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14.2.09

Gotyk... (Część V)

POKAŻ/UKRYJ SPIS TREŚCI | POKAŻ/UKRYJ TREŚĆ NOTKI

The Distribution of Power Within and Without The Gothic Mode in Edgar Allan Poe's The Purloined Letter

PART V:
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FIELDS OF POWER

The Purloined Letter" is also a study of the relations between the public and the private, and the distribution of power within both these fields in particular. One of the qualities of the Gothic mode is the portrayal of the family not as a functional, social unit, but as a system of various dynamics within which power is distributed unevenly. Such a distribution structures relations of oppression and victimization. Such a system of relations within the family exists to an extent in "The Purloined Letter". The official, public image of the lord and the lady (as Lacan and others assume — the King and the Queen) must be uninterrupted if both are to forfend their honor and position. By stealing the letter, Minister D— has gained ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose honour and peace are so jeopardised (456). By exposing certain shortages in the private relations of the royal marriage, the thief also endangers their public position. It is clear from the very existence of the purloined letter that relations within the royal marriage are strained. It is to be assumed that the King is the wielder of official power and is of much greater importance than the Queen, and therefore the Queen seeks compensation and power elsewhere — in her royal boudoir — with persons other than the King himself. Because Minister D— recognized the handwriting on the letter, the reader may assume that the Queen had been secretly meeting a person with power from the political circles. Such a relation provides her with influence on the political field only as long as it is not made public.

As had been mentioned before, another instance of the public and the private in tension is the meeting between detective Dupin and the Prefect of Parisian police. It is an instance of the public, official power having authority over the private life of citizens, although at the same time the public authority must resort to the help of the citizens. In both instances of such cross−relations of the public and the private (Queen−King; Dupin−Monsieur G—) the public field wields much power over the private field, although the private field is capable of undermining and subverting such official power. Dupin could have as well ruined Monsieur G—'s investigation by not returning the letter and using it for his own benefit, and the Queen could have undermined the King's position by not commissioning the investigation and allowing for Minister D—'s political plans to be fulfilled.

WORKS CITED

  • Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Purloined Letter". Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination. London: The Aldine Press, 1955.
  • The Purloined Poe. Lacan, Derrida & Psychoanalytic Reading. Edited by John P. Muller & William J. Richardson. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988

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