2.2. Taphephobia and the Decortication of Religion:
Influenced by the context of his home town Baltimore, which is
referred to by Michael L. Burduck in his book Usher's Forgotten Church?:
Edgar Allan Poe and Nineteenth Century American Catholicism as "a hub of
American Catholicism" (4), Poe uses some
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religious hints to present the primary cause behind the public
taphephobia, stressing that the phenomenon is not restricted solely to the 19th
C, but it rather dates back to the early years of Christianity. Poe's strategy
to use religion is different from one tale to another, varying from the use of
some names with religious connotations to the use of some basic catholic
traditions.
In "The Fall of the House of Usher", Poe uses Madeline as a
victim's name; which is a very catholic name that refers to Mary
Magdalene. Madeline and Mary Magdalene share the mysterious identity and
character in addition to the mystery of their death. Unlike the other female
characters, Poe does not provide a clear, detailed description of Madeline
despite the fact that she represents a major figure in the story. The first
appearance of her character is associated with her mysterious disappearance
"the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote
portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared"
(CTP 175). Despite the fact that she is known as one of the Jesus
Christ's followers who witnessed his crucifixion as well as his resurrection,
Mary Magdalene presented, as Hugh Pope affirms in The Catholic
Encyclopedia, a debatable figure since she was misidentified with other
characters like Mary the "sinner" and Mary of Bethany (761). In addition, both
Madeline and Mary Magdalene share the fact that they both suffer from unknown
illnesses. For Madeline who suffers from catalepsy, her illness "had long
baffled the skill of her physicians" (CTP 175) since, as Christopher
Dibble states in his essay "The Dead Ringer: Medicine, Poe and the fear of
Premature Burial", the medical field was not developed enough to identify and
understand the nervous system diseases that can cause the apparent death (2).
As well, The Bible mentions that Jesus heals St Mary Magdalene from her
anonymous illness "When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he
appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons" (Mark
16:9). According to Wayne Jackson, in his essay "Demons: Ancient Superstition
or Historical Reality?", these seven demons mentioned, refer to physical
illness that occurs as a consequence of being
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possessed. Furthermore, Madeline and Mary Magdalene share an
enigmatic death. For Madeline, there is no reference in the tale about when she
passed away or how. The narrator was "informed abruptly that the lady Madeline
was no more" (CTP 179), allowing many questions to be asked about the
circumstances of her death, especially after we notice the indifferent reaction
of her brother. Mary Magdalene is as well mysteriously buried since there are
no records about the real date and place of her burial. Poe's use of
parallelism between the biblical story of Mary Magdalene and Madeleine Usher
provides a kind of legitimacy to Americans' irrational fear of premature
entombment. Echoing a religious story known by the mass places the motif of
taphephobia as a reality recorded and validated in antiquity and not as mere
hallucinations of a neurotic person.
Poe follows the same path in his tale "The Cask of Amontillado",
in which he uses one of the principle catholic practices, which is confession.
The plot presents a confession to an unknown person that includes a flashback
to an act of immurement "for the love of God" (CTP 189). Poe presents
the first cause behind the public trepidation as a holy act done for the sake
of religion and not for mere revenge. This description echoes an old history of
immurement in the Catholic Church. Many skeletons were found in the walls of
churches and monasteries in Europe. One can recall the example mentioned by
Henry Charles Lea in his book A History of Inquisition of the Middle Ages
(1887), which consists of immuring a nun, accused of two types of heresy;
Catharism and Waldenism (487). Lea asserts that the monastery system uses
in Pace to refer to " those subjected to it speedily died in all the
agonies of despair" (488). The same expression is used by Poe in "The Cask of
Amontillado" to suggest that Montresor is the representative of " the cruelty
of monastic system" (487) and that Fortunato presents the victim who lived an
earthy hell of psychological and physical horrors. This clear religious
connotation of the immurement as a form of premature burial
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which is the source of people's panic and obsessive fear,
suggests that Poe wants to enlarge the context of the phenomenon to include
catholic religion in addition to medicine.
Besides, Poe chooses to use some biblical allusions7
in his tales as a constant reminder to the reader that the phenomenon of
premature burial, which consumes their mental peace, is an old practice, deeply
rooted in the Christian history through the live burial of many saints. Thus,
Poe tries, within the process of reflecting the general trepidation of the
American society, to legitimize the mass horror by echoing old images of
prematurely buried, well known saints. One of the examples of saints presented
in The Roman Martyrology, revised and corrected by Benedict XIV, is
saint Chrysanthus and his wife Daria who were buried alive for trying to
convert Romans. In his article for National Geographic News, Ker Than
states that there are skeletons found in Italy and believed to be of this saint
and his wife. This investigation is led by the Italian professor Ezio Fulcheri
who states that "all of the evidence we have gathered points toward the relics
having belonged to Chrysanthus and Daria" (Than, "Legendary Saints were Real,
Buried Alive, Study Hints"). Other examples of saints who supported the words
of Jesus Christ and martyred by being buried alive are present in the history
of Christianity like Saint Castulus, Saint Vitalis and Saint Oran. These living
examples presented in Christianity, the defining religion of American people
intensify the horror they live within, realizing that the primary cause of
their phobia is an omnipresent element in their religious history.
