BERENICE, QUEEN OF HELL: MALE PANIC AND THE HORRORS OF WOMANHOOD
Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas. — Ebn Zaiat.
MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch — as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? — from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
My baptismal name is Egæus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars — in the character of the family mansion — in the frescos of the chief saloon — in the tapestries of the dormitories — in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory — but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings — in the fashion of the library chamber — and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library’s contents — there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollection of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes — of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before — that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? — let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms — of spiritual and meaning eyes — of sounds, musical yet sad — a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow — vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
“The recollection of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes — of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before — that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? — let us not argue the matter.” Egæus begins by arguing with himself about the pre-existence of the soul. In the same breath, he flippantly mentions that his mother passed away after she gave birth to him. The combination of this beginning paragraph foreshadows the narrator’s conceited, self-serving personality type and raises questions about the value of a woman’s life. It seems to the reader that Egæus is not psychologically tormented by this occurrence but rather finds his mother’s life an appropriate sacrifice for the physical embodiment of his soul that he hypothesizes lived before he was born. His unappreciative tone toward his mother’s selflessness and eternal love foreshadows the lack of appreciation he feels toward his late wife Berenice. 18th-century literature often depicted childbirth as a symbol of female subordination and male dominance. Pain and death at delivery were considered a “…punishment for female sexuality” (Rogers) and idolized male control over reproduction. Egæus emotionless attitude toward his mother’s livelihood in her weak state anticipates the focus he has on the female body and disregard for Berenice’s mental well-being.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy land — into a palace of imagination — into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition — it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye — that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers — it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life — wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, not the material of my every-day existence, but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
* * * * * * *
Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew — I, ill of health, and buried in gloom — she, agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers the ramble on the hill-side — mine the studies of the cloister; I, living within my own heart, and addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation — she, roaming carelessly through life, with no thought of the shadows in her
The narrator’s sheer description of Berenice is extremely misogynistic. While his first page asserts his manhood, his lack of deep love for Berenice is apparent on page two. Despite her being the only positive light in his life, he describes her as careless and ignorant, “…she, roaming carelessly through life, with no thought of the shadows in her path or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours.” (2) Which exemplifies the narrator’s distaste for her mental presence. He seems to only be interested in her physical attributes, her “… gorgeous yet fantastic beauty”, which quickly evolves in the same paragraph to “misery and terror” upon contracting a disease.
path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! — I call upon her name — Berenice! — and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah, vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh, gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh, sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! Oh, Naiad among its fountains! And then — then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease — a fatal disease, fell like the simoom upon her frame; and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went! — and the victim — where was she? I knew her not — or knew her no longer as Berenice!
Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressin
g and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself — trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was, in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease — for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation — my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form — hourly and momently gaining vigor — and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy.
The development of the narrator’s disease, which is mental, occurred right after Berenice’s physical death and is described as a disease that is thought-provoking and advantageous in a way. He describes it as an “incomprehensible ascendency” (2). This is the beginning of the battle between Egaeus’ intellect and Berenice’s mortality. Egæus’ haunting occurs mainly in the library, where his late mother passed. Female voices haunt him and he is forced to confront the years of neglect and unappreciative attitude toward both his mother and Berenice.
This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and
buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin,
or in the typography of a book; to become absorbed, for the better part of a summer’s day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or the floor; to lose myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame o
f a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat, monotonously, some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, employing absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.
