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| Karen Lee Street |
The Australia-based writer Karen Lee Street published
in 2016 the first novel of her trilogy on Edgar Allan Poe: Edgar Allan Poe
and the London Monster. The text is noteworthy as it employs the figure of
the charismatic American author as a fictional protagonist who joins forces
with Chevalier Auguste Dupin, a character of Poe’s “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The
Mystery of Marie Rôget” (1842), and “The
Purloined Letter” (1844), to investigate the lives of the
author’s grandparents. The combination of
real characters with fictional ones is one of the strengths of Street’s
narrative, and, though she claims that she has “alluded to over thirty Poe
stories, poems and essays in the novel” (372), the truth is that readers not
familiar with the writings of the Gothic classic can delight in Street’s
thriller with supernatural echoes.
Street’s story begins with Poe travelling from Philadelphia to London in 1840. After receiving a mahogany box with some letters allegedly written by his ancestors in the late 1780s/1790s, Poe meets his friend Dupin in the British city to discover the connections between Poe’s grandparents, actors of the London stage, with the so-called “London Monster”, a notorious criminal who appeared in the press of the time for stalking beautiful women and slicing their garments and derrières.
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| Cover of Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster |
This blog post will analyse several features of Street’s novel and will not develop the storyline as such. The aim of this text is to study some Poetic references that emerge when reading the novel. Consequently, the blog post will be divided in three different sections: the employment of the doubling in the story with Dupin resembling the figure of Poe, the background of both Poe and Dupin and how they echo some of the American author’s tales, and, finally, the figure of Charles Dickens in both Street’s novel and in Poe’s real life.
Edgar Allan Poe and Auguste Dupin as Doubles
The concept of a double appears in diverse types of narratives, from comedies to serious tales, yet it is the Gothic literature the one which emphasises this trope. The term “doppelgänger”, a loanword from the German which literally means “double goer”, is depicted as a ghostly phenomenon seen as a harbinger of bad luck. First seen in Siebenkäs (1796) by Jean Paul, the noun is frequently equalled to an evil twin, and, in the nineteenth century, the theme of the double in literature was predominant for individuals had to face their lack of individuality in growing metropolis and, as Miriam Fernández-Santiago states, “the rise of Psychology and the theories of double consciousness developed by Mesmer, Schubert, Charcot, Binet and Janet” (72) relate to the anxieties of the time. E.T.A Hoffmann’s “The Devil’s Elixirs” (1815), “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, or Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) are examples of this type of fiction.
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| Illustration by Arthur Rackham |
For Freud, “the double refers to a representation of the ego that can assume various forms: shadow, reflection, portrait, and twin” (Jafari), and, as it can be read in his influential “The Uncanny” (1919), the psychoanalyst states that it is Otto Rank who “has gone into the connections the “double” has with reflections in mirrors, with shadows, guardian spirits, with the belief in the soul and the fear of death” (Freud 9). In his Double: A Psychoanalytic Study (1971), Rank comments on Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson”, a vital story to understand Street’s novel. After a brief summary of the plot in which Rank claims that William Wilson “meets a double in his childhood at school” (26) with “Wilson’s own name and birthday” (26) and he “also resembles him so much in physique, speech, behaviour and gait that both are considered to be brothers” (26), “only by his voice, which cannot rise above a whisper, is the double distinguished from the original” (26), Rank clarifies that “the main character is incapable of hating his counterpart” (26) nor reject his advice.