Despite the deep-rootedness of the phenomenon in the Christian
history, taphephobia's heyday was in the 19th C and one can relate this period
with the gradual collapse of the nation's religious doctrine. The context of
19h C in America presents an era of a constant battle between science and
religion especially with the age of Enlightenment that developed in the 18th C
and with the revolutionary theory of Darwin. According to Paul Jerome Croce
in
7 It is the title of William Mentzel Forrest's book
published in 1928.
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his essay " Encyclopedia Entry on Nineteenth Century Science and
Religion", the Darwinian theory "brought the religious leaders' worst fears to
life" (Encyclopedia of American Culture and Intellectual History
1838). A more secular society grew during the 19th C, having a developing
strong faith on the medical and scientific progress rather than on their basic
religious concepts. This radical change includes the concept of life and death,
the immortality of the human soul and the concept of afterlife.
Within the process of representing taphephobia as the defining
fear of the 19th C United States, Poe continues providing hints on the social ,
historical and religious contexts of the phobia. Out of six tales, the
characters of Ligeia, Egaeus, Roderick Usher and Morella share one common
feature related to their intellectual portraits. They are interested in the
forbidden knowledge related to the nature of human soul and the ambiguous
concept of death and afterlife. Portraying Ligeia, Poe focuses on the
clandestine feature of the character by showing that the narrator, who is her
husband, has no idea about her origins. Thus, by the end of the tale, the
reader will be able to question the authenticity of the story and in particular
the narrator. Poe highlights this ambiguity through the poem written and
recited by Ligeia herself. The poem is about the tragedy of Man who is defeated
by "The Conqueror Worm" (CTP 99) that symbolizes the power of death.
The whole poem presents a manifestation of what is happening in heaven where
angels and seraphs witness what happens on Earth. Ligeia describes in details
the horror experienced by Man within the context of his innate struggle against
death. The poem presents an aesthetic, literary representation of a religious
concept like death in which Ligeia provides a philosophical explanation of the
afterworld, portraying it as a society of angels and archangels watching the
human "madness", "sin" and "horror" (99).
Poe uses the same pattern to describe Morella, stressing on her
intellectual capacities rather than on her beauty. He states that she has a
"Pressburg education" (CTP 214).
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According to Dawn B. Sova, in his book Critical Companion to
Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to his Life and Work (2007),
Pressburg presents "the center for "the Black Arts" [...] whose meaning appears
to be the use of magic for evil purposes" (118). Besides, Poe asserts that the
character is interested in "mystical writings" (CTP 214) and enjoys
discussing Pantheism which is defined in the online Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy as the philosophy that stands for the idea that divinity and
"cosmos" are identical, creating a possibility of having a multiplicity of
Gods. Poe uses Pantheism in particular to record one of the most debatable
philosophies in the 19th C America since it was refused by some religious
leaders considered it as anti religious like the case of Mary Becker Eddy,
mentioned in Encyclopedia of American Religion and Politics (2003)
while others accepted it, relying on the belief that God is everywhere.
Within the context of the rising Darwinism and Pantheism in the
19th C America, taphephobia presents a result of the collapse of religious
dogma related especially to the concept of death, afterlife and the immortality
of the soul. In an age of growing scientific awareness and belief, the concept
of death lost its mystical, religious dimension as a sudden event designed and
controlled by divinity, to become in 19th C a purely scientific concept that
refers to a natural phenomenon, a result of biological aging and sickness.
Besides, Poe shows the scientific side of his characters by stressing on their
obsessive interest with the human soul, echoing his personal efforts to study
this abstract, mystical concept in a very logical and scientific way. In his
article "Studies in English and American Fiction", published in the French
literary Magazine La Revue des Deux Mondes in 1846, E.D Forgues
asserts that Poe was engrossed in finding "a plausible explanation both of
human soul and of the Divinity" (Edgar Allan Poe: The Critical Heritage
211). Poe's personal interest with the nature of the human soul and his
attempt to find scientific explanation to what happens in the grave is echoed
in the different portraits of his characters and notably the character of
Ligeia, Morella,
8 This term refers originally to the Post WWI
generation of writers, including Earnest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. The aim
of using this term is to reflect the same metaphorical meaning of the
concept.
Layouni 72
Roderick Usher and Egaeus through emphasizing the fact that they
were interested in the forbidden knowledge related to the nature of the soul
and its immortality. Besides, Poe's interests in scientific study of the human
soul echoes as well the predominant atmosphere of 19th C American society.
Within the context of a growing faith in science, the frequent occurrence of
premature burial presents a source of a prevalent fear, since it symbolizes a
midway state between life and death, a mysterious state that has no scientific
explanation. Thus, the obsessive state of taphephobia, that predominates the
American society during more than a century, presents a result of a wonky
belief in sciences after the frequent occurrence of medical faults and a result
of the collapse of the religious dogma that presents for a long time the basic
explanation of the mysterious phenomena like death. Hence, the 19th C Americans
present a "lost generation"8 unable neither to reinstate their
strong religious faith nor to have confidence in science, that proves its
inability to have a strict definition of death. Within this psychological loss,
the 19th C Americans tried to find some radical solutions in order to repress
the source of their phobia. However, these solutions aggravate their
taphephobia, showing how an irrational obsession changed the American lifestyle
during a whole century.
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