here i share my personal view about lack of feminist voice in poe's literary works. from paper no.10 the american literature

1. Lack Of Feminist Voice In Poe's
Literary Works
presented by
BHUNGANI CHINTAVANKUMAR N.
M.A. (SEM -2)
Paper no:- 10 THE AMERICAN LITERATURE
Roll no:- 6
Enrollment no:-PG15101006
Email id:- cnbhungani7484@gmail.com
Submitted To
Smt. S. B. GARDI DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
MAHARAJA KRUSHANAKUMARSINHJI BHAVNAGAR
UNIVERSITY

2. Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe was an outstanding American writer of the
1800s. Mostly praised and renowned for his short stories, he
is widely considered as one of the fathers of the American
detective fiction genre, thanks to world-famous tales such as
“The Murder in the Rue Morgue.” He is also thought a pioneer
in the field of science-fiction, thanks to stories such as “The
Fall of the House of Usher” or “the tell tale heart” .
New literary landscapes helped bring Poe worldwide
recognition nowadays as a master of the mysterious and the
macabre, but during his lifetime his fictional works were more
popular in Europe than in the United States, where he was
mostly regarded as a literary critic.

3. 1. Womanhood: A Construct?
• The first wave of feminism occurred in the nineteenth
century, although it was only
• thought upon as a feminist movement later on.
• Mainly focused on gaining the right to vote and to own
property for women, this movement opened the door for the
second and third waves of feminism that started respectively
in the 1960s and 1990s.
• in the United States, the movement was mostly focused on
granting women the same rights as men through action, it
developed differently in Europe, and especially in France with
French Feminist Theory.

4. Women's Voice: Ignored?
• To this extent, Edgar Allan Poe could not have been considered a feminist, as
most of
• his poems are phallocentric.
• Indeed, whereas Simone de Beauvoir advocated years later for a
• moral and sexual revolution in order to give women a voice for equality, Poe's
poetry focuses
• on men and their feelings. Of course, women are not absent from most of Poe's
poems
• whether they deal with love, pain, loss, sorrow or death, but, narrators are
exclusively men.
• This exposure of male narrators is not problematic in itself, but raises the
question of women's
• position in Poe's poetry, as well as in poetry and literature in general. Absent
from the action,
• women are passive in Poe's poetry
• whereas men are always portrayed as active.

5. Naming Women: Matters of
Labeling?
• This theory stating that women and men are
respectively associated with body and
• mind can be developed even further. As
women are connected to the body, they
become
• objects, properties to be owned and only their
class will determine if their body is to be loved
• or hated, decorated or used, worshipped or
destroyed. As women are objectified.

6. To be continued
• Women are the subject of numerous poems by
Poe, and a lot of them are entitled after
• the female character.
• “To Helen” (1831),
• “Lenore” (1831),
• “Eulalie – A Song” (1845),
• “Ulalume – A Ballad” (1847),
• “To Helen” (1848),
• “For Annie” (1849),
• “Annabel Lee”(1849).

7. Poe’s short story
• “The Fall of the House of Usher”(1839)
• “The Gold Bug” (1843)
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1850)
• “The Purloined Letter” (1845)
• “The Cask of Amontillado”(1846)
• “The Black Cat” (1845)

8. Conclusion
• To sum up, to end this topic I would like to say that
we can not see more justification of women
character in Poe's literary works such as prose,
poem, and short stories. He does not give much
important to woman characters as given to man.
Work cited:
The Loss of the Ideal Woman in Edgar Allan Poe’s Poetry Kevin
Reynaud
• https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-00936674/document

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