Chapter 2 Constructing Jacksonian Manhood: Fear and Homosocial Desire in
2.3 Household Horror: “the Cult of True Manhood”
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restoration of manhood is once again unsettled by the (re)emergence of his queer belonging—or rather, “unbelonging” considering its unstable nature—by virtue of his relationship with the second cat. One is tempted to say that taverns in this regard bear testimonial to the osmosis of the threshold between homosocial attachments and homoerotic desire.
While it may seem instinctive for an animal-lover like the narrator to take a cat home, it is the second cat’s willing availability and tender responsiveness that
convince the narrator he is the very creature he seeks for: “Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice” (196). Such reciprocated affection harks back to his interactions with Pluto whereas immediately taking the form of shame upon his realization of “[the creature’s] evident fondness for [him]” (196). On a symbolic level, the second cat represents a thwarted attempt to consolidate the different roles the narrator ought to navigate in both public and private spheres, a fluctuating position between normative homosociality and unspeakable desires. In effect, the two cats are metaphorized differently in the story. While Pluto is originally raised and kept in the household, the second cat is acquired at a tavern. The two cats hence figure differently in that the former is tied to the narrator’s incomplete male identity, whereas the latter, taken from the tavern and brought home, signifies a failed attempt to integrate male-male
intimacy and domesticity. In brief, if Pluto’s death signifies a frustration stemming from unrequited desire, the violence inflicted upon the second cat registers the destruction following an endeavor to maintain such a desire within domestic spaces.
2.3 Household Horror: “The Cult of True Manhood”
Contrary to the narrator’s self-exculpatory statement that his atrocities are
motiveless, the mutilation of Pluto actually points to the primal source of his anxieties.
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Namely, Poe’s murderer has motives, but these motives remain concealed to himself.
The act of eye-gouging reflects, in a Freudian sense, a latent fear of castration. As formerly mentioned, in his well-known essay “The Uncanny” Freud showcases the substitutive relation between the dread of castration and the anxiety about eyes. As indicated by Freud, “every affect belonging to an emotional impulse, [if repressed,] is transformed . . . into anxiety, then among instances of frightening things there must be one class in which the frightening element can be shown to be something repressed which recurs” (240). This statement elucidates the underlying link between the uncanny effect and entities that are old-established in the mind, yet later alienated through the process of repression. In this regard, the narrator’s fear of the cat is interconnected to his anxiety pertaining to the castration complex of his childhood.
Similar to the production of uncanniness, the narrator’s dread is directly linked to his insecurities upon the sight of Pluto, a substantial reminder of his infantile infatuation for animals and his effeminacy well into manhood. These insecurities force him to confront his lack of “appropriate manhood.” In other words, what lurks beneath the gouging of eye sockets is the narrator’s fear-induced preemptive hostility that strives to counteract the idea of being emasculated, an anxiety later amplified by their same-sex intimacy. It is driven by this fear that the narrator’s failure to reconcile the domestic ideal between male gentility and the market values of aggressive
subjecthood lead to his violent outburst as a denouement. More specifically, aside from being a marker of thwarted masculinity, Pluto functions as a disturber of love in the Oedipal family, constantly working to impede the “benign discourse of marital sanctity” (Møllegaard 15). This detail situates the story within the stifling, gendered spaces of the home where the husband’s ire is concealed by loving, sacrosanct images of marital relations. Despite the ostensible corollary that ascribes his crimes to
alcoholism, it is his endeavor to “reject a gendered system of economic hierarchy,
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symbolized by the murder of Pluto and the burning of his house” that lands him in jail (Neff 90-91).
