The dysfunction in Poe’s life begin in his infantile years, when his father David Poe Jr. deserted his fatherly duties and left William Henry, Edgar, Rosaline and their mother Elizabeth Arnold-Poe to suffer the strains of life single-handedly without his aid. Their mother Elizabeth soon after passed away at the age of twenty-four, and their father passed away at the age of twenty-seven, and as a result of this, Poe and his siblings were given up to state, torn asunder, and divided in between different foster families. Fortunate enough for Poe, his foster parent’s John Allan and Frances Allan (hence: where Poe received his middle name Allan), was quite the ideal parents until things begin to fester between Poe and John, and before his consequences begin to take detriment upon his life, education, and trade, which pushed him to becoming the Poe we associate as being “quarrelsome, temperamental, alcoholic, unreliable, [who] made few friends and many evils” (Levine 671). These disruptions of Poe’s life are extremely characteristic of the “aristocratic madmen, self-tormented murderers, …show more content…
In the month of May in the year 1884, Gilman wed Charles Stetson—a marriage she entered into reluctantly—and “within eleven months, their only child, Katherine, was born; following the birth, Gilman became increasingly [and inexplicably] despondent, and marital tensions increased” (Reesman 1682). In hopes of coping with her emotionally-scarce circumstances in life, Gilman was requested to Neurologist Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who prescribed her a rest cure treatment, consisting of Gilman living as “domestic life as…possible, to have but two hours’ intellectual life a day, and never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again as long as [she] lived” (Reesman 1682). By depriving Gilman of the power to pain pictures in words with the fine point of her pen and her ability to lecture in such topics as “women [empowerment], labor, and social organization,” Gilman found herself at a state of mental ruin insanity. This and a multitude of other successive events, such as a failed marriage with Stetson, who soon after married Gilman’s best friend writer Grace Ellery Channing, and also gained custody of their