“The Raven”: Speaking of Mommy Dearest

R e O h S 121 The "old negro,"Jupiter, who aids the treasure hunters in the recovery of Captain Kidd's plunder has received his freedombut stillprefers to serve h i s former masters, the Legrand family. As opposed to the majorityof his brethren in the South,Jupiter would seemto be beyondcommodification , which, paradoxically, makes him that much more avaluableservant.Andyet, asthe narrator notes, such freedom is a most unfree affair: the Legrands have "contrived to instil this obstinacy " inJupiter that he continue in his subservience [Works,3:807].Jupiter and hismasterswould seemto agree,then, on at leastone thing: namely, the fantasy that labor cannot be stolen when it, like buried treasure,isjust lying around, free for the taking.Of course,thejewelsand coinscarried o f fby Kidd's crew were stolen and remain so no matterhowlongagothe theft occurred.So, too,is Jupiter the product of piratical trade, no matter how many generations ago his ancestors were seized from Africa. As Legrand deciphers the treasure map, he instructsJupiter to climba magnificenttulip tree, shinnyout on a branch,locatea human skull,and drop a gold-colored bug through the left eye socket.Butsincethe death's-head facesJupiter, he confusestheskull's right eyeforitsleftone. Surely Jupiter makes a mistake, but at another level, his inabilityto place hisown self in the position of the skullis deeplyrevealing.Legrand,in contrast,has no difficultyidentifyingwith the death's-head and adoptingitsperspective,understandinghislefteye, as it were, to be the skull's left eye. Is this not the definition and embodiment of gothic vision? Legrand is able to look on the world with this morbid vision for two reasons, both of which are wrapped up in the New World commodification of race. First,the vantage of death comeseasily to those who remand others to the social death of slavery. Second, in understanding their position as that of lifeless, inanimate bone, the Legrands have alwaysfound comfort,if not absolution.The skullsitswithout acting;capital accruesat its feet (supposingit had any) withoutit doing anything. Otherschooseto bringitrichesby becomingslaves or, as in the case ofJupiter, reluctantlyreceiving freedom. In this gothic tale of deathly sight, the treasurejust magically piles up. The story is not merely a nice fantasy;it is a l s o a highly profitable account that launders wealth by removing the stains of history. And although searchingfor the source of wealth behind this fantasy may entail some digginginto the past, all one reallyneed do is start by looking at the surfaces of things that speak themselves as commodities. One mystery remains, however. As the narratorasksin the tale's penultimateparagraph,What arewe to makeof theskeletonsfoundin the hole?" Legrand surmisesthat Kidd "must have had assistance in the labor"of burying his loot and that, in order to keep the cache secret, his cronies were dispatched with a pickax [Works,3:844].Despite the best efforts at repression, the skeletons come to the surface.They are,after all, the only trace of what has provided the material basis of secrecy, of what has allowed concealment and repression to occur. Along with Poe's narrator, then, we might take Edwards's bookandask,Whatarewe to make of the commodificationsfound in the depths of the chiasmus that connect the gothic and race?" "he Gold-Bug"suggeststhatitissuchghostlytraces as these that assist in the tm6c between literary formsand culturaldeterminationsof identity. Russ Castronovo Universityof Wiscunsin-Madison "TheRaven":Speakingof Mommy Dearest Daneen Wardrop. Word,Birth, and Culture:TheP e dry of Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson. Westport, GreenwoodPress, 2002.169pp. $58.95 cloth. In W o r d , Birth, and Culture, DaneenWardroptreats EdgarAllanPoeprimanlyinwhatwas hispreferred literary role: poet. Connecting him to Whitman and Dickinson-on the face of it, a bold move- 122 Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism Wardrop holds that all three adhere to a feminine poetics. In particular, this poetics amounts to a recollected mimesis of the maternal body,which, however, remains an elusivefigure: a trope per se for the uterine-like flows and rhythms founding and subsequently haunting one’s psyche. On the other hand,she plays the “mother”as literal referent for the female body as such, quietly agreeing with today’s academically endorsed, moralistic agenda of reversing the status of abjected or marginalized groups. Wardrop happily does not rely on the...