LLR – LLE, Third year, First Semester [606490]

Student: [anonimizat], Third year, First Semester
English Minor, Group 4
Seminar of American Literature
"William Wilson"
by Edgar Allan Poe
– essay-
Edgar Allan Poe was not just a source of inspiration for Tzvetan Todorov (for the structural
study The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre), a powerful influence for Romanian
Symbolism (by means of the French Symbolism „which hailed Poe as a supreme artist and
thinker”1), a writer „of the human mind trapped between grotesque nightmares of the irrational (as
in his best Gothic short stories and poems) and the idealized triumph of reason, personified by the
brilliant detective, (which) has also rendered the romantic American author as a founding father of
the Southern Myth”2; but, most of all, he was considered to be, according to the critic James Russell
Lowell, „a man of «some genius»”3, an immortal ideal in terms of writing.
"William Wilson", his best known psychological thriller short story, clearly explores the
theme of the double. This second self haunts the protagonist and leads him to insanity and also
represents his own insanity. According to Poe biographer, Arthur Hobson Quinn, the second self
represents the conscience. This division of the self is reinforced by the narrator's admission that
"William Wilson" is actually a pseudonym. The name itself is an interesting choice: "son" of "will".
In other words, William Wilson has willed himself into being along with the double which shares
that name.
Beside this main theme of the double, the story William Wilson reveals other interesting
themes, which all contribute to the impressive effect upon the reader: identity (in this story, the
horror is magnified by the exact identical appearance, age, and manner of the double and it comes
from a feeling of lost individuality and a self-doubt), versions of reality (many versions of reality:
lies, imagination, subconscious-driven fantasy, wishful thinking, alter egos; not only is the narrator
unsure of what is really happening, but the reader also is unsure of his story and even of his
1Peiu, Anca. Five Versions of Selfhood in 19th Century American Literature , Ed. C. H. Beck, București, 2013. Print ,
pp. 16.
2Idem, pp. 19.
3Idem, pp. 23.
1

character), lies and deceit (the text focuses heavily on self-deception and the imagination’s ability to
convince the reader of even the most unbelievable ideas), guilt and blame (conscience follows the
man everywhere, doesn’t let him rest, is always by his side – sometimes driving him to great anger
and frustration), freedom and confinement (“William Wilson” is the story of a man trapped by his
own conscience and victim to his own overactive imagination. All of his attempts at escaping are
necessarily doomed from the start; man cannot run from his alter ego, nor rid himself of conscience,
nor break free of his own imagination).
To outline the atmosphere: Wilson grew up in a "large, rambling Elizabethan house" in a
"misty-looking village of England." It is important to observe the abundance of epithets which Poe
uses to create a "totality of effect," and there can be no argument about their effectiveness. Poe's
multitude of details are spell-binding and create a complete unity of effect for this tale. In his
memory, Wilson recalls "gigantic and gnarled trees," ancient houses, the chilliness of deep shady
walks, and the "deep, hollow notes of the church-bell." The gothic church steeple, he says, lies
"embedded" in this sleepy atmosphere. It is as though Poe suddenly thrust a sharp symbol of
unknown mystery into his already darkly picturesque chronicle. The description of the atmosphere
of the school building is also realised very attentive, with subtlety, and it reveals many Gothic
caracteristics. Beside all these, the passage in which he portrays the school can be seen as a source
of anticipations of the bad events that will later unfold.
This story may be perceived as autobiographical, since Poe gives his narrator (and his
narrator’s doppelganger) Poe's own birthday (January 19th), and much of the narrator’s description
of his boyhood days resembles that of Poe’s. The setting of "William Wilson" is semi-
autobiographical and relates to Poe's residence in England as a boy. The "misty-looking village of
England" of the story is Stoke Newington, now a suburb of north London. The school is based on
the Manor House School in Stoke Newington which Poe attended from 1817 to 1820. Poe's
headmaster there, the Reverend John Bransby, shares the same name as the headmaster in the story,
though, in the latter, he acquires the dignity of being a "Doctor".
The school that Wilson attended was an old one, prison-like, extremely severe, and the only
respite from its strict oppressiveness were the brief walking trips on Saturdays and the ceremony of
the Sunday church services. Wilson has never forgotten the preacher-principal of the school. This
man is a paradox. In church, he had a "countenance […] demurely benign"; yet at school, he had a
"sour visage" and administered the school's laws with extreme severity. The "double nature" of the
Reverend Dr. Bransby is an inkling of what is about to happen to Wilson; ironically, it foreshadows
Wilson's confusion about this "double" at the school. As another element of foreshadowing, we
should also note how Wilson describes the building where the students eat and sleep and have their
2