To begin with, the hanging of Pluto is only a precursor to a more thoroughly devastating destruction. As the narrator discloses, one day as his wife accompanies him into the cellar of the house “which [their] poverty [compels them] to inhabit,” the second cat tags closely, following him down “the steep stairs” (198). Once again, “the steep stairs” carry a sexual connotation which fits neatly into the Freudian phallic referents. As Freud relevantly observes, “[s]teep inclines, ladders, and stairs, and going up or down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act”
(Interpretation 277). Linked to this scene is the second cat’s persistence in pursuing the narrator, which “nearly throwing [him] headlong, [exasperates him] to madness”
(198). Here, the narrator’s “madness,” caused by the intolerable closeness to the cat—both in corporeal and psychological senses—contrasts with his adamant denial of insanity previously. “Mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream,” thus
exclaims the narrator at the outset of his confession (192). The centrality of this scene lies in the fact that the discourse of sexuality in the eighteenth and nineteenth century frequently pathologized homosexuality as unnatural deviancy and assigned to it the stigma of madness. As elucidated by Michel Foucault, “sexual irregularity was annexed to mental illness” (36). In this respect, the narrator’s eagerness to ascertain his sanity seems closely related to his forbidden yearning. Read in tandem with this reassertion, the visitorless seclusion and “[intense] gratification” (192) shared by the narrator and his pets together hint at the existence of secretive homoerotic activities.
Later, in a fit of uncontrollable rage, the narrator “[uplifts] an axe, and [forgets]
in [his] wrath, the childish dread” which formerly lingers, and “aim[s] a blow at the animal” (198, emphasis mine). However, the blow is unexpectedly arrested by the hand of his wife: “Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demoniacal, I
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withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain” (198). Here the unfaltering operation of the narrator’s crime is contrasted by his previous sentimental excesses, which expressly denotes a metamorphosis. Once again, the narrator’s diction suggests that the dread of the animal, if not entirely irrational, is remotely tied to his infancy. This childhood experience follows him into marriage, wherein he seeks sustenance from the emotional stabilities guaranteed by the role of a husband, only to be disappointed again. The claim that these atrocities are without motives remains dubious, as the progression of events throughout the narrative evidently denotes development. In depicting the conflagration that ensues the hanging of Pluto, the narrator encourages his reader to explore the impetus of his violence by claiming that he is “above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity” (195). The narrator’s matter-of-factness can also be observed in the opening scene where he asserts these horrifying deeds are “nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects” (192). With this statement, Poe presumably argues that there is no fundamental contradiction between the narrator’s docile character and his subsequent violent impulses—a logical
outcome of the attempt to incorporate multiple masculinities in the increasingly separate spheres.
Notwithstanding the narrator’s attempt to exonerate himself of the murders by rationalizing his murderous impulse, these crimes are, in actuality, linked to his failed embodiment of manliness. As Brian Neff keenly observes, the narrator illustrates the aftermath of his crime in terms of “economic satisfaction”: “Here at least, then, my labor has not been in vain” (94). The phraseology chosen to depict the depositing of the corpse into a wall undergirds the narrator’s namelessness and invisibility due to his lack of economic prowess in the urban milieu. As Neff argues, the narrator’s gratification upon seeing the positive and concrete results of his labor negates “any
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fear or negative affects” (94). Furthermore, “[b]y walling up his wife’s corpse the narrator in a sense returns to an earlier artisan tradition of work, outside of the terrors of the marketplace, where one’s work meant economic and social freedom” (94). In so doing, the narrator’s “happiness [is] supreme” and he can finally “look upon [his]
future felicity as secured” (“The Black Cat” 200). Hence, the murder of his wife can be seen as a hypermasculine reassertion of male subjecthood, but one that represents a violent rejection of the shame and fear associated with his non-normative desires. In addition, oddly lacking in the narrator’s confession is his expression of remorse for killing his wife, a fact that is highlighted by the iterations of his guilt toward Pluto.
More precisely, in murdering his wife and entombing her within the walls, the narrator buries the supposed object of his desire. This act of violence lays bare the claustrophobic confines of domesticity that quite ironically transform into the site whereby his endeavors eventually pay off, only at the expense of his moral integrity.
In sum, what the enclosed space where all secrets are encapsulated actually unfolds is a whole system of under-appreciated toil and disillusioned ideals of self-made
manhood.
Having stated that his “future felicity [is] secured,” the narrator in his haughty spirit gladly cooperates with police investigation on the fourth day of the assassination.