When we read Street’s novel, we perceive the same relationship between Poe and Dupin: not only they do resemble physically, but they also have an intellectual connection. Friends since a previous meeting in Paris eight years before, and with their own phrase of Amicis semper fidelis (“Friends always loyal”), the first time Poe sees Dupin in London he is astonished by their own resemblance: “I was momentarily taken aback- it was as if I were unexpectedly confronted by my own image in a looking glass. We were the same age, thirty-one, and of the same build and height. Even our clothing was similar, for Dupin habitually dressed entirely in black, like an entity of the night, as was my own predilection.” (28-29) Moreover, there are continuous comments by Poe regarding Dupin such as “I had assumed Dupin’s uncanny ability to read a person’s most private secrets” (74) or “when I confided my memories, Dupin dismissed them as little more than nonsense. It seemed that he had never had a childhood.” (103) The latter sentence is relevant since Dupin accompanies Poe to his school to gather some information about his childhood, echoing the double of William Wilson appears when the protagonist is at his school.
Interestingly, D.J. Moores considers that “William Wilson” is generally understood “in one direction only” (32), and that “they interpret the whisper of Wilson (the doppelgänger) as that of Wilson’s (the protagonist’s) conscience without considering the possibility that Wilson may also be the dream persona, the object, of a sleeping subject, Wilson.” (32) (italics and bold by Moores) This can be perceived in Street’s text throughout the plot, as Poe states that “I followed Dupin like a shadow, and fear followed me” (138), or “I asked in a whisper not unlike that of William Wilson” (192). The fact that Dupin disappears when Poe is reading the end of “William Wilson” to an audience in London, or that Dupin aids Poe in different critical situations, makes the reader wonder how Poe really manages to save himself from death and how Dupin emerges just at the precise moment he is needed. Besides, in Street’s text, Poe tends to have a “feverish brain” (199) at certain moments of the narrative in which he hears a “small voice” within himself (199).
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| Illustration by Arthur Rackham |
Nevertheless, Poe and Dupin are not the only characters Street works with to express dualism, since when both characters visit Madame Tussaud, a friend of Dupin and his family, in her museum, the wax creature of Maria Malibran is depicted as a doppelgänger of the real opera singer (134).
Another story by Poe which can be perceived is the “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846). As Charles A. Sweet Jr. explains, the parallelisms between Montresor and Fortunato in Poe’s tale “serve to exhibit the unconscious psychological process of transference and hence to elucidate Montresor’s motivation. Montresor unconsciously projects himself into Fortunato. Montresor’s revenge, then, is not a ritual of sacrifice, but of scapegoating” since he refuses to express the “thousand injuries” and the “insult” he allegedly is a victim of and he torments himself with the crime fifty years after committing it. In Street’s novel, the idea of a heritage by both Poe and especially Dupin (who is a nobleman) is present, and the latter is even portrayed with a walking stick whose top has a “golden cobra with glaring eyes of Burnese rubies, its fangs exposed to strike…the deadly snake was a part of his (Dupin’s) family coat-of-arms. Indeed, I had seen a magnificent rendering of it displayed in his Paris apartment: against a field of azure, a golden human foot crushed a serpent that had its fangs embedded in its heel.” (174) This echoes Montresor’s coat of arms: “A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel”, and Montresor’s motto, “Nemo me impune lacessit” (“No one insults me with impunity”) is the threat Poe receives by his nemesis (199), therefore Street blurs again the identities between Poe, Dupin and even their enemies.
The following section will analyse more in depth the background of the two protagonists and a historical explanation alongside the mention of some of Poe’s tales, especially “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), will be studied.
Edgar Allan Poe and Dupin’s Backgrounds
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous writers of all time, and his figure has influenced numerous writers and filmmakers. Scholars have studied both his personal life and his literature in depth, and Marie Bonaparte’s “ground-breaking psychoanalysis of several Poe stories in The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho-Analytic Interpretation ties the character doubles in Poe’s stories back to people in Poe’s personal life: the double as Poe himself, Poe’s cousin, Poe’s foster father.” (Bradley 55) More modern scholars have developed their ideas from Bonaparte’s book, yet the aim of this blog post is not to give a psychoanalytical approach to Poe’s oeuvre, but to mention information about his life which emerges in Street’s novel.
