The Purloined Letter (1845)
Overview The Purloined Letter is the third of Poe's detective stories (Pryor). It tells the tale of detective C. Auguste Dupin, a Parisian detective who solved the murders in the Rue Morgue. The story is set in nineteenth-century Paris on a stormy night when Dupin is enjoying a leisurely evening with the narrator. In the middle of their conversation, the Prefect of Police in Paris, G--, enters. It is on this night that the narrator and Dupin learn of a letter stolen by the Minister D-- for the purpose of blackmail. The letter's owner, a woman of royal status, wishes the letter be retrieved as well as kept from her husband, and offers a handsome reward for its return (Poe).
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Setting |
The setting of The Purloined Letter is Paris, France, in the mid-nineteenth century. This helps to develop the characters and the plot. Paris is known as a glamorous city, full of rich people and the finer things in life. The letter was stolen from a woman of royal status, so it is safe to infer that she has a reputation to uphold. If the contents of the letter were to be revealed, her reputation would be in ruins within a matter of days, due mostly to the fact that Parisian royalty would have become the topic of gossip columns worldwide.
Mood & Tone
The mood and tone of The Purloined Letter is created mainly by Poe's use of non-mainstream vocabulary. The mood is one of dignity and suspense. The sentence structure accents this by giving details that the story could have done without. However, if these details were to have been omitted, the story would lose the suspenseful feeling. The narrator could have just given us the dialogue and events without describing anything, which would have made the mood more academic than entertaining. The narrator gives us his observations, from the actions of the men, to the manner in which they speak. Poe's tone could almost be described as condescending, due to his choice of words being so far from the common vernacular. However, this does add to the mood being suspenseful.
Symbolism
Like in other Romantic-era works, The Purloined Letter contains symbolism. Although symbolism is open to interpretation, the main symbol would be the letter. In the story, the letter can stand for proverbial skeletons, the ones that can destroy a person's life if they got out of the metaphorical closet. This is because the letter contains compromising information, and, as stated above, can utterly ruin the woman's reputation. Another symbol for the letter could be sin. Letters are generally sealed in an envelop, as humans like to seal, or hid, their sins.
Theme
The theme of The Purloined Letter can be stated as "sometimes, what you are searching for is right in front of you." This is because Dupin found the letter in a card rack that was in the room (Poe, The). The card rack would seem to be an obvious place to store correspondence, however, because of the information the letter contained, G-- assumed it would be in a more difficult hiding place.
Dark Romanticism
Poe is considered to be dark Romantic. The Romatic era was "a movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that marked the reaction in literature [..] from the neoclassicism and formal orthodoxy of the preceding period" (Holmon). While most romantic writers wrote about nature and Heaven, dark Romantics focused on the other side of humanity--the darker side. In The Purloined Letter, Poe's characters have a few dark secrets. The woman whose letter was stolen had a secret to keep from her husband, presumably an affair. Minister D-- was using the letter to blackmail the woman, which is another sin.
(Suspense)
Page designer: Christina Johnston
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