In high school, I read a few of Poe’s stories in my English class, and had a great time writing about how his works draw inspiration from events in his own life. When I noticed that we are reading more of Poe’s work in this class, I was really excited to see if the connections I made then applied to a broader sample of his work.
One reoccurring trope in Poe’s work is the death of any and all women in the story. Stories like Ligeia, and The Fall of the House of Usher center around the death of their only female characters, while the rest simply neglect to mention women at all. Even The Masque of the Red Death, which describes an entire ball full of people, ends with everyone dying. So no women survive there either. Poe had tragic experiences with many of the women in his life. His mother and foster mother both died of tuberculosis when he was young, his first love died of brain cancer when he was 15, and his wife Virginia died of tuberculosis later on. The motif of death and despair is ever-present in Poe’s work, likely because it followed him throughout his life. The trauma of his real life likely inspired the tragedy in his writing.
Other common themes in Poe’s work include madness, intoxication, and gambling, which likely stemmed from his own insecurities/flaws. Poe made terrible decisions like the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart, which led to public humiliation. Drinking in excess before important interviews is less catastrophic than bring the police to the place where you hid a body, but both demonstrate a sort of self sabotage. Alcohol was one of Poe’s many vices, which is likely where the idea for the narrator in William Wilson came from, and why so many of his stories feature notes about intoxication, whether it be by alcohol or opium. Also, like Glendinning in William Wilson, Poe was known to gamble away more than he had.
It is believed that Poe’s main motivation was money, he wrote knowing what would sell, but I believe that many themes in his writing stemmed from his own life and experiences.
Citations:
(myself) I wrote an essay related to this in high school but I affirm this is new original work building upon the ideas I came up with then, incorporating a wider sample of stories.
The information on Poe’s life came from the sources cited below:
“Edgar Allan Poe.” Britannica School, Encyclopædia Britannica, 7 Jan. 2021.
school-eb-wswhe.orc.scoolaid.net/levels/high/article/Edgar-Allan-Poe/60519?. Accessed 19 Oct.
2021.
Patterson, R. “Once upon a Midnight Dreary: the Life and Addictions of Edgar Allan Poe.” CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association Journal = Journal De L’Association Medicale Canadienne, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 15 Oct. 1992,www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1336506/?page=1.
Relating Poe’s writings to his life is really intriguing! Your post actually inspired me to read into Poe’s love life after his wife Virginia died. I found that this article https://www.nps.gov/articles/poeromances.htm was informative on the topic. It seems that Poe did not have much luck with love after Virginia passed away. Poe had two failed engagements (one due to his drinking habits) and one engagement which ended when he died. His frustrations with women bleed through into his work; however, Ligeia was written before Virginia died. I found this quite interesting because his wife died of Tuberculosis, and then began Poe’s frustrations with finding a wife who could compare to his first. The tragic story of his wife certainly parallels Ligeia yet the story itself is influenced by the earlier heartbreaks of his youth (that you mentioned).