Women in Edgar Allan Poe’s Fiction

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional stories and macabre left an immortal mark on Literature. He is one of the most famous writer of his time. He is most recognized as the father of detective stories. Nevertheless, his poetry and short stories are one of the best work that give him much of his fame and inspire many generations, especially the one that tell about love, women and macabre. The following research is a study how are women portray in two of Poe’s short stories. This dissertation attempts to analyze two female characters in “Morella” and “Ligeia” and it focuses on the dying woman in each story, for the purpose of showing that Poe did not write about the passing women in his short stories because he is a misogynist or affected by his life and personal trauma, but he tried to represent the woman as powerful and strong being and to show that her triumphs over death represent victory over men’s power. Moreover, this research contains two chapters the first will explain the meaning of Gothic Literature and it origins and aspects, then Poe’s tragic life and his lost for the women he loved and how women are represented in both his fiction and the era he lives in. Besides, in the second chapter it deals with the characterization in depth of the two main females’ protagonist, and what their death in the stories represent. At the conclusion, the paper points that their deaths and the rebirths symbolize the domination they have over the narrator’s mind.