The conditions she describes as 'perversity' is just the heightened response of an over-stressed brain.
The suicidal thoughts (that still horrify the person thinking them) aren't due to a so-called Freudian perversity as the author implies, but are a first step towards total mental breakdown (which actually ends up in suicide, due to to the struggle with such thoughts--which is a form of depression).
When I was extremely stressed for long periods of time, with no solution in sight, I did enter this stage. Photos I took for a mugshot in this period show a slight shine in my eyes that I hadn't before (that's another sign the brain is disintegrating). I'd stand over overpasses and watch cars drive by, and then a little voice would tell me: jump! jump! while another thought which felt more stronger, would consider this horrifying and made me reflect on why I was thinking such thoughts.
It wasn't limited to the visible possibilities, either. Frequently when the stress would become unbearable, a little strange thought would make me think of tall buildings and let me imagine that by jumping from one, my problems would cease.
I've recovered from those thoughts now -- because luckily my stressors were eliminated -- and I no longer experience such thoughts or voices. I mention all this to help others realize that they need to seek help and solve their stressors instead of falling back on the quack-doctor Freud's ideas that "oh it's in our nature to be perverse!".
I'm pretty sure the latter is really common. I've always thought it was my brain generating failure cases for risk assessment. We think "What if I dropped this bottle of water on my lap while driving and crashed?" and then we take more care not to drop it.
Not sure how they could describe suicidality more clearly. Speaking as someone who has also experienced it due to chronic health conditions that had gotten particularly bad for a while.
What the poster is talking about is different, something that occurs in a deep depression where your mind is struggling to find a way out of the situation. Sometimes the will gives out completely and you're just a zombie to the world, only slogging forward out of habit and maybe guilt.
> With a peak circulation of forty thousand—enormous for its time
How was it possible to make a living - I imagine a full editorial team, writers, printers, office workers - with this volume of sales, while today, magazines with zero distribution cost, and with millions of subscribers are going under. Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter.
In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet
Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level
Plus ça change...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357868645_Edgar_All...
It's one thing for a biographical analysis to look at the person's real life experiences and relationships.
It's another thing entirely when you start conflating the characters in the fiction with the author's own character...
There isn't one because you can dislike a person and/or their works for literally any reason you want.
Is there a label for insisting that people put aside their feelings and engage with something because you have deemed their reason for not doing so invalid?
I only implied that implied psychological traits of a fictional character are not evidence of the same psychological traits in the author. It's merely evidence that the author is capable of observing or imagining such traits in others.
And lots of affirmations of that text aren't unsustained or don't make sense.
Terribly bad angle.
This post was an absolute joy to read.