Behind Locked Doors: Angela Carter, Horror and the Influence of Edgar Allan Poe

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe is frequently acknowledged as the originator of the horror genre. His dark tales contain demonic pledges, walled in corpses, living death, curses, body horror, contagion and natural terrors turned weird. In his study Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927), H.P. Lovecraft devotes a whole chapter to Poe’s horror tales, acknowledging his mastery by calling him the ‘deity and fountain-head of all modern diabolic fiction’ (53). Lovecraft sees Poe as moving beyond earlier horror writers who ‘[w]orked largely in the dark; without an understanding of the psychological basis of the horror appeal’ (ibid.). These writers were, he argues, hampered by the need to conform to a happy ending, side with one of the characters and their views, reward virtue and adhere to popular standards and beliefs. Poe chooses to write of doom, decay and death, but avoids didacticism; he ‘perceived the essential impartiality of the real artist’ (ibid.). In “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846), he talks of his awareness of effect and the importance of keeping it short: ‘I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in view — for he is false to himself who ventures to dispense within so obvious and attainable a source of interest’ (480; emphasis in original).1 KeywordsFairy TaleWife BeatingFemale AuthorSexual AdmirationReal ArtistThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.