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| The London Monster |
Poe was born in 1809 in Boston, and he was the son of a couple of actors, David and Elizabeth “Eliza” Poe. His father abandoned his family in 1810, and Eliza died shortly afterwards. Poe was separated from his siblings William and Rosalie and taken in by Frances and John Allan of Richmond, Virginia. Poe’s foster mother provided “some affection, but seems in no way to have satisfied his passionate desire for love” (Pruette 378), and “his foster’s father speedy remarriage after the death of Mrs. Allan in 1829 definitely severed his relations with Mr. Allan and removed any possibility of his securing the inheritance which he had been brought up to expect.” (Pruette 376)
Street’s novel begins with Poe blaming Mr. Allan’s new wife for excluding him of his inheritance: “It was cruel to cast me aside after Ma’s death—she would not have allowed my exclusion from Pa’s will. I endeavoured to make this point to my Pa’s widow after his funeral, but the discourteous woman utterly disregarded my presence in Richmond.” (34). Moreover, Poe reckons that his father’s widow has sent him some mysterious letters written by his grandparents Elizabeth and Henry Arnold, his mother’s parents. While the plot develops, readers discover that a Welsh man named Rhynwick Williams was condemned for the crimes committed by the “London Monster” and that Poe’s ancestors may have been involved in the misdeeds.
Nevertheless, Poe is not the only character whose legacy is at risk. Dupin also has to protect himself from an enemy called Ernest Valdemar (a character from Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845)) and defend his family heritage: “It is true that my parents and my grandparents are immortal within my heart, and I will not rest until I restore their reputations.” (257) According to Dupin, Valdemar murdered his grandparents during the French Revolution and he suspects that Valdemar asphyxiated his mother as well.
Street wisely depicts surroundings that are not associated with Edgar Allan Poe: she takes the reader to the England of the late 18th century with the letters of Poe’s ancestors, and includes the curious “Bals des Victimes” to explain Dupin’s family background. These balls remembered the victims of the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution, and the participants had to be relatives of the mentioned victims to be able to attend them. Ronald Schechter questions whether these balls really existed: “From the mid-1820s until midcentury the bals des victimes were a staple of memoir literature on the period of Thermidor and the Directory” (80), that is, of the time of Robespierre’s death and the coup d’état by Napoleon Bonaparte, yet “they were written decades after the events described.” (81)
Curiously, in these bals, the participants “wear red ribbons around their necks to simulate prior decapitation” (Shechter 87) and the women have short hair as if they were about to be guillotined. This haunting setting in which the ghosts of the dead merge with the living influenced the literature of the time, and authors such as “Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Janin, Eugene Sue, and Washington Irving frequently indulged in Guillotinromantik, lingering over the horrors of decapitation” (Schechter 86).
Streets relates a Bal des victimes Dupin and Poe attend in London invited by Madame Tussaud to Poe’s abovementioned “William Wilson”, as both Wilsons attend a masquerade ball, and, particularly to “The Masque of the Red Death”. Street describes thoroughly the seven rooms both characters visit until reaching the last black one echoing the abbey Prince Prospero chooses to host a
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| Illustration by Harry Clarke |
ball in alongside wealthy nobles. If in Poe’s tale the population is dying of the plague outside the abbey, Street’s bal can be understood as ““a subject of continual astonishment” that “after all the blood with which our squares had just been soaked, the relatives, the friends and even the simple acquaintances of the victims could take part in these pleasures.”” (Baronne de Vaudey in Schechter 85) Consequently, Street links the frivolity and lack of morality both balls can imply.
Furthermore, Street employs the colours of the rooms Poe follows, except for the second one, which she chooses to be yellow instead of purple. The writer pens some of the general explanations given to the use of colours of the rooms, but she clarifies the reason why, according to Dupin, Valdemar chooses the violet of one salon: “Valdemar murdered by mother with violets.” (279) Besides, throughout the novel, violets are equalled to deadly danger, as Poe is kidnapped by a violet seller when he was a child, and he is tricked by a woman with violet eyes. Nonetheless, Street focuses on the serpentine decoration of the rooms to associate them with Valdemar, le Grand Serpent de la Mer (285), as the readers of the novel will notice.