Yet upon the police’s departure, in a fit of the spirit of perverseness, he directs their attention to the “excellently well-constructed house,” whilst “rapp[ing] heavily with a cane which [he] [holds] in [his] hand, upon that very portion of the brickwork behind which [stands] the corpse of the wife of [his] bosom” (200). Shortly after, a muffled cry coming from behind the walls is heard by all, which rapidly escalates into “a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph” (200). It is then that the narrator realizes he has accidentally walled up the creature in the walls. His awareness proves to be long overdue at this point, for the wall crumbles after a while of labor, and “[t]he
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corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, [stands] erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head . . . [sits] the hideous beast whose craft [has] seduced [him] into murder” (201). Despite his previous remark that “the walls were loosely constructed” (199), the statement here informs the decisive factor that propels his final downfall is once again, the spirit of perverseness. In this way, the narratorial self-betrayal here paradoxically reconstitutes the storyteller’s male identity through a confession that consigns the narrator to the hangman. Crucially, it is the narrator’s failure to integrate homosociality and same-sex desire into the domestic sphere that results in his violent emotional outburst.
Yet this outburst is accompanied by the symbolic reanimation of a corpse, a tripartite embodiment of the second cat/Pluto/the narrator’s sole object of desire throughout the story. The transgressions of boundaries culminate in a quintessential Gothic moment wherein fear is intimately bound together with masculinity. In this sense, the unearthing of the narrator’s homoerotic desire characterizes the tale as a powerful critique of hegemonic masculinity and heterosexual matrix. While it might be tempting to follow the argumentation above and argue that the incipient queer desire between the narrator and his cats is inherently liberatory, “by commingling the two facets of the narrator’s life, and by grouping the rejection of both sides in one violent act, [the text] ultimately denies any certainty about the nature of male-male desire” (Neff 95). Crucially though, “The Black Cat” is decidedly not the usual Gothic formula where heterosexuality endures by virtue of obliterated monstrosity and restored orders, for the denouement of this story resolves its central conflict by underscoring the tenuousness of marital happiness. In sum, what the story boils down to is a social epitome which brings to light systematically isolated embodiments of desires that have lied outside of reproductive teleology. These desires reveal the contingencies of identity construction and shed light on the monstrous productivity of
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the Gothic.
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Chapter Three
“In Secret Communion with Myself”: Male Paranoia in “William Wilson”
3.1 Poe’s Literary Doubling
The prerequisite of self-consciousness is duality, one that requires the subject to reflect upon himself as an object. Such is the precondition of “William Wilson,”
wherein the narrator exhibits a divided awareness that typifies the motif of the Gothic literary double. Tracing the rise of the Double motif would inevitably lead one to consider the burgeoning notion of the individual in modernity. In fact, it is only under the presupposition of a unique, coherent subjecthood that horror can be derived from its facsimile or dissolution. The theme of doubleness is renowned for its recurrence in the Gothic, and is given the most paramount articulation, among Poe’s oeuvre, in
“William Wilson.” To begin with, the story revolves around a male-male competition in which the first-person narrator William Wilson develops an inexplicable animosity for his namesake, a young man whom he acquaints at Dr. Bransby’s academy. Aside from his name, the man shares the identical birthday, the same stature, and a similar voice with the narrator. Over the course of the narrative, his namesake pursues him persistently through Eton, Oxford, and finally to Rome. Specifically, the presence of his mysterious doppelgänger emerges every crucial moment to obstruct and disclose the narrator’s immoral intentions.
With an attempt to expose the identity of his mysterious rival, Wilson recollects his “later years of unspeakable misery” and “unpardonable crime” (168). These accounts, however, are not provided with specified details of the crime. His
self-reprimand seems oddly out of place considering the fact that he cannot fathom the exact origin or the nature of his crime: “I would fain have [my fellow men]
believe that I have been . . . the slave of circumstances beyond human control. . . . Have I not indeed been living in a dream? And am I not now dying a victim to the
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horror and the mystery of the wildest of all sublunary visions?” (168-69) In particular, the uncertainty of the narrator’s self-proclaimed “evil propensities” (169), examined along with the uncanny resemblances between him and his double, leads earlier criticism to conclude that Wilson is the innocent victim of his superego embodied by his doppelgänger. Strenuous endeavors have contributed to analyses of the doubling of the narrator and his namesake, while emphasis has been laid on the second
Wilson’s timely presence to thwart the narrator’s misconducts ranging from fraudulent gambling, collegiate profligacy, to secret sexual liaison.
