being haunted by her fear of being late, is also haunted by her husband's tyrannical actions and her recent desire to go live in Paris with her daughter and grandchildren: In other words, Mrs Foster have probably been haunted by this desire for the last couple of years and it could have led her to let her husband to die in the elevator.
In Poe's tale, the artist is obviously obsessed by his passion: The volume which presents the paintings and their histories also reveals that the bride, herself, was jealous of her husband's passion: Drioli in Dahl's story is equally haunted by his own experience during the war. Indeed, when contemplating Soutine's painting in front of the gallery, Drioli gathers his memories and the reader learns that Drioli lived during the Second World War and that this war destroyed his business: The destruction of his business because of the war left him impoverished and that is the reason why he accepts to sell his body at the end.
Poe and Dahl's characters are all in a way obsessed by something and being obsessed can be linked to Mauron's psychocriticism and trauma theory as it once again supposes a repetition: This motif of obsession in the stories under consideration may highlight the fact that Poe and Dahl were themselves haunted by something when writing these stories, drawing attention to the traumatic quality of their fiction.
Moreover, because their characters are haunted, the reader may eventually feel haunted as well when reading their tales because as Punter argues: Though haunting is obvious mostly in the literary genre of a short story, the haunting quality of this kind of fiction lies in its ability not only to frighten the reader but also to haunt him after the reading process. Poe is generally known for being the originator of this genre of narratives and Hammond 29 The special issue devoted to this reserch question is planned for publication in And this is specifically the kind of literature Dahl wrote.
Moreover, Dahl clearly shares Poe's opinion on this genre when he states "'A short story has to be two things. It has to be a short, and it has to be a story'" qtd. Poe and his "single effect" theory seemingly influenced Dahl as both writers considered that a short story should be short, and has to achieve a single effect or impression at the end: If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression — for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art — the limit of a single sitting… Poe, Essays and Reviews 15 Poe was thus the first writer to fully comprehend that, within the limits of the short story genre, an author should aim at a "single effect".
Dahl seemed to agree with this theory and thus, in both authors' works, everything whether it is the title, the structure, the punctuation, the onomastic or simply the wording is relevant and meaningful. In spite of its length, a short story is not an easy form to write or, perhaps more importantly, to read. A relationship has to be created between these two entities for a book to achieve its goal and function. Chez certains, elle occupe presque toute la part ludique de leur existence Although a short story has no set length, it is, according to Poe and many other subsequent critics and authors, supposed to be read in one sitting and it is thus a pretty short narrative which increases emotional impact.
The reading contract asks the reader to participate in the game of literature and enter the fictional world. In other words, fiction has an ambiguous status as the reader has to make a choice when reading: According to Jouve, the priviledged site of this reading contract is the paratext or the incipit of a fiction: Here, Poe proposes his text and it is up to the reader to accept to read and believe it.
Poe therefore plays with the reader and, this metatextual prefatory remark is also an appetizer for the reader who is about to enter the story's fictional world as it creates suspense. The narrator's aim is not only to invite the reader into the fictional world, but also to create an illusion of truth in order to make the reader believe the story he is about to read.
According to him, these strategies are: Moreover, Poe uses an important metafictional process in his tales to remind the reader that his stories are fictional: Therefore, by directly addressing his reader, Poe, recalls the situation of communication between the author and the reader and it allows the reader to take a critical distance from the text as it re-establishes the boudaries between fiction and reality.
Therefore, the onomastics allows the reader to take distance with the fiction. Because most of the short-story 17 pages out of 27 is William's letter to his wife, the reader actually witnesses someone who is in the same position as him: Mary is indeed also a reader as she, along with Dahl's reader, reads the letter and he therefore becomes aware that the story is just fiction. However, though Poe and Dahl propose opportunities for the reader to take a critical distance from their fiction, the single effect they both produce is mainly due to their use of techniques to involve the reader.
Many of Poe and Dahl's fiction feature the strategies an anthor can use to make their reader believe in their stories. For instance, Poe's tales in this study are all told by a first person narrator and therefore these narrators guarantee the authenticity of the stories by suggesting that the events they describe actually happened to them.
