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Summary AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE A* EXEMPLAR NEA (25/25) - 'On To what extent are the women in Edgar Allen Poe’s Poetry objectified through their deaths?' Using Feminist Lens.$7.32
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Summary AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE A* EXEMPLAR NEA (25/25) - 'On To what extent are the women in Edgar Allen Poe’s Poetry objectified through their deaths?' Using Feminist Lens.
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Elements of Crime Writing
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AQA
AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE A* EXEMPLAR NEA (25/25) - 'On To what extent are the women in Edgar Allen Poe’s Poetry objectified through their deaths?'
Using Feminist Lens.
Edgar Allen Poe's Poetry Collection is the main focus.
To what extent are the women in Edgar Allen Poe’s Poetry objectified through their
deaths?
Upon first read of the question there seems to be little debate. Edgar Allen Poe’s oeuvre represents the
phallocentric patriarchal nature of much of early 19 th century literature as Poe’s poetry places characters
into their traditional gender roles. Male narrators are psychologically flawed yet physically stable, while
women are presented as unstable, usually sick, suffering or most often dead. Due to this it is difficult to
see how women are not objectified by their immobile position in death.
"Objectification" is a key aspect of feminist theory, examining how women are treated as mere objects,
not their own beings, with agency and autonomy. Bertens stated that character’s act as ‘constructions’
representing the culture that they belong to showcasing “the continued social and cultural domination of
males”. This objectification therefore links to traditional gender roles of Victorian society which require
women to be passive and submissive while men were dominant. However, the questions focus on the
objectification of women through their deaths ignores the other forms of objectification presented, such
as through the use of female characters as tools to progress the plot or through the narratives focus on
the female beauty which treats them as objects of desire.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s 1846 essay ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, he stated that “the death, then, of a
beautiful woman is unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world”. In this, the writer intertwined
the themes of female death and poetic art, romanticising female death so that it can be viewed as a mere
literary device instead of a tragedy. This objectifies the women presenting them as tools used to further
the plot instead of them being their people. In both ‘The Raven’ and ‘Annabel Lee’ the poetic voice is that
of the mourning lover who has “the lips best suited for such a topic” as stated by Poe. The female
characters are silenced through their death, but their death is also what drives the narrative of their male
lover’s grief which is the plot. The narrator refers to Annabel Lee as living “with no other thought” “than
to love and be loved by me” and through this, she is objectified and viewed through the sole purpose of
providing the narrator with love. Similarly, in ‘The Raven’, the death of the narrator’s beloved Lenore
catalyses the narrator’s grief and madness, acting as a tool to evoke an emotional response in the reader.
Additionally, the name Lenore’s rhyming qualities with the raven’s repeated ominous phrase
“nevermore” presents the dead woman as an aesthetic device used to add to the poetic shine of the poem.
Neither Lenore nor Annabel are given their own voice, which prevents them from becoming complex
characters although they are the eponymous subjects of the poems. Instead, they appear as elusive vague
figures lacking any individual development appearing as flat characters. As stated by the critic Person,
Lenore is “hardly even a memory in the involuted game the speaker plays with the raven”. Both women
fade into the backdrops of the poem playing no role aside from their deaths. The narrative is driven by
their deaths, allowing Poe to examine themes of grief, loss and the supernatural, but they are not further
developed, with their importance summarised in their life status. Through his poetry, Poe objectifies
women by using them as tools to serve a male-orientated purpose: the poem itself.
In the Victorian era, the dead woman represented the ultimate idealised woman of the time period. Silent,
submissive but still beautiful. Feminist theory questions “whose attitudes are heard, and voices assumed
within the text” and through the female role of corpses in Poe’s poetry, it can safely be determined that
the female voice is non-existent. Through this, a dichotomy between male and female characters is
presented with the mere fact that the male lovers appear strong enough to remain alive while the weak
fragile women are dead before the poem begins. This can be seen as a form of sexism where men are
presented as stronger than the powerless women who die abruptly or are killed off in a form of
‘misogynistic sadism’.
‘Annabel Lee’ begins as a fairy tale with the line “it was many and many a year ago” creating the hypnotic
effect of a nursery rhyme. As Annabel is introduced, she is referred to as a “maiden” with her youth and
innocence being emphasised through the repetition of her being a “child” in a similar way to Lenore who
“died so young”. However, as the poem progresses the narrative darkens as the wind comes “out of a
cloud, chilling and killing my Annabel Lee”. The ease of her death represents her frailty and weakness
placing her in the stereotypical role of the helpless maiden. The Victorian obsession with virtue and
innocence in women is expressed through the young age at which Annabel dies. She remains forever a
virgin and a “bride” meaning that she is forever idealised remaining bound to her lover, even in death;
“nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of Annabel Lee”. This can be
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