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Edgar Allan Poe -- Criticism
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Edgar Allan Poe's Fiction
Should it be asked why Poe's tales are nearly all of the
bloodcurdling variety, the answer is that they are a triple reflection of
himself, of the fantastic romanticism of his age, and of the taste of
readers who were then abnormally fond of ghastly effects in fiction. Let us
understand these elements clearly; for otherwise Poe's horrible stories
will give us nothing beyond the mere impression of horror.
To begin with the personal element, Poe was naturally inclined to
morbidness. He had a childish fear of darkness and hobgoblins; he worked
largely "on his nerves"; he had an abnormal interest in graves, ghouls and
the terrors which preternatural subjects inspire in superstitious minds. As
a writer he had to earn his bread; and the fiction most in demand at that
time was of the "gothic" or Mysteries of Udolpho kind, with its
diabolical villain, its pallid heroine in a haunted room, its medley of
mystery and horror. [Footnote: As Richardson suggests, the popular novels
of Poe's day are nearly all alike in that they remind us of the fat boy in
Pickwick, who "just wanted to make your flesh creep." Jane Austen
(and later, Scott and Cooper) had written against this morbid tendency, but
still the "gothic" novel had its thousands of shuddering readers on both
sides of the Atlantic.] At the beginning of the century Charles Brockden
Brown had made a success of the "American gothic" (a story of horror
modified to suit American readers), and Poe carried on the work of Brown
with precisely the same end in view, namely, to please his audience. He
used the motive of horror partly because of his own taste and training, no
doubt, but more largely because he shrewdly "followed the market" in
fiction. Then as now there were many readers who enjoyed, as Stevenson
says, being "frightened out of their boots," and to such readers he
appealed. His individuality and, perhaps, his chief excellence as a
story-writer lay in his use of strictly logical methods, in his ability to
make the most impossible yarn seem real by his reasonable way of telling
it. Moreover, he was a discoverer, an innovator, a maker of new types,
since he was the first to introduce in his stories the blend of calm,
logical science and wild fancy of a terrifying order; so he served as an
inspiration as well as a point of departure for Jules Verne and other
writers of the same pseudo-scientific school.
Poe's numerous tales may be grouped in three or four classes. Standing by
itself is "William Wilson," a story of double personality (one good and one
evil genius in the same person), to which Stevenson was indebted in his
_Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_. Next are the tales of
pseudo-science and adventure, such as "Hans Pfaall" and the "Descent into
the Maelstrom," which represent a type of popular fiction developed by
Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and many others, all of whom were more or less
influenced by Poe. A third group may be called the ingenious-mystery
stories. One of the most typical of these is "The Gold Bug," a tale of
cipher-writing and buried treasure, which contains the germ, at least, of
Stevenson's Treasure Island. To the same group belong "The Murders
in the Rue Morgue" and other stories dealing with the wondrous acumen of a
certain Dupin, who is the father of "Old Sleuth," "Sherlock Holmes" and
other amateur detectives who do such marvelous things in fiction,--to
atone, no doubt, for their extraordinary dullness in real life.
Still another group consists of phantom stories,--ghastly yarns that serve
no purpose but to make the reader's spine creep. The mildest of these
horrors is "The Fall of the House of Usher," which some critics place at
the head of Poe's fiction. It is a "story of atmosphere"; that is, a story
in which the scene, the air, the vague "feeling" of a place arouse an
expectation of some startling or unusual incident. Many have read this
story and found pleasure therein; but others ask frankly, "Why bother to
write or to read such palpable nonsense?" With all Poe's efforts to make it
real, Usher's house is not a home or even a building in which dwells a man;
it is a vacuum inhabited by a chimera. Of necessity, therefore, it tumbles
into melodramatic nothingness the moment the author takes leave of it.
If it be asked, "What shall one read of Poe's fiction?" the answer must
depend largely upon individual taste. "The Gold Bug" is a good story,
having the adventurous interest of finding a pirate's hidden gold; at
least, that is how most readers regard it, though Poe meant us to be
interested not in the gold but in his ingenious cryptogram or secret
writing. The allegory of "William Wilson" is perhaps the most original of
Poe's works; and for a thriller "The House of Usher" may be recommended as
the least repulsive of the tales of horror. To the historian the chief
interest of all these tales lies in the influence which they have exerted
on a host of short-story writers at home and abroad.
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