The story that I will be discussing is entitled “Berenice” which tells the story of a man named Egaeus. Egaeus spends most of his time in the library in deep meditation. He lives in his head and the realities of the world are dreams to him. He suffers from monomania and concentrates on trivial things for long periods of time. Egaeus has a cousin named Berenice who he describes as graceful and full of energy. Berenice becomes sick, however, and soon begins to wither away. Egaeus proposes marriage to her and they are set to get married. One night while he is meditating in his library he notices Berenice standing in front of him. Her emaciated frame disturbs him and he becomes anxious. His anxiety is heightened when she smiles and he sees her teeth. He becomes obsessed with the teeth and cannot get them out of his mind. Egaeus soon becomes convinced that if he gains possession of the teeth he will be at peace. Berenice soon dies of epilepsy and Egaeus prepares for her burial. One night in the library, he awakens in a confused state. He has an uneasy feeling and cannot recall the past few days. All he remembers is that Berenice is dead. He can hear the scream of a female in his ears and there is a small box on the table beside him that makes him shudder. A servant enters the library to tell Egaeus of a strange scream in the night that brought the household to the grave of Berenice where her body had been dug up. She was still breathing and still alive. The servant then points out the mud on Egaeus’s clothes and points to a spade on the wall. Egaeus rises in horror and grabs the box dropping it. It falls and shatters, and dental instruments and teeth scatter across the floor.
Edgar Allan Poe is known for his gothic style of writing and this story has obvious gothic elements. The setting itself is very gothic. Egaeus lives in a large mansion described as gloomy and grey. The character of Egaeus is very gothic in that he lives in his mind and is very disconnected from the world. He was born in the library and is preoccupied with books and studying. This keeps him isolated from the rest of the world. Berenice is a common gothic character as well. She starts out healthy but deteriorates quickly. Her frame becomes emaciated and her beauty fades. Her character becomes a haunting figure in the life of Egaeus. The themes of the story are also very gothic. For example, mental illness is prevalent throughout the story. Egaeus suffers from monomania, which is characterized by excessive concentration on a particular object. This seems to cause him great distress throughout the story. One of the most gothic moments of the story is Egaeus’s obsession with Berenice’s teeth, which leads him to dig up her body and extract them from her mouth while she is still alive. The death of a beautiful woman is also very gothic as is the idea of being buried alive.
It is evident that Poe’s culture as well as his life affected his writing in a big way. His life was plagued with tragedy that I think definitely made his stories more dark and twisted. Both of his parents were gone by the time he was three leaving him orphaned. His wife also dies of tuberculosis at a young age. Poe suffered from alcoholism throughout his life, which I think also contributed to the darkness of his stories and the isolation of his characters. Poe was also writing during the Romantic period and would have been exposed to other writers such as, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley who was known for her gothic novel Frankenstein. He would have also been familiar with the work of Nathanial Hawthorne and the Bronte’s, who where also well-known gothic writers. In other words, the period in which Poe was writing creatively was beginning to explore the gothic elements of horror and apprehension. Someone who was living and producing literature in this time would have surely been influenced by such factors.
