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28 pages 56 minutes read

Edgar Allan Poe

Berenice

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1835

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Themes

Beauty Versus Horror

The first paragraph of the story asks whether evil can have its origin in something good. The text suggests that sorrow often originates in joy because “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” (333). If a person is unhappy in the present time, it might be because they either remember a happier past or are imagining a better future that they cannot achieve. While this opening initially seems to be abstract speculation, the plot of the story demonstrates the process through which something beautiful can lead to something unlovely.

The moment of Egæus’s birth foreshadows that good and evil will be intertwined for the rest of his life. Describing the library, he asserts, “Here died my mother. Herein was I born” (333). He implies that she died in childbirth, transforming a moment of joy into one of sorrow. Similarly, Berenice’s teeth appear to be the most perfect part of her body, untouched by the illness that affects the rest of her appearance. However, their perfection is, ironically, what causes them to be removed from her mouth because their beauty inspires the narrator’s obsession in a way that her less perfect attributes do not.

The text uses descriptive language to indicate that the aesthetics of beauty and horror are closer than they might seem. Egæus refers to “the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth” (334). White teeth would normally imply beauty, but here whiteness seems to make the teeth frightening and spectral. He also compares her teeth to the dancing of the 18th-century French ballerina Marie Sallé, but the beauty of dance becomes horrific when applied to teeth. The physical feelings associated with love and with fear are equated linguistically as well. Egæus points out the irony of his never having felt attracted to the beautiful Berenice before her illness, but asking her to marry him due to his fascination with her changing appearance as she deteriorates physically.

The obsessive behavior that the narrator’s mental health condition induces seems to be responsible for making something beautiful become horrific. Egæus mentions that his “monomania” makes him spend an entire night staring at the flame of a lamp; he sometimes loses entire days thinking about the smell of a flower. While noticing a flickering fire or a flower’s perfume might seem like pleasurable aesthetic experiences, Egæus does not find his obsessive thoughts pleasant. Rather, he describes himself as “addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation” (333). Likewise, his eventual removal of Berenice’s teeth inspires feelings of horror and revulsion, rather than delight or enjoyment.

The Dehumanizing Effect of Illness

Throughout the story, the text indicates the similarity between physical and mental illness and emphasizes that both can cause a person to lose their sense of self. Berenice is inflicted with “a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself” (333), a physical illness rather than a mental one. Egæus, however, refers to his troubles with obsession as a disease, calling it “my own disease—for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation” (333). He uses highly technical and medical language when he describes his mental illness, describing it as “a morbid irritability of the nerves immediately affecting those properties of the mind, in metaphysical science termed the attentive (333). These descriptions reduce the distinctions between diseases of the body and diseases of the mind.

The impact of illness upon both Egæus and Berenice causes both of them to transform and lose their sense of selfhood. When Berenice first becomes sick, Egæus claims that “the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character” (333). The illness makes obvious changes not only to her body but also to her mental characteristics and even her personality. The changes produced by illness cause Egæus to find her unrecognizable and to exaggerate the extent to which she changes. When she appears before him in his library chamber, he wonders:

Was it my own excited imagination—or the misty influence of the atmosphere—or the uncertain twilight of the chamber—or the grey draperies which fell around her figure—that caused it to loom up in so unnatural a degree? I could not tell. Perhaps she had grown taller since her malady (334).

He cannot determine if the feeling of her extreme tallness is caused by his own perception, the environment, or some physiological consequence of disease. Likewise, he describes her appearance by referring to specific body parts, rather than considering her as a full person. Egæus uses the word “the” rather than “her” when discussing these body parts, making them seem disconnected from Berenice’s personhood. When he does refer to her entire body, he uses the term it. For example, he notes that “its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour” (334). 

The dehumanizing impact of illness upon the body culminates in Berenice’s burial while she is still alive and the subsequent removal of her teeth. Egæus’s memory loss during this encounter seems to suggest that he also briefly lost his humanity or his ability to experience conscious thought. His compulsion to contemplate the teeth transforms him. He loses his own sense of self, lapsing into a trance in which he is dehumanized, acting as a creature that lacks the capacity for rational thought.

Visual Obsession and The Unreliability of Sight

“Berenice” focuses on the sense of sight to convey the narrator’s disordered thinking. By repeatedly emphasizing that Egæus’s mental illness causes him to fixate on primary visual stimuli, the story conveys the idea that thinking only of physical characteristics, without any consideration for their deeper meaning, is an unhealthy behavior. Further, the narrator’s increasing detachment from reality makes him oblivious to his own actions; his visual fixation leads to an inability to rely on what he sees as an indicator of truth.

Egæus claims that when he was born in his family library, “it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye” (333). This establishes that from the very beginning of his life, he was drawn to visual contemplation. His ancestral home is filled with visual art, such as frescoes, paintings, and carved buttresses, suggesting he inherited this preoccupation with visual aesthetics. However, Egæus’s visual appreciation exceeds the limits of simply appreciating what one sees and becomes the source of his obsessions. When he notices Berenice changing as she falls ill, “[his] disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice” (334), rather than its moral or emotional significance. He admits that physical aspects are less important, but Egæus cannot separate his attention from the visual spectacle of Berenice’s suffering body.

When Egæus sees the teeth that will become the source of his obsession, the text emphasizes the visual nature of his obsession. Regarding the teeth, Egæus claims that “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” (335). Even when he cannot see her teeth anymore, Egæus contemplates them with this “mental eye.” His meditative technique involves considering the aesthetic appearance of the teeth, referring to multiple angles and light sources. Similarly, when he goes to Berenice’s body after her supposed death, he finds himself compelled to look at the corpse. However, Poe casts some doubt upon the reliability of the narrator’s perception in this moment, forcing the reader to question whether this act was also the consequence of his disordered thinking or was the product of a hallucination. When Egæus enters the room with the coffin, he wonders, “Who was it asked me would I not look upon the corpse? I had seen the lips of no one move, yet the question had been demanded, and the echo of the syllables still lingered in the room” (335). By questioning whether anyone in the room ever really asked if he would like to see Berenice’s corpse, the text implies that this may have been a hallucination or a compulsion; there is no evidence that anyone else was present to make those suggestions. His obsession with the appearance of Berenice’s teeth eventually drives Egæus to extract them, presumably so that he can continue his aesthetic contemplation even after his fiancée’s premature death. This confirms his attraction to one visible aspect of Berenice, rather than to her as a person. 

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