In other words, they are universal because shared by everyone. Poe uses key locations in his stories to awake the archaic fears and phantasms of his reader and therefore make him adhere to his texts. Dahl also manages to make his reader believe in his stories mostly thanks to the characters he creates. She didn't wish to see her husband. She was terrified that in one way or another he would eventually manage to prevent her from getting to France.
As Vincent Jouve explains in La Lecture , the emotions a reader feels allow him to identify with the character 11 and, as previously discussed, the reader knows that women in Dahl's stories have been neglected and wrongly treated by their husband. Casulli 70 Moreover, though Dahl does not use Gothic locations that may frighten the reader, he nonetheless provokes the reader's participation because his stories may also echo one's unconscious.
Even though his stories have a more trivial dimension than Poe's because they often represent domestic disputes that eventually take a bad turn, they nonetheless may frighten the reader because the situations depicted in the stories may "affect" him, and that is, according to Jouve, one of the most attractive things about fiction: Indeed, word choices, sentence construction, description, action or other previously mentioned devices used for reader participation control the emotional flow and these devices often appeal to the reader's affect, that is to say his feelings or emotions and not his reason.
At some point in these stories, the situations become irrational and improbable: However, because the reader cannot master his affect, his irrational side is appealed to. He therefore enters into the story via this irrational affect even though he is aware that the story is not rational. The text manages to awake the reader's archaic and irrational side because what one feels when reading mirrors his own unconscious: Like Poe, Dahl draws his reader into his fiction by stimulating his unconscious and irrational fears. This single effect is, in the selected tales, horror. As previously mentioned, Poe seems more straightforward 33 http: Because he has no delicacy where horror is concerned, because he stops at nothing, he never falls short" Volume IV The horror effect Poe wants to produce in his reader is therefore created thanks to the author's ability to make the reader believe and his explicitness.
Indeed, in many of his tales, including the ones under consideration in this study, the end is powerful because violent. In the selected texts from Poe, death surrounds the characters and it is what ends the tales, constituting the single impression of the text. In this tale, the reader is indeed confronted to a violent death that is made even more macabre because it happens at the end of the tale, leaving the reader shocked and unprepared: The use of ekphrasis by the narrator of the story highlights the romantic mood of the tale: The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl.
It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the radiant hair melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the background of the whole. R Hammond indeed agrees with this idea when he states: Poe's single effect is thus achieved thanks to the closed endings of his stories as they leave a single impression on the reader's mind.
However, Poe also uses another source of terror in these two tales to intensify the single effect he wants to produce in his reader: I admit the deed! Sound seems to be an important means to convey horror and Poe also uses a special typography to express sonority and rhythm in his tales. Throughout the tale, the overuse of dashes is for instance noteworthy, especially at the end: I felt that I must scream or die!
Eric Lysoe has explored the significance of the dashes in the tale and argues that these numerous dashes highlight the narrator's madness: Once again, the use of repetitions is obvious at the end of the story when the narrator's madness rises to its breaking point: Maddy had tricked her into a hospital for a check-up, but actually left her to stay where she would no longer have to care for the mother. When the mother tries to run away, she is caught and brought back to her room, where she is henceforth restrained to her bed.
Whether Maddy had expected the hospital stay to accelerate her mother's death, as it eventually does, remains unclear. But for all their rational attempts at explanation and justification, the sisters remain trapped in their guilty conscience. From a pragmatic point of view, the daughters have fulfilled their duty: Yet from a more instinctive, humane perspective, their incapability to love the grotesque mother was a most tragic, visceral failure.
In true Gothic mode, the degeneration of the mother highlights the gap between civilized surface and the primeval fears of human nature.
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The treaty established Britain as the major imperial power, not least because it included an agreement with Spain that granted Britain a monopoly over the slave trade with Spanish America. It also marked the end of French explorations in North America, and stopped the commercial skirmishes over trade monopolies and ownership of land.