Black, obviously the colour identified with death, is vital to Street’s story too, and the figure of Charles Dicken’s black raven Grip is introduced in the novel. The last section of the blog post will study how the bird is put together with Poe’s “The Raven” (1845),
Charles Dickens as an Influence on Edgar Allan Poe
At the beginning of Street’s novel, the reader can see how Poe is eager to meet the famous British author Charles Dickens in person. When he is in London to discover the truth behind his grandparents, Poe states:
I had written to an author whose work I had greatly admired when I reviewed it for the Southern Literary Messenger and more recently, for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, a man whose newest effort, Nicholas Nickleby, was his best— superlative praise indeed. From his tales I felt him to be a kindred spirit and expressed my hope that Mr. Charles Dickens’s schedule would allow for a meeting. I enclosed a copy of my Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque with my letter and put my position to him honestly: I wished to find a publisher in England and his assistance in this would put me forever in his debt. (45)
One interesting fact which really occurred is that in 1841 Charles Dickens published his historical novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of Riots of Eighty. It had appeared serialised in the author’s Master Humphrey's Clock, a periodical written and edited by Dickens, between 1840 and 1841. The plot is set in the Gordon Riots of 1780, and it combines history with the intrigues of two families. Nevertheless, what is notable in the novel is that its main character, the eponymous Barnaby Rudge, has a pet raven called Grip with an extraordinary talking ability. Dickens himself had three pet ravens in his lifetime, and Grip was the first one.
Poe reviewed different works by Dickens, and he praised Barnaby Rudge and especially Grip: ‘‘The raven, too, intensely amusing though it is, might have been made more than we now see it, a portion of the conception of the fantastic Barnaby. Its croaking might have been heard prophetically heard in the course of the drama” (Poe 128). The fact that he mentions the bird as a prophetic figure foretells the intentions of his own poem “The Raven”.
Furthermore, there are similarities between Barnaby Rudge and Grip and Poe’s scholar with the raven. Both men attempt to communicate with the talking birds rationally.
When Barnaby is imprisoned for his role in the Gordon Riots, he is accompanied by Grip, and they lament together:
“You hope! Ay, but your hoping will not undo these chains. I hope, but they don’t mind that. Grip hopes, but who cares for Grip?”
The raven gave a short, dull, melancholy croak. It said “Nobody” as plainly as a croak could speak’’ (Dickens 363)
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| Illustration by Gustave Doré |
Not only does Poe copies the use of one unique word by the raven (in his case the famous ‘‘Nevermore’’), the American writer also follows Dickens’s idea of the bird as a devil. Dickens’s bird claims: “I’m a devil! I’m a devil! I’m a devil!” (Dickens 80).
Street’s employment of Grip in her novel is one of the funniest moments: Dupin and Poe arrive at Dickens’s house without the formal announcements expected from a visitor, and they are received by a surprised Mrs. Dickens and her annoying pet raven. The lady invites them to drink some tea in her living-room, while the bird flies around them and she complains: “Grip—my husband calls him Grip the Clever, Grip the Wicked, Grip the Knowing, depending upon the temper the creature is in.” (242), to what the raven reacts: “I’m a devil!” (242).
The
scene continues with the corvid bobbing up and down Dupin’s walking stick, and
it is Dupin who is interested in the statements of the ebony bird, and he
claims: “Covus corax, a highly intelligent bird and quite human in a
number of ways, though dare I say their human qualities are not what makes them
clever.” After the jest, Dupin continues: “They inhabit most parts of the world
and adapt to almost any environment —certainly they
will eat almost anything.” (245
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| Illustration by Gustave Doré |
This echoes Poe’s original poem, though in the American writer’s lyrics, the bird possesses no paper:
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more. (lines 37-42)
With Dickens’s Grip, Street wisely equals the message from the raven the protagonist attempts to comprehend in Poe’s poem with the clues delivered to Dupin and Poe in her novel. The use of crows to announce events the main characters have to investigate becomes even more relevant in Street’s second novel in her trilogy: Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru (2018), as my next blog post will analyse.
