Essay Sample on Poe's Relationships With Women

Introduction

The images of murderers, mad people, untimely burials and women of unknown origin who tend to return from the dead come into our minds whenever the Poe is mentioned. Poe is a renowned persona since the year 1827 where he was able to publish many books, novels, and poetry. He has special acknowledgment of being the father of the today detective stories as well as the beginner of fiction stories. (Drewery, and Claire 16). Poe's name lies heavily on the terrifying fictions and his haunting poetry. However, Poe had a special place with women as he had many encounters with various women throughout his entire life. The women whom he had contacts with a range from his mother to his aunty and his fiance as well as several other women as we shall see in this article.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Several of his literary work was based on the lives of women and their deaths. His literary work such as The Oval Portrait, The fall of the House of Usher, Annabel Lee and Berenice are some few of his work that was primarily influenced by the lives and deaths of the women in the presence of the troubled author. We get essential them from one of his work which is women in distress. Most of his readers would criticize his work on women claiming that Poe had a peculiar tendency of idealizing women fragility and vulnerability. Throughout the literary work of Poe, the women are doomed right from the beginning to the end. He says that the life of a maiden is fatal and final.

Poe was born by his mother who was an actress who was playing the roles of beautiful women who were woeful, miserably and who were doomed to die. The real life of his mother was miserable; she had lost husbands twice this making her a widow for two times. His mother was repeatedly dying in the dais as she was acting and died of tuberculosis. Poe witnessed his mother dying, and this was his first time to see a woman dying. (Poe, 14). Her death had a painful effect on his life considering the strong relationship that was between him and his mother.

Following his mother's death, there was a separation between Poe and his siblings as he was adopted by a couple that did not have children. He had a foster mother relationship with this woman by the name Frances Valentine Allan. He says that this woman had a resemblance to his mother in many ways. Both women had a lot of love for the little Poe as well as both of them did not have strength in terms of health. Poe got attached to Mrs. Allan so quickly such that he could not foresee a loss that was forthcoming as Mrs. Allan was ailing and death was becoming more and more inescapable.

Poe fell in one-sided love with another woman by the name Jane Stanard who was a mother of one kid that was his school friend who adopted him after the demise of Mrs. Allan. The love of this woman and the care that she was giving Poe made him write a poem when he was very young at the age of 14year. In 1824, Stanard passed away adding to his list the name of the good women that he had a relationship. Nevertheless, the list of the dead and darling women in his life did not stop with the death of Stanard, but it went on becoming longer and longer as time went by.

In 1825, Poe met another young yet charming lady in the university. The woman was called Sarah Elmira Royster. Her beauty and his need for a companionship compelled him to approach her. Poe was soon willing to propose to Sarah. The two could send each other letters, but neither of their parents would agree to the engagement of the two young lovers, and as a result, they had no choice but parting ways. Later Sarah got an involvement with another woman and right to it this was a relationship that came to an end, and this was another loss which left Poe disappointed and with great pain. (Poe, 14).

Poe had an experience of several deaths of women that he loved. He almost thought that any woman that she loved, she would eventually lose them. This made him know that love could never last forever and therefore Poe was afraid of abandonment and separations that he had found himself in after having several women in his life who were to bring him up and another one who left her for another man. The deaths of the women who he loved grew into a plant that would blossom into scary stories and poems that we all know today. He later met his female cousin and another lady whom he wanted to marry by the name Virginia Eliza Clemm, but this did not happen as well.

Conclusion

All his life, Poe continued with his search for a woman that would become his wife and fill the gap that his mother left in his life. Poe was unable to accept the inevitability of death, and so he always wished that he could bring his mother Eliza Poe back to life, but unfortunately this could not happen. (Hayes, Kevin 13) Poe was, therefore, suffering rejection from the girls he wished to propose and abandonment that was forced to him by death which was taking away the people he loved. It is therefore evident that Poe had relationships with women some that were good as he could get the motherly love and other relationships with beautiful ladies which were disappointing him after causing him pain due to what he termed as a betrayal.

Work Cited

Drewery, Claire. Modernist Short Fiction by Women: The Liminal in Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair and Virginia Woolf. Routledge, 2016.

Hayes, Kevin J., ed. Edgar Allan Poe in Context. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The complete tales & poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Knickerbocker Classics, 2014.