However, it did nothing to ease the tension between French- and English-speaking communities, which continued to affect relations between the settlers. While the treaty temporarily ended the official fighting, an undercurrent of mistrust and tension continued to shape the lives of the settlers. In a similar way, neither Helen's escape from Jubilee, nor Maddy's decision to put her mother in a hospital, gave the sisters the peace of mind they desired.
I would even go so far as to suggest that the economic, utilitarian dimension of the treaty, which was stressed by Seeley, implies an entirely selfish motive behind the sisters' actions. The Gothic mother is both the source of the dread, and a symbol for the suppressed levels of experience. Maddy and Helen are both accomplices in her death. The story ends with Maddy wondering why she is incapable of going away from Jubilee Munro Last but not least, it relates to the human potential for violence.
The girl, Heather Bell, gets lost while she was on a hike with the C. Because of their group leader's stubborn insistence that she simply played a trick on them all and would return soon enough, a day passes until a proper search is organized. But Heather cannot be found, nor can any sign of what has happened to her.
Has she eloped with an unknown man, or was she kidnapped, or murdered? The town is briefly unsettled by the case, but soon decides to invest its energy in the re-establishment of the status quo rather than in solving the mystery. The story's progress consequently continues to communicate the priorities of the town's people: After revealing how they portray Heather as being 'strange,' that is, as not being a local, it narrates the reactions and speculations of individual community members.
An eventual solution to the mystery is never offered — a final comment only implies that Maureen, the main character, might have observed something relevant but failed to realize its importance: In fact, Maureen's contemplations on the event suggest that she has, in true Gothic fashion, suppressed her lust for living in a social structure that is built on women's willingness to maintain the idea that marriage guarantees them ultimate fulfilment. Adult women are described as somewhat grotesque figures, whose unattractive looks correspond to the insipidity of their lives.
She had a heavy face, a droop to the cheeks — she reminded Maureen of some sort of dog. Not necessarily an ugly dog. The thickset bodies of the women, their clipped or otherwise fixed hair — all of these superficial attributes highlight how they seek to embody a rigid morality rather than, for instance, tempting suggestions. The women in the story have eliminated their playfulness; to serve as pillars of their community, they have become immobile. She disappears at an age that marks the turning point of her leaving adolescence behind in order to enter maturity.
Therefore, her disappearance makes Maureen wonder whether the girl did not simply take the chance to escape provincial life. Maureen gives in to reminiscences of her own days in the C. The girls played cards, they told jokes, they smoked cigarettes, and around midnight began the great games of Truth or Dare. Questions requiring Truth were: Do you hate your mother? How many peckers have you seen and whose were they? Have you ever lied? In fact, the girls' games mockingly parody the mottos of the C. She remembered how noisy she had been then.
A shrieker, a dare-taker. Just before she hit high-school, a giddiness either genuine or faked or half-and-half became available to her. Soon it vanished, her bold body vanished inside this ample one, and she became a studious, shy girl, a blusher. She developed the qualities her husband would see and value when hiring and proposing.
Maureen's thoughts imply both her loneliness and her inclination to try a different life. In this way, Heather's disappearance becomes symbolic for the rebellious girl Maureen had once been. Like Heather, this younger, independent self got lost. Therefore, Maureen wants the younger woman to have run away, to have opposed what small town life held in store for her: I dare you to run away. There are times when girls are inspired, when they want the risks to go on and on. They want to be heroines, regardless. They want to take a joke beyond where anybody has ever taken it before.
To be careless, dauntless, to create havoc — that was the lost hope of girls. The melancholy of the story remains, like the mystery at the heart of the plot, unresolved. Stronger sensations, hidden desires, are implied in the characters' observations, in their gestures and looks, but they are never actually verbalized — and, thus, neither consciously perceived nor acted upon. If Heather had indeed become the victim of a crime, her perpetrator would have been the only person who has failed to restrict him- or herself.
