The Themes of Obsession, Isolation, and Madness in Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories

A dead wife. A set of teeth. A painter. A man of malaise. These four details bond two of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories to the elements of madness, isolation, and obsession. In one of these short tales a man is staying in a tower and discovers the erie events of a preoccupied painter and the death of his wife through the work of a portrait. Separately, the second story is a personal narrative of the fictional character Egaeus, who with his mental illness of great focus on small details becomes obsessed with his cousin Berenice’s teeth. His startling actions are unforgettable, to all except for himself. However despite the great differences in these stories’ plots, the two characters are tied together through their mental illness, similar in regards to their detailed focus on particular objects, which leads to their connection in several Gothic elements of Poe’s works. The painter, a character from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Oval Portrait,” and Egaeus, a character from the Poe story, “Berenice,” both demonstrate the aspects of the Gothic style as obsession, isolation, and madness.

The first Gothic aspect represented in these two Poe stories is obsession, as Poe introduces the characters in both “The Oval Portrait” and “Berenice” as having preoccupied elements to their personalities, causing them to develop growing obsessions. Robert Giordano summarizes on his website Poe Stories: An Exploration of Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe, published by Design215 Inc., Poe’s short story “The Oval Portrait” helping to emphasise this theme: “A painter is so obsessed with painting the perfect portrait of his beautiful wife, that he does nothing else until it is finished.” Giordano directly connects the stories plot with the element of obsession, by saying that the painter becomes distracted by the painting of his wife, which keeps him completely engulfed by his work until he is finished, causing him to pay the ultimate price. For instance, in “The Oval Portrait” Poe writes, “But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and from day to day.” This indicates the painter’s obsession with his painting because of how much time he spends working on it, never stopping to enjoy time with his wife or even see the world around him, for if he did, he could have prevented his wife’s untimely death. Furthermore, his wife herself participated in her own death by complying to her husband’s wishes, as she is depicted as also having an obsession, the obsession of fulfilling her husband’s obsession. Just as the painter struggles with a deep obsession, Egaeus from “Berenice” experiences one as well.

Egaeus, because of his mental illness, focuses on small details quite intensely, and he starts to develop a growing obsession with the teeth of his cousin Berenice. Poe directly writes, “In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no other thoughts but for the teeth… --ah therefore it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason” (Poe, “Berenice”). As shown by Poe, Egaeus stops thinking about everything and only focuses on trying to gain possession of Berenice’s teeth. In fact, Poe uses the literary element of punctuation through an exclamation to further represent this obsession. As Egaeus and the painter develop these obsessions, they lead themselves into subsequent isolation.

The element of isolation is another that Poe frequently writes into his short stories, however isolation is represented differently in both stories. In order to express the effects of the painters obsession, Poe details how the painter starts to shut people out of his life. “But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from the canvas merely, even to regard the countenance of his wife” (Poe, “The Oval Portrait”). Through this quote, Poe demonstrates the grave isolation that the painter experiences due to his obsession. He can not stop working on his painting, which leads him to disregard everything around him, isolating himself from everything and everyone, by both keeping everyone out of the tower and ignoring his wife. In contrast to the painter, Egaeus’s isolation is caused by the loss of a loved one. “I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred” (Poe, “Berenice”). The immense isolation Egaeus feels is shown through Poe’s imagery. As he wakes up from his slumber in the library, he realizes he is by himself, as his cousin Berenice has just passed away and was probably already buried. This leaves a hole in Egaeus, creating an immense feeling of isolation as one of the people closest to him had passed away. So, Poe is able to create isolation through obsession, linking together these Gothic elements in his stories.

The third Gothic aspect of his stories is madness, which is shown by both the painter and Egaeus. For example, Poe imulates the utter madness of the painter in “The Oval Portrait” within the last few lines: “...but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, 'This is indeed Life itself!' turned suddenly to regard his beloved: -- She was dead!” This portrays madness because as the painter cries out about his newly finished painting, describing it as very lively and real, he then turns to look at his model, his wife, and she is dead, which shows his madness in terms of having more care for his nonliving painting than his wife’s life. Poe uses irony to demonstrate this madness by juxtaposing the painting of the woman as “Life itself”, to the actual woman, who is lifeless. One example of the madness Egaeus is consumed by is when it is revealed that he pulled out Berenice’s teeth:

With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it… and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.

From the description of the contents in Egaeus’s box, it is clear that they are teeth, which indicates that he has succumbed to his obsession of Berenice’s teeth. However, it is especially mad as he does not even realise he has removed her teeth until after a menial comes in and points out all of the evidence, which scares Egaeus, causing him to grab the box to see what was inside only to let it fall and see teeth spilling out. In both stories Poe utilizes the characters’ obsessive compulsion to bring out their sheer madness, as the painter does not realise his wife had passed and Egaeus does not remember taking Berenice’s teeth out.

In all, Poe represents the ideas of obsession, isolation, and madness throughout his stories and by tying all three aspects together is able to create astonishing plots that make his stories so popular. In an article called “Where to Start with Edgar Allan Poe”, published by the New York Public Library website, author Amanda Pagan links the madness of Poe’s writings to the time period in which he wrote them. “Murder, death, madness, grief, and psychological horror were common themes within his works, which fit with the dour spirit of the Victorian age. Indeed, this time period saw a rise in Gothic literature and early works of horror.” As Poe lived during the Vitorian era, there was a rise in grim thought which helped fuel his creative yet dreary stories, introducing themes like madness, isolation, and obsession. So, Poe’s use of these elements is not only represented by the painter from “The Oval Portrait” and Egaeus from “Berenice”, but also through many of his other short stories, as Poe opened up the world to these Gothic literary devices.