Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Berenice is a short horror story by Edgar Allan Poe first published in 1835. The story deals with the themes of mental illness, disease, and death. In the story, Poe describes death not as a permanent state, rather he explores the idea that the body dies but the soul is reborn again and then suggests that death always defies all expectations. In the story, death continues to appear again and again but nobody actually dies. Another important theme of the story is repressed sexuality. The story is about a man who from his childhood, has remained shy, reserved, bibliophile, monastic, and religious.
On the other hand, his cousin is a cheerful, beautiful young girl who cherishes all the colors of life. The man continues to struggle between his monastic ways of life and his natural desires. Though he actively suppresses and ignores his love for Berenice to whom he gets engaged, he subconsciously is attracted towards her and the pleasures of life. This struggle leads him to his madness. His cousin, on the other hand, faces and suffers from disease. Her illness changes her body and personality and then she finally suffers the ‘fatal and primary’ disease of epilepsy. During the episodes of epilepsy, Berenice appears almost dead, but not dead. The fear that Berenice may die disturbs the man further and his madness ‘grows rapidly,’ as he becomes obsessive, which suggests that he actually loved and desired Berenice.
Characters of Berenice:
Egaeus is the main character and the unreliable narrator of the story. Egaeus is unreliable due to his self-admitted mental illness. He belongs to an ancient and well-respected family of thinkers and visionaries. Thus, he doesn’t share his last name because that may tarnish the image of his family. He was born in the library of his home and it was also the place where his mother died, which suggests that his mother too was a well-read person. This is why since his childhood, he has been a studious, reserved, and introspective person, a sickly, gloomy child. He is the only child and after his mother’s death, he develops an idea that the body may die but the soul remains and takes rebirth. Egaeus admits that he is suffering mental disorder, obsessive monomania, and often suffers trance-like states during which he fails to reason. He has been monastic and laborious since always and tries to avoid lust and other pleasures of life for the sake of his reading in the library.
Berenice is a young beautiful girl, a cousin of Egaeus. Both were raised side by side at Egaeus’ house. Egaeus affirms that he never actually loved Berenice. He was a lonely child, studious and shy while Berenice was always full of activities, fun and frolic. She is agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy” and spends her time “roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path.” Egaeus admits that he never loved Berenice but always liked her smile. Her teeth are a symbol of mortality.
In her youth, she suffers illnesses that turn her into a sickly, weak, and troubled person. In addition, she develops a “species of epilepsy” which occasionally falls into a catatonic sleep that resembles death. However, her epileptic seizures are short-lived, and soon she regains consciousness. Egaeus never loved her, but he knows that Berenice always loved her and to offer her some solace, he offers to marry her and they get engaged. Just before they are about to marry, she faces another seizure and this time, it takes longer for her to return to normalcy.
The Menial and Maid are the other two minor characters, unnamed servants. The maid finds Berenice suffering an epileptic seizure just before her marriage and tells Egaeus that she is dead. Since her epileptic seizure prolongs, Egaeus and others actually believe that she is dead, though she is not. The Menial finds Berenice alive, mutilated, and exhumed in the library where she was buried alive.
Summary of Berenice:
The story begins as the narrator explains misery and its different manifestations. He then raises the question ‘if good can become the cause of evil.’ which is the story's central idea. He introduces himself as Egaeus and refrains from telling his family name. Though he claims that he belongs to “a race of visionaries,” his family is well respected and well-read which is evident from the copious amount of books, tapestry, and artifacts in the library. He mentions he was born in the library of his house where his mother died. Egaeus believes that he had a past life and his soul had inhabited another body and had another life. The proof is in his dim memories of “sounds, musical yet sad” and “spiritual and meaningful eyes.”
He mentions spending his childhood in the library, studying laboriously and ‘monastically.’ However, as he reached adulthood, ‘noon of manhood’ he felt a stagnation that hindered his intellectual pursuit. This suggests that he struggled between his monastic lifestyle and the natural tendencies of adulthood.
He then introduces Berenice, his cousin who was raised with her at his house. They were of the same age but poles apart. While he was a sickly, gloomy child, Berenice had always been a lively, playful, beautiful person, enchanting everyone. He claims that he never actually loved Berenice which suggests that he actively suppressed his sexual feelings for his monastic behavior and laborious attitude towards his studies.
Things changed when Berenice got ill. She suffered diseases that turned her pale, yet her smile was always enchanting. More than that, she faced a fatal form of epilepsy that the narrator says often pushed her into a trance-like state where it was difficult to say if she was alive or dead. Whenever the servants and Egaeus felt as if she was dead, she returned back to her normal self.
Her condition continued to deteriorate and during the same time, Egaeus too suffered from mental disorders. He suffers from an obsessive disorder, a monomania that makes him fixate on objects. During his disorder, he would fail to reason and understand things properly.
As the health of Berenice continued to deteriorate, Egaeus’ mental situation continued to suffer. His monomaniac episodes cause him to spend hours and hours on “frivolous” objects such as “the typography of a book” or “a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry.”
He notices the sickly changes in Berenice as she continues to become weak and faint. He mentions that he never loved Berenice even when she was glorious and lively, though he knew she always loved her. To sympathize with her and offer her solace, he proposes to her. This brings a smile to her face. That smile catches his attention and her teeth become Egaeus’ obsession. He notices that though Berenice’s whole body is turning pale and sick, her teeth are still lively, and her smile is alive.
Shortly before they are about to marry, the maid comes and informs Egaeus that Berenice suffered the epileptic attack again, and she is dead. Egaeus sees her and finds no sign of life. Berenice is then buried in the same library where he proposed to her. He never loved her but her death deeply disturbs him.
Alone he reads a book by Ebn Zaiat. The page he is reading says "My companions said to me, if I would visit the grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries." While reading, he falls asleep.
He suddenly wakes up and hears “the spirit of a departed sound” of a “shrill and piercing shriek” that he believes came from a woman. He notices a small box belonging to the family physician, a lamp, and a book with the same page on the table. The Menial comes in, horrified, and informs him that the servants were disturbed by the shrieks of a woman coming from the library. When they decided to check, they noticed Berenice’s “violated grave” and discovered that she was still alive, although “enshrouded,” mutilated. The Menial then notices that Egaeus’ clothes are bloody and covered in mud, human nail marks on his hand, and a spade inexplicably sitting in the corner of the room. Realizing what might have happened, Egaeus jumps at the physician’s box, it drops and opens up.’ Egaeus and the Menial see it is full of “thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances.” Those were Berenice's teeth that Egaeus was obsessed with. All 32 of them that he detached from her face during his monomaniac trance, believing she was dead. He read the book by Ebn Zaiat, visited Berenice’s grave, exhumed her, and took away the teeth, without realizing that she was still alive, breathing, and back from her epileptic seizure.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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