The language that Egaeus uses to convey Berenice’s spiritual presence metaphorically is a language that is commonly attributed to women. “Fire” and “flower” are quite contradictory, but this is commonly used to convey the innocence of a woman while emphasizing her “inherent” sexuality. The narrator also compares her to objects which exemplifies his focus on objectification and misogyny. He furthers this metaphor by comparing his story of Berenice to Ptolemy and the flower Asphodel, which deliberately separates him as a moral figure and Berenice as an object of desire. Ancient Greek thought hypothesized that asphodels, or daffodils were the flowers that lay upon the ground in the meadows of Hell. They also represented the Queen of Hell, as the ruler of Hell was gendered. Her name was Persephone, and it is said that she became Queen unintentionally after plucking a daffodil from the ground and unleashing Hades, King of the Underworld. (Hanks) The symbolism is aggressive. The lack of agency that Berenice experiences and her ignorance that Egæus insists on are parallel to the fate of Persephone. Persephone also returns to the land of the living (under Hades’ jurisdiction) for six months out of the year so that plants can grow. (Similarly, Berenice returns to Egæus, but it is eternally tied to her tragic death and loneliness, her soul sentenced to life that lacks agency under the control of a man. Egæus realizes that he has kidnapped Berenice’s soul and happiness selfishly, out of loneliness. Despite his ability to employ references to ancient thought, Egæus still struggles to see the interconnectedness between his objectification of women and psychosis.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day[[-]]dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum, or first cause of his musings, entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the speculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian, Cœlius Secundus Curio, “De Amplitudine Beati Regni Dei;” St. Austin’s great work, the “City of God;” and Tertullian “De Carne Christi,” in which the paradoxical sentence “Mortuus est Dei filius; credibile est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est,” occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fail to ponder, frequently and bitterly, upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and where [[were]] such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice — in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.
His trance-like state is Egæus, for the first time, experiencing the anxiety and guilt he has repressed internally about male toxicity. He is finally curious about Berenice’s purpose and internal thoughts and encounters with his initial hypothesis of the soul living outside of the body, but this time, it is the female soul instead of his qualms about his eternal existence. Berenice enters with the force of both Egæus’ later mother and her anger and resentment that built up over time. It is almost as if Poe is implying that the neglect that the emotional neglect that women endure at the hands of a misogynistic man leads to death. The generational piece indicates that this is a learned behavior from his father.
On page three, the narrator feels the presence of Berenice and her death starts to overcome him “In the lucid intervals of my infirmary, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heat that total wreak of her fair and gentle life…” (3) He then attributes these feelings to his mental disorder, or psychological dissolution that is caused by her loss and his desperate realization that he did not marry her for personality. What haunts him, unironically, is the “physical frame of Berenice – in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity” (3) He even admits to never loving her and keeping her as an accessory, “During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her… feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions were of the mind.” (3) (I want to explore this quote more because I feel like it is the climax of his self-realization?/ not sure what to call it but its almost a silver lining moment amid his psychotic internal monologue) This moment of clarity is followed by an alternate perception of his late wife that he had never considered. He offers dichotomies that place Berenice clearly at the intersection Egaeus’ psychosis and misogynistic past; “I had seen her- not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream; not as a being of earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such being; not at the thing to admire, but to analyze; not as an object of live, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation.” (3) Egaeus is reframing his perceptions of Berenice in this quote. Her transformation into a spirit has rid her of her body and what is left to perceive is the soul, which is why the narrator is experiencing cognitive dissonance as he never perceived her for anything but her physical presence. He then realizes that Berenice loves him genuinely, which seems to provoke Berenice’s spirit to visit him. The focus on Berenice’s body in this portion contributes to the characterization of Egæus, which also supports the idea that Berenice is more of a “supporting actress” role than anyone who should be paid attention to. This constitutes her frustration and furthers the disconnect between Egæus and his original perception of his late wife.
During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning — among the trellissed shadows of the forest at noonday — and in the silence of my library at night — she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her — not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream; not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being; not as a thing to admire, but to analyze; not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. And now — now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet, bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.
He offers dichotomies that place Berenice clearly at the intersection Egaeus’ psychosis and misogynistic past; “I had seen her- not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream; not as a being of earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such being; not at the thing to admire, but to analyze; not as an object of live, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation.” (3) Egaeus is reframing his perceptions of Berenice in this quote. Her transformation into a spirit has rid her of her body and what is left to perceive is the soul, which is why the narrator is experiencing cognitive dissonance as he never perceived her for anything but her physical presence. He then realizes that Berenice loves him genuinely, which seems to provoke Berenice’s spirit to visit him. When she visits him as a spirit his immediate reaction is to attend to the shape of the draperies around her and then her physical description follows, which is of course unappealing. His insistence on focusing on Berenice’s body during this interaction is a reflection of his own internalized misogyny. Her death unleashes havoc and the fear that Egæus experiences is not a fear of haunting, but rather a fear of self-realization and reversal of internal bias. The admission that he has neglected his late mother and lover would deconstruct his perception of himself. It comes from a place of unconscious understanding that admission of emotional neglect and perpetuating generational trauma inevitably disempowers his privilege as the sole authoritative figure of his household and credits Berenice and his mother for sustaining the emotional integrity of the family. This, again, emphasizes the rationale behind her haunting and Egæus’ dissolution.
