Dark and Dark and Terrible Ladies”: The Female Undead in Edgar Allan Poe's Short Stories

Abstract

This article examines Edgar Allan Poe’s depiction of the female undead. It demonstrates that the representations of female characters who die only to return from death via reincarnation or premature burial can be substantiated via two-fold discourses in the nineteenth century: the discourses on death, grief, and mourning, on the one hand, and the changing ideations about the roles of women, particularly the construct of the femme fatale during that time, on the other. By engaging with the feminist discourses on Poe’s women, this article argues that Poe’s female undead challenge the stereotype of the femme fatale that came to prominence during the nineteenth century through competing dynamics of death, agency, and madness that are in play in Poe’s short fiction. Additionally, this article argues that Poe’s female undead defy the frameworks of traditional female representations in stories such as “Berenice” (1835) and “Ligeia”  (1838), highlighting how these women are endowed with power and agency as they lead men to madness and destruction. By so doing, Poe’s short stories subvert traditional gender roles and the sociocultural norms and conventions against which women were judged during the nineteenth century.