Animal Cruelty and Intimate Partner Homicide in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat"

Abstract

The relation between animal maltreatment and interpersonal violence has long been of interest to developmental psychologists, psychiatrists, law enforcement officials, criminologists, and others from related disciplines who concluded that the motivation behind these atrocities is a deep-seated need for power and control that stems from inadequacy. The culprit begins by practising on animals, before graduating to humans, mainly women. In 1843, Edgar Allan Poe saw the potential significance of cruelty to animals as a precursor to future violence against humans and brought it to life through his short story "The Black Cat." The narrator begins his reign of terror by practising on cats (women stand-ins) until he summons enough courage to murder the real source of his misery—his spouse. The story is artistically coherent if understood in terms of cruelty to animals as an unfavourable prognostic sign characteristic of those who will kill. Until now, animal cruelty in Poe’s tale received relatively little attention from literary critics. To date, no inquiry has put forward a theory regarding the abuse of animals and its relation to homicide. Hence, this study proposes to look into this disturbing phenomenon and to complement the Poe scholarship.