But all of these probabilities are swallowed by the bleak, mundane character of the town. The inability to communicate is highlighted in another grotesque feature: A stroke has slurred the speech of Maureen's husband; the only verbal contribution of Mr. Siddicup, whom Marian suspects to be involved in Heather's disappearance, has stopped speaking altogether after a laryngectomy. The guttural sounds and inarticulate expressions of the men mirror the distorted images of the women.
Munro seems to mock her readers' expectations when she turns a story that began as a mystery into a delineation of a scenery that is devoid of any suspense. It is, instead, a representation of the 'underlying dreadfulness' stated by Tennessee Williams. The possible crime that briefly disturbed it eventually serves to enhance the impression of dull stagnation.
On the surface, the story narrates a young woman's failed attempt to break free from a troubled marriage with the help of an older, more sophisticated female friend. Upon closer examination, however, Carla's — the young woman's — return to her husband suggests a correlation between submission and security. Her homecoming may limit her autonomy, but it also provides her with the reassuring feeling that there is something, and someone, to care about.
The comfort of a familiar unhappiness prevails over the vague temptation of freedom — or so it seems. Munro's dense and concise narration suggests a number of different explanations for Carla's eventual decision to stay with her husband. Carla, the young wife, Clark, her husband, and Sylvia, the older friend, are representations of such archetypes as the damsel in distress, the dark lover, and the wise woman, respectively. All three characters are entangled in a triangle of suppressed desires and contested power relations. She takes pleasure in the knowledge that she has a set occupation, and attends to her routine of tasks.
These tasks include cleaning the little horse barn of their trailer park home, and caring for the tourists who come for a horse ride. Carla's third obligation serves to describe the character of her husband Clark, because. Clark had fights not just with the people he owed money to. His friendliness, compelling at first, could suddenly turn sour. There were places he would not go into, where he always made Carla go, because of some row.
Her emotional composure and quiet compliance form the counterbalance to Clark's irritable, unpleasant, and self-absorbed personality. Her parents' disapproval positively boosted Carla's perception of Clark as a dark, romantic rebel. He represented a challenge which appealed to teenage Carla's longing for heightened sensation. I hate when you're like this, that's all. Clark cannot endure defiance from anybody.
In their conversations, he tries to outwit rather than communicate with Carla, forcing her to submit to his regime of domestic terror. She also tends to avoid direct confrontation. Her reluctance to win one of their verbal contests results from her sensing that such a defeat would impair what is left of his romantic appeal; it would also, however, further provoke his brutality. Her education and social status seem to depict her as superior to Carla, as someone Carla might consult when she is in trouble.
Sylvia despises Clark, and when Carla breaks down in front of her, crying about her miserable marriage, she offers help. She arranges a bus trip and temporary accommodation for Carla in Toronto. Yet Sylvia's readiness to help the young woman derives from her being appalled at Carla's noisy fit rather than from an earnest desire to end Carla's obvious unhappiness: In order to excite some passionate response from her husband, Carla had invented a bedtime story about how Sylvia's late husband had molested her — a narrative to stimulate Clark's and Carla's more intimate moments.
Clark, however, has decided to use the story in order to gain some material profit as well. He forces his wife to visit Sylvia, where he wants her to repeat the tale. He expects Sylvia to pay a large sum to hush up the alleged harassment. Far from really wanting to leave her husband, but unable to reveal the truth, Carla breaks down in front of Sylvia in order to escape from the imminent danger of being revealed to be a liar. These characters are rather sarcastic adaptations of the Gothic archetypes of the damsel in distress, and the wise woman, respectively.
As far as Clark is concerned, his literary function encompasses features of both dark lover and villain: Carla has envisaged her husband as romantic lover, while Sylvia sees him as a villain who abuses his wife. Munro is darkly ironic again, when she constructs him as a jerk who lacks the capacity for either. Her subversive rendering of Gothic stereotypes, as well as the presence of an imminent danger that suffuses the narration, contribute to an uncanny, foreboding atmosphere. Gothic elements are employed as direct references to a fear that informs the characters' actions. Moreover, Munro uses Gothic features to show both that her characters rely on creative inventions, and that these imaginations are fictitious.