instruction. The old house has "really no end"; its corridors are like a labyrinth and double back on
themselves. The house, then, is symbolic of the two William Wilsons who will appear, and the
puzzle of where the students actually sleep suggests the mysterious dreamlike nature of the story
which Wilson is going to tell to the readers.
Quotation: The rivalrous double William Wilson utters these final words to the narrator, the
man who has just stabbed him. This quotation, spoken with reference to an image in a mirror, points
to the indistinguishability between the victim, William Wilson, and the narrator, William Wilson.
The quotation highlights the inseparability of the self and the rivalrous double, for the murder of the
rival also produces the suicide of the self. The second William Wilson constitutes the narrator’s alter
ego, the part of his own being that he has externalized in the figure of his competitor. This quotation
also points to the fine line between love and hate. The second William Wilson’s final words are not
bitter or vengeful.William Wilson, until his final breath, plays right into the narrator’s jealousy by
rejecting the very lust for vengeance that the narrator has been unable to escape. In the end, the
narrator’s suicide proves a tragic alternative to William Wilson’s compassionate self-knowledge.
Within the postmodern social milieu, doubling connects to the notion of the "schizoid
reality" described by Fredric Jameson4. The figure of the double is a common trope in the American
experience with individuals defining themselves by what they are not. Poe's "William Wilson" must
violently battle his alter ego in order to reclaim his identity, a scenario strikingly similar to Fight
Club (1999, director: David Fincher). Fight Club shares some major thematic content with Poe’s
work. Both tell the story of a man and his other half – “good,” in one case, “bad” in the other. Both
protagonists are convinced that their alter ego is his own person until in some moment of revelation
discovers the truth – he is his own worst enemy. In Fight Club, the protagonist is tempted by his
rebellious half, while in “William Wilson,” the narrator is restrained by his moral half. Another
movie which uses the theme of the double, this time in a quite different way, is the more recent
Black Swan. In the film Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky and released in 2010, the plot is
partially based upon the story of the ballet Swan Lake, which features the sweet, fragile and fearful
White Swan, the Princess Odette and her double, the Black Swan Odile. The film is filled with shots
of mirrors, contrasting light and dark colours, and of course it’s central character, Nina, and her
Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation from a timid and sexually repressed woman into a wild and volatile
4"This differentiation and specialization or semiautonomization of reality is then prior to what happens in the psyche-
postmodern schizo-fragmentation as opposed to modern or modernist anxieties and hysterics-which takes the form
of the world it models and seeksto reproduce in the form of experience as well as of concepts, with results as
disastrous as those that would be encountered by a relatively simple natural organism given to mimetic camouflage
and trying to approximate the op art laser dimensionality of a sciencefictional environment of the far future." in
Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism . Fredric Jameson: Duke University Press. Durham, NC.
1991. pp. 371.
3