The narrator recounts his perverse refusal to take the second Wilson’s advice, even though “he can recall no occasion when the suggestions of [his] rival were on the side of those errors or follies” (176). Moreover, he underscores the second
Wilson’s “moral sense, at least, if not his general talents and worldly wisdom, was far keener than [his] own” and that the narrator would have been “a better, and thus a happier man” if it were not for his constant dismissal of his rival’s insightful counsels.
Notably, the doppelgänger’s corrective role—with both “omnipresence and
omnipotence” (185)—once again corresponds to the super-ego, a critical agency that allows the subject to judge and prescribe to the self as an object. According to the narrator, his antagonist’s interferences of his misdeeds on numerous occasions partake of “patronage and protection” (173), while these actions are presumably motivated by
“a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify [him]” (173). Moreover, the narrator is preoccupied with an eerie feeling that he has been acquainted with his namesake “at some epoch very long ago—some point of the past even infinitely remote” (176). Although met with varying degrees of resistances, these encounters are always present in Wilson’s character-formation. The second Wilson’s demonstration of superior judgment, combined with the narrator’s uncanny familiarity with him, resonates with the Freudian schema wherein the ego-ideal exerts the influences of the
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abandoned object-cathexes, among which the most powerful one remains the individual’s first identification, namely, with the father. Together, these depictions shape his rivalry as an ego-ideal that the ego can never measure up to.
With no intention to discredit this reading, however, I would like to draw attention to the love-hate dynamics lurking behind their competitive homosocial relationship and the potential gender critique it might produce. Firstly, in the opening paragraphs, Wilson reveals that his doppelgänger makes him “doubly disgusted with the name because a stranger bore it, who would be the cause of its twofold repetition”
by reminding him of his “aversion to [his] uncourtly patronymic, and its very common, if not plebeian praenomen” (174). On a symbolic level, by rejecting the name of the Father and assuming the alias William Wilson, he becomes an “outcast of all outcasts most abandoned” (168) to the patriarchal social order. Taking the Freudian schema one step further, Yonjae Jung’s Lacanian reading of the tale resonates with my view: the subject, facing obstacles in “internalizing the law of the Father that allows him to enter the Symbolic order,” falls into the psychological catastrophe designated as “foreclosure” (83). Specifically, in his depiction of childhood, the narrator boasts of his unruliness and recalcitrance when faced with his parents’ discipline:
I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and, of course, in total triumph on mine. Thenceforward my voice was a household law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions. (169)
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Namely, by substituting himself as the name-giver, thereby usurping the place of the father, Wilson relinquishes and loses his family identity while denying the
possibility of a successful Oedipal resolution. In canceling out the power bequeathed by his real appellation, the narrator chooses to remain nameless in the antebellum market where manhood is defined as competitiveness and “making a name for oneself.” As such, Wilson’s avowed disdain for his patronymic name also marks his ostracization and disassociation from his “gentlemanly estate” (180). Like the narrator of “The Black Cat,” Wilson’s anonymity disengages him from the market economy that demarcates proper manhood in terms of a normative bourgeois masculine identity.
However, in this story, the fear of being a man is codified in the form of competitive antagonism which merges with paranoia. If “The Black Cat” reveals the gruesome aspects of marriage and gendered spatiality, “William Wilson” is a tale about the fear of exposing the unnaturalness of one’s own gender.
To put it more succinctly, Gothic terror here is manifested in the erosion of barriers between self and other, allowing the narrator a glimpse into the liminal moment that delimits the boundary between familiarity and fear—the moment when masculine identity becomes indecipherable. Such indecipherability is characterized here most pointedly in Poe’s tales as the problem of naming. As in “The Black Cat,”
Poe’s “William Wilson” is saturated with the impossible deadlock of expression,
Poe’s “William Wilson” is saturated with the impossible deadlock of expression,