And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year — one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon,* — I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. But, uplifting my eyes, I saw that Berenice stood before me.
Was it my own excited imagination — or the misty influence of the atmosphere — or the uncertain twilight of the chamber — or the gray draperies which fell around her figure — that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke no word; and I — not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon the face.
The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets, now of a vivid yellow, and jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupilless, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!
The narrator also seems to have a fetish for Berenice’s teeth, which further proves that he is solely interested in her physicality. Her teeth symbolize physical perfection, but also hidden internal emotional depth that goes unrecognized by Egæus. This ignorance is what transforms Berenice’s beauty into horror. Their purpose is transformed by the end of the story when Berenice “gifts” Egæus her teeth, the only body part that is not deteriorated by disease. Egæus’ monomania causes his obsession with Berenice’s teeth to transform from a symbol of beauty to a haunting reminder that he cannot undo the way he neglected her. There is an evilness in the beauty of her teeth that symbolizes the transformation that Berenice goes through; from beautiful and lacking depth to deteriorating and resentful. The integrity of her teeth is symbolic of Egæus’ perception of Berenice’s physicality and furthers the disconnect between the reality she was living and the reality that Egæus perceived for her (obliviously)
* * * * * * *
The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their surface — not a shade on their enamel — not an indenture in their edges — but what that brief period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth! — the teeth! — they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They — they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mademoiselle Sallé it has been well said, “Que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments,” and of Berenice I more seriously believed que tous ses dents etaient des idées. Des idées! — ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! Des idées! — ah therefore it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason.
Egaeus’ obsession with Berenice’s teeth is symbolic of his desire to take all of the happiness and goodness that came with being around Berenice. They are the center of his desire and he believes that he can reconceive the happiness she once brought him if he removes those teeth because “their possession could event alone restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason” (4) When he retrieves the teeth and, for the last time, violated her physicality and the dead body, the teeth become evil. In a blacked-out state, Egaeus allowed his disturbed thoughts to take charge, and he unearthed the still-living Berenice from the grave and removed all of her teeth. The violence and anger associated with Egaeus’ mourning are extremely jarring and representative of the inherent interconnectedness between male intellect and their relationship with sexuality and the female body.
And the evening closed in upon me thus — and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went — and the day again dawned — and the mists of a second night were now gathering around — and still I sat motionless in that solitary room — and still I sat buried in meditation — and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow or of pain. I arose from my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the ante-chamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that Berenice was — no more. She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed.
* * * * * * *
I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware, that since the setting of the sun, Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror — horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed — what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, — “what was it?”
On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how came it there, upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat: — “Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas.” Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins?
There came a light tap at the library door — and, pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he? — some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night — of the gathering together of the household — of a search in the direction of the sound; and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave — of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing — still palpitating — still alive!
He pointed to my garments; — they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand: it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall. I looked at it for some minutes: it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor, it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
Work Cited
Hanks, Gordon R. Narcissus, and Daffodil: The Genus Narcissus. Taylor & Francis, 2002.
Poe, Edgar Allen. “Text: Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Berenice’ (Text-04b), Broadway Journal (New York, NY), Vol. I, No. 14, April 5, 1845, Pp. 217-219.” Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore – Works – Tales – Berenice (Text-04b), eapoe.org/works/tales/berniced.htm. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
Rodgers, Deborah. “Eighteenth-Century Literary Depictions of Childbirth in the … – JSTOR.” JSTOR, 1993, www.jstor.org/stable/23739390.
Eichenberg, Fritz. “Berenice.” Edgar Allan Poe Museum, 9 July 2021, poemuseum.org/berenice/.
Oehlers, Adam. “Berenice.” Behance, 2020, www.behance.net/gallery/20090841/Berenice/modules/135377643.
EDGAR A. POE.