individual.
Duality appears as a common theme in late-Victorian literature. In her study “The Shadow
Within: The Conscious and Unconscious Use of the Double.”, Clare Rosenfield points out that to
Victorians “double novels became devil novels” and that “the devil is simply the projection into the
external world of man’s buried instinctual life”5. The duality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the
protagonist(s) of the novel written by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886) is
very complex and intriguing as well. Throughout the novel the two characters appear to be two
separate individuals. This occurs especially because they are so different in nature. Jekyll is
handsome and “good” in the eyes of society whereas Hyde is ugly and “evil” when viewed through
society’s glasses. Perhaps the most evident example of duality in Oscar Wilde’s novel (The Picture
of Dorian Gray, 1890) is the struggle between good and evil in Dorian that is depicted through his
body’s youthfulness and the painting’s ugliness. Dorian himself is supposed to be good and the
painting of Dorian is supposed to be evil. The reader finds out that both Dorian and the painting are
both good and evil. There is a good example in the German literature too. While the double in
"William Wilson" serves as a "conscience" for the main character's moral development, the double
in Hoffmann's The Devil's Elixirs (1815) functions as an "id" that allows Medardus to live out his
sexual fantasies and need for power. In both cases, however, the double provides an impetus for the
protagonists' improvement through a process of duplication, separation, and substitution.
The double, both in literature and out of it, is an enormous and seductive subject. As an
imagined figure, a soul, a shadow, a ghost or a mirror reflection that exists in a dependent relation to
the original, the double pursues the subject as his second self and makes him feel as himself and the
other at the same time6. The term ”double” may be accepted as including both the concept of the
doppelganger and that of the divided Self. Ralph Tymms discusses the relevance of the theme to
'primitive religious and ethical beliefs'7. The significance of the idea of duality is essential to
Christian religious thought, to which the distinction between corporeal and spiritual life is
fundamental.The Old Testament, however, presents this struggle in a different manner, namely by
the presence of numerous pairs of brothers, and the disharmonious relationship that almost
invariably exists between them. The parallel to New Testament thought in this respect is clearest in
the relations between the first set of brothers, Cain and Abel, for in murdering his brother, Cain
5Rosenfield, Clare. The Shadow Within: The Conscious and Unconscious Use of the Double, 1967. Stories of the
Double. Ed. Albert J. Guerard. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1967. 311-331. PDF Format , pp. 321.
6Živković, Milica. The Double as the "Unseen" of Culture: Toward a definition of Doppelganger , University of Niš,
in The scientific journal FACTA UNIVERSITATIS, Series: Linguistics and Literature V ol.2, No 7, 2000, pp. 121.
7Abi-Ezzi, Nathalie. An analysis of the treatment of the double in the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins,
and Daphne du Maurier. , King's College, University of London, Submitted for the degree of Ph.D., 2000, pp. 26.
4

