Often Poe’s writings unfold intricate issues in gender, of masculinity and femininity, and the reiterated interiority in his creative works fittingly symbolizes the human mind and self.

“William Wilson” exemplifies such psychological foregrounding. The tale at first seems to be just one among many similar nineteenth-century literary works in which twins struggle to the death, whether that be actual organic death or emotional death-in-life. Poe manages to have both types of death come into play. Narrator William Wilson stabs the “other” William Wilson (his twin, double, conscience), only to learn that he has “murdered” the good part of what should be his integrated self, thereby furthering the triumph of the evil within. The repetition of the word “will,” the resemblances between the two Wilsons, the claustrophobic settings of the main episodes—all are foundations for successful psychological fiction. The other William Wilson’s voice is symbolically husky and muted because the narrator William Wilson doesn’t want to hear its actual sounds or its counsel.

That horrors in Poe’s works often occur without supernatural help makes them all the more significant, and more frightening. Most of the tales in which women are prominent revolve around this theme. The early “Berenice” and “Morella” struck some of Poe’s contemporaries as mere exercises in horror, but they overlooked artistic modifications of Gothic conventions that we see today as foreshadowing sophisticated psychological developments in literary creations throughout the world. The narrator in “Berenice,” Egaeus, has nearly the same name as the father in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—Egeus, who fails to comprehend the truly irrational nature of love. That Poe’s character was born in a library—thus he’s unreal—may carry more psychological substance than what informs many other mere thrillers. On two counts—a literary name and an inability to cope with physical realities, except in odd, even sadistic responses—Egaeus likely causes debility in Berenice. By showing her scant love he thereby manages to drive her toward an early grave; his fixation on her teeth squelches any mutuality in their relationship. The story is open-ended: Possibly Egaeus pulled the teeth of a corpse, an activity already gruesome enough, or maybe Berenice was not actually dead, but only in a cataleptic state approximating death, so his violation of her grave might involve even worse emotional warpings in his character. Inability to love makes him static, with only an occasional pendulum swing toward sadism.

The narrator-husband in “Morella” appears to be more passive than his wife (the title character), although such passivity may mask emotional savagery, which ultimately kills. Like Egaeus, this man manifests no healthy passion or love. Morella’s spirit returns, however, and takes over the body of their daughter, also named Morella, but named only at the moment when she is baptized—an event that represents irrepressibility of will. Perhaps the narrator’s refrain-like or near-rhyming repetition of “Morella” forms an incantation or spell that conjures the elder Morella’s spirit.

A variation on this theme of the will’s supremacy makes “Ligeia” one of Poe’s most compelling tales. If, as has been hypothesized, Poe originally intended to satirize German and British Romanticism—respectively symbolized in the dark, super-intellectual, German Ligeia, and the dumb blonde English maiden, Rowena (perhaps a hit at Scott’s Ivanhoe)—an equally valid seriousness informs the tale.6 The nameless narrator, like other Poe characters in intimate relationships who suffer because of an inability to love, brings about the death of his first wife, Ligeia, a symbol of colossal strength in human will. In contrast, his second wife, Rowena, symbolizes real, flesh-and-blood femininity. However, her family’s real desire is not Rowena’s happiness but the narrator’s financial generosity. Indifferent to Rowena’s future, her family does not see that life with her husband is horrifying. Their bridal chamber resembles a coffin, and his reactions to her are sadistic, possibly because they arise from repugnance toward the physical in love. In true horror-story fashion, he apparently poisons Rowena while fortifying his resolve with opium, then fantasizes that Ligeia takes over Rowena’s body. Given the hallucinatory texture of the tale, what the narrator would have us accept as truth in no way resembles factuality. As in Poe’s other fiction about dying and returning women, disaster emanates from a male whose attitudes and conduct toward females—in what is presumably the most intense human relationship, marriage—devastates all involved. If these women symbolize nurturing and intuitive elements in the human self, then the husband’s “killing” them is equivalent to psychological repression, and in Poe’s imaginative universe, nobody can repress a strong emotion without experiencing a tremendous, negative rebound.

Two other tales revolve around the deaths of beautiful women with more positive implications. In “The Assignation,” Poe’s first prose tale to feature the theme, the lovely Marchesa does not return to haunt her lover—who is not her husband, but instead a far younger, more virile, artistic, altogether creative man. Rather, they agree to double suicide. Although the horrifics in these deaths are undeniable, the horror is mitigated by the lovers’ hope to unite on the far side of the grave, where worldly society’s rules of conduct do not apply. Bliss after death may also signify a more spiritual love than society would tolerate.