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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
‘ The Black Cat ’ is one of Poe's neat little studies of obsession. Joseph Moldenhauer has said that these first-person tales of terror should be regarded less as studies of deranged minds than as controlled exercises in madness. We may take his point that there is little ‘ clinical ’ observation and that the obsession is seen from within, but may add further that the subjects of these tales are the irrational motives themselves, and therefore Poe does not need to create a motive for the motive. That is, ‘ The Black Cat ’ is a study of the ‘ murdering impulse ’ of the sort noted by Benjamin Rush in his Sixteen Lectures (1811) by whose account of a famous poisoner of cats it may have been suggested. It is not particularly a study of the effects of the ‘ murdering impulse ’ but rather of the impulse itself, which Poe simply cloaks in a non-specific narrator ‘ self ’. Poe's habitual use of the monologue or confessional form, and his claustrophobic interiors, are both calculated to produce a sense of internalized action, and the scenery of the tales is usually the chamber of the haunted mind, of which the poem ‘ The Haunted Palace ’ is only the most explicit version. The lack of a touchstone in ‘ real ’ surroundings, of an objective point of view, together with the sense of identification induced by first-person narration, combines to ensure that the internalized action is not seen from a position safely outside the distorted consciousness but, necessarily, from within.
1 Moldenhauer, Joseph, ‘ Murder as a Fine Art ’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America, 83 (1968), 292Google Scholar.
2 Rush, Benjamin, Sixteen Introductory Lectures (Bradford and Innskeep, Philadelphia, 1811), p. 386Google Scholar.
My argument here, and throughout this article, is based not on the presumption that Poe read the works mentioned, although that is often possible and sometimes very likely, but that he was an intellectually aware member of his community and through magazine work and his interest in scientific and medical matters would be aware of many of the contemporary theories of the mind, as we are ourselves. I do not think it necessary to repeat the case for such assumptions; it has been made tellingly by a number of critics, notably Walker, I. M. in his article ‘ The “ Legitimate Sources ” of Terror in “ The Fall of the House of Usher ” ’ (Modern Language Review, 61 (1966), 588)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and by Jacobs, Robert in Poe : Journalist and Critic (Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, 1969), pp. 19–34Google Scholar.
3 Rush's account of the poisoner of cats, John Ward, assigns him to the category of ‘ perversion of the moral faculty ’ which seduces a sense to act with it. Op. cit., p. 440.
4 The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Harrison, James A., 17 vols. (Crowell & Co., New York, 1902) (hereafter cited as Works), vol. 5, p. 154Google Scholar. See also Poe's, comments on the ‘ amazing self-possession ’ of some mad persons in ‘ The Trial of James Wood ’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 52 (1943), 105–6Google Scholar.
5 Works, vol. 5, p. 147Google Scholar.
6 Works, vol. 5, p. 148Google Scholar.
7 Works, vol. 5, p. 144Google Scholar.
8 Works, vol. 5, p. 150Google Scholar.
9 Works, vol. 5, p. 152Google Scholar.
10 Works, vol. 5, pp. 149, 150Google Scholar.
11 Rauch, Frederick, Psychology; or A View of the Human Soul (New York: M. W. Dodd, 1840), pp. 108–9Google Scholar.
12 Ibid., p. 110.
13 Ibid., p. 140.
14 Abercrombie, John, Inquiry into the Intellectual Powers ([1st U.S.A. ed., New York, 1832;] Harpers, New York, 1853), p. 196Google Scholar.
15 Upham, Thomas C., Elements of Mental Philosophy (Wells, Boston, 1831), 2 vols.; vol. 1, pp. 208–9Google Scholar.
16 I. M. Walker, op. cit.; Lind, Sydney E., ‘ Poe and Mesmerism ’, P.M.L.A., 62 (1947), 1077–94Google Scholar; Smith, Herbert F., ‘ Usher's Madness and Poe's Organicism; A Source ’, American Literature, 39 (1967), 379–89Google Scholar; Hungerford, Edward, ‘ Poe and Phrenology ’, American Literature, 2 (1930), 209–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sandier, S. Gerald, ‘ Poe's Indebtedness to Locke's “ An Essay Concerning Human Understanding ” ’, Boston University Studies in English, 5, 107–21Google Scholar.
17 Works, vol. 5, p. 143Google Scholar.
18 The Letters of E. A. Poe, edited by John Ostrom (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1948), vol. 1, p. 57Google Scholar.