could be said to have divorced himself from the better side of his character. The mythological
parallel of Romulus and Remus conforms to this fraternal formula, where the foundation of a city is
likewise related to the murder of a brother. Twinship is also a predominant theme in the Greek
myths. The best known among these are the Dioscuri – Castor and Polydeuces, or Pollux – whose
close and harmonious relationship is interrupted by Castor's death.
Poe’s study of psychology in “William Wilson” anticipates the major theories of Sigmund
Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis and one of the twentieth century’s most important
psychologists. Poe’s notion of the rivalrous double predates Freud’s concept of the repressed,
unconscious alter ego by at least half a century. Like Freud, Poe associates the alter ego with a
universal psychological condition, unaffected by specifics of time or place. William Wilson’s
double follows him across Europe—from England to Italy—and from childhood to adult life.
When Poe wrote to Washington Irving asking for a word of endorsement, he specifically
requested a response to "William Wilson", calling it "my best effort". Irving responded, "It is
managed in a highly picturesque Style and the Singular and Mysterious interest is well sustained
throughout". Thomas Mann said of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Double: A Petersburg Poem, which
explores a similar doppelgänger theme, "by no means improved on Edgar Allan Poe's 'William
Wilson,' a tale that deals with the same old romantic motif in a way far more profound on the moral
side and more successfully resolving the critical [theme] in the poetic".
Much of the critical conversation surrounding Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” deals
with whether the tales should be read psychologically, as manifestations of mental illness. Tracy
Ware, speaking of “William Wilson,” stated that “If there are ‘two stories’ in ‘William Wilson,’ one
literal and one allegorical, then it is as difficult for the reader as it is for the narrator, ‘at any given
time to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happens to be’”8. The scene at school
suggests that the second Wilson is a psychological invention, not a real person. Valentine C. Hubbs
states that “the second William Wilson is never seen or recognized by any of the pupils in the
boarding school and therefore has no existence outside the first Wilson’s mind”9. This seems true as
Poe never mentions the second Wilson’s interaction with any other student in the seven pages at the
boarding school, and Wilson goes so far as to accuse them of “some unaccountable blindness”10.
The lack of outside recognition suggests that the duplicate Wilson may be a hallucination or, as
some critics like Ruth Sullivan suggest, the second Wilson is “some form of the superego”11.
8Ware, Tracy. The Two Stories of ‘William Wilson.’ , Studies in Short Fiction 26.1 (1989): 43-8. PDF Format, pp. …..
9Hubbs, Valentine C. The Struggle of the Wills in Poe’ s ‘William Wilson.’ , Studies in American Fiction 11.1 (1983):
73-9. PDF Format, pp. 73.
10–. William Wilson., Trans. Array Tales & Sketches. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2000. 426-51. PDF Format,
pp. 432.
11Sullivan, Ruth. William Wilson’ s Double , Studies in Romanticism 15.2 (1976): 253-63. PDF Format, pp. 254.
5

Bibliography
•Abi-Ezzi, Nathalie. An analysis of the treatment of the double in the work of Robert Louis
Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, and Daphne du Maurier , King's College, University of London,
Submitted for the degree of Ph.D. PDF Format.
•Hubbs, Valentine C. The Struggle of the Wills in Poe’ s ‘William Wilson.’ , Studies in
American Fiction 11.1 (1983): 73-9. PDF Format.
•Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke
University Press. Durham, NC. 1991. PDF Format.
•Peiu, Anca. Five Versions of Selfhood in 19th Century American Literature , Ed. C. H. Beck,
București, 2013. Print.
•Rosenfield, Claire. The Shadow Within: The Conscious and Unconscious Use of the
Double., 1967. Stories of the Double. Ed. Albert J. Guerard. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott,
1967. 311-331. PDF Format.
•Sullivan, Ruth. William Wilson’ s Double , Studies in Romanticism 15.2 (1976): 253-63. PDF
Format.
•Ware, Tracy. The Two Stories of ‘William Wilson.’ , Studies in Short Fiction 26.1 (1989): 43-
8. PDF Format.
•Živković, Milica. The Double as the "Unseen" of Culture: Toward a definition of
Doppelganger, University of Niš, in The scientific journal FACTA UNIVERSITATIS,
Series: Linguistics and Literature Vol.2, No 7, 2000. PDF Format.
•–. William Wilson. Trans. Array Tales & Sketches. Illinois: University of Illinois Press,
2000. 426-51. PDF Format.
6

Questions
1. What are the main themes in Poe's ”William Wilson”?
2. Did you find in this short-story any description which has an important role in outlining the
atmosphere?
3. What are the arguments which support the idea that ”William Wilson” may be accounted as an
autobiographical piece of writing?
4. What are the details which foreshadow the confusion of the double in this story?
5. What is the essence of this fragment if you compare it to the message of the hole story?
6. How did the idea of the double change from Poe to postmodernism: have you seen any movie
based on this theme?
7. In which it may concern the intertextuality, do you know other novels which reflect the theme of
the double?
8. What do you think the acceptions of the double are and where could we find this idea, aside from
the literature?
9. Could you think about one very important psychologist of the twentieth century whose one of his
theories is anticipated by Poe in ”William Wilson”?
10. How do you think the critics perceived Poe's ”William Wilson”?
7“In me didst thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image, which
is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.”