In conclusion, Karen Lee Street first novel with the figure of Edgar Allan Poe is a must read for any lover of the American author. This blog post has merely analysed several of the sources Street has developed in her text, but there are many more echoes the readers can grab from her plot and try to guess what tale or poem by Poe she is referring to. I have focused on her use of the double following “William Wilson”, the family backgrounds of both Poe and Dupin, and the influence of Dickens’s Grip in the real Poe as well as in Street’s novel as I reckon they are the more distinctive features of Street’s narrative, and she develops settings which are not directly associated with Poe, thus enriching the storyline.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bradley, Jacqueline. “Character Doubles and Barrier Imagery in Poe's Work.” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 9, no. 2, 2008, pp. 55–66. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41506297. Accessed 3 Oct. 2020.
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty (First published in 1841) in Master Humphrey's clock Volume 3 (Ulan Press, 2012)- via Google Books
Fajardo, Tatiana. ““The Raven”: How Folklore, Charles Dickens and Samuel Taylor Coleridge Dwell in Edgar Allan Poe’s Dark Poem”. http://tatianafajardodomench.blogspot.com/2018/10/ Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.
Fernández-Santiago, Miriam. “Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative Use of Literary Doubling.” Mediterranean Journal of Sciences, vol. 4. (1), 2013, pp. 71-82. ResearchGate, 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n1p71. Accessed 2 Oct. 2020.
Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny” (First published in 1919) https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf. Accessed 3 Oct. 2020.
Jafari, Morteza. “Freud's uncanny: the role of the double in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.” Victorian Newsletter, vol. 118, 2010, p. 43+. Gale Literature Resource Center, Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
Moores, D. J. “‘Oh Gigantic Paradox’: Poe's ‘William Wilson’ and the Jungian Self.” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 7, no. 1, 2006, pp. 31–48. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41506247. Accessed 3 Oct. 2020.
Poe, Edgar Allan, Review in Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature, Art and Fashion, Volumes 20-21- via Google Books
--- “The Raven”. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven (First published in 1845).Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
Pruette, Lorine. “A Psycho-Analytical Study of Edgar Allan Poe.” The American Journal of Psychology, vol.31, no. 4, 1920, pp. 370-402. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1413669. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
Rank, Otto. Double: A Psychoanalytic Study Translated and Edited by Harry Tucker Jr. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1971.
Schechter, Ronald. “Gothic Thermidor: The Bals Des Victimes, the Fantastic, and the Production of Historical Knowledge in Post-Terror France.” Representations, no. 61, 1998, pp. 78–94. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2902948. Accessed 4 Oct. 2020.
Street, Karen Lee. Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster: A Poe and Dupin Mystery. London: OneWorld Publications, 2016.
Sweet, Charles A. “Retapping “Cask of Amontillado”” Poe Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 8: 10-12, 1975. https://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1975104.htm Accessed 1 Oct. 2020.
IMAGES:
“William Wilson” by Arthur Rackham: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:39_rackham_poe_williamwilson.jpg
“Cask of Amontillado” by Arthur Rackham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cask_of_Amontillado#/media/File:13_rackham_poe_caskofamontillado.jpg
1 May 1790, artist's depiction of the London Monster attacking a woman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Monster#/media/File:LondonMonster.jpg
"The Masque of the Red Death" by Harry Clarke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_the_Red_Death#/media/File:The_dagger_dropped_gleaming_upon_the_sable_carpet_-_Harry_Clarke_(BL_12703.i.43).tif
“The Raven” by Gustave Doré: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Paul_Gustave_Dore_Raven14.jpg and https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Paul_Gustave_Dore_Raven14.jpg