19 Works, vol. 2, p. 19Google Scholar.
20 Works, vol. 2, p. 19Google Scholar.
21 Works, vol. 2, pp. 19–20Google Scholar.
22 Op. cit., p. 225. Upham, makes a similar point in his Outlines of Imperfect and Disordered Mental Action (Harpers: New York, 1840), p. 217CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where he says that the judgement may become defective, rendering the person unable to distinguish between the important and the trivial. This may be connected with ‘ defective attention ’ he says.
23 Ibid., p. 305.
24 Works, vol. 2, p. 17Google Scholar.
25 Darwin, Erasmus, Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (2nd ed. corrected, London, 1796), vol. 2, p. 350CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Op. cit., p. 141.
27 On catalepsy, Beasley, as cited in text, p. 468. Upham, , Outlines, notes that the ‘ sleep of the senses is imperfect or partial ’, p. 188Google Scholar.
28 Combe, George, Phrenology ([1st U.S.A. ed. 1824] New York: Fowler & Wells, 1897), p. 489Google Scholar.
29 Abercrombie, op. cit., p. 197.
30 Payne, George, Elements of Mental and Moral Science ([1st U.S.A. ed. 1828] New York, 1835), p. 171Google Scholar.
31 Ibid., p. 182.
32 Works, vol. 4, pp. 154–6Google Scholar.
33 Payne, op. cit., p. 26.
34 Ibid., p. 175.
35 We should be aware that Poe's intentions in his description of Dupin's ability to unravel apparent mysteries on the basis of an understanding of the association process may have been largely satirical, for although the views quoted above were widely accepted, not all mental philosophers agreed with them. George Combe, for example, of whose lectures Poe seems to have been aware by 1838 (see Edward Hungerford's article, noted in footnote 16, p. 214; ‘ The Murders in the Rue Morgue ’ was written in 1841), said in his Phrenology ‘ Ideas arise from impressions on the various faculties of the mind; and there is as little regularity in the order in which they are received, as in the breathing of the air on the strings [of an Æolian harp] ’, op. cit., p. 499. Although Combe's views were not the most popular, Poe does seem to have taken Phrenology quite seriously, as Hungerford proves.
36 Works, vol. 14, p. 195Google Scholar.
37 Works, vol. 14, p. 194Google Scholar.
38 This phrase was a catchphrase of the Common Sense school; a basic test of the validity of statements. Its incorporation here may indicate some additional satiric intent.
39 Works, vol. 14, p. 201Google Scholar. Wagenknecht, suggests in his Edgar Allan Poe : The Man Behind the Legend (Oxford University Press: New York, 1963)Google Scholar that this association might itself have been influenced by Blackwoods, or Burke, or Archibald Alison (p. 163).
40 Moldenhauer, op. cit., p. 287.
41 Upham, , Elements, vol. 2, p. 25Google Scholar.
42 Works, vol. 14, p. 273Google Scholar. ‘ The Poetic Principle ’. (Poe's idea is reminiscent of the work of Hutcheson, Francis, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (London, 1726)Google Scholar.)
43 Upham, , Elements, vol. 2, p. 32Google Scholar.
44 Ibid., p. 18.
45 Burton, Asa, Essays, on Some of the First Principles of Metaphysicks, Ethicks, and Theology (Portland, 1824), Essay VIII, p. 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 Op. cit., p. xv, for example: ‘ He (God) has made virtue a lovely Form, to excite our pursuit of it; and has given us strong Affections to be the Springs of each virtuous Action.’ (But Poe makes a different use of his scheme.)
47 Works, vol. 14, p. 275Google Scholar.
48 Moldenhauer, op. cit., p. 286.
49 ‘ Mr. Griswold and the Poets ’, Works, vol. 11, p. 148Google Scholar; Works, vol. 4, pp. 149–50Google Scholar.
50 Works, vol. 16, p. 206Google Scholar.
51 Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by Pringle-Pattison, A. S. (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1924), p. 261Google Scholar.
52 Works, vol. 4, p. 146Google Scholar.
53 Works, vol. 5, p. 39Google Scholar.
54 Works, vol. 4, p. 169Google Scholar.
55 Works, vol. 4, p. 169Google Scholar.
56 Works, vol. 16, p. 228Google Scholar. A broader application of this principle might underlie Poe's interest in the bizarre, exemplified in his tales of terror. By ‘ such protruberancies above the plane of the ordinary ’ he may have hoped, as later psychologists have hoped, to investigate the secrets of human nature.
57 Works, vol. 10, p. 62Google Scholar.
58 Works, vol. 10, p. 63Google Scholar.
59 Davidson, Edward, Poe : A Critical Study (Belknap Press, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 57–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 e.g. Upham, , Elements, vol. 2, pp. 89–90Google Scholar.
