Descend into the vaulted chamber of a tormented mind and witness the most shocking act of dental obsession in all of Gothic literature, and read the complete story online for free.
Published in 1835, Berenice is Edgar Allan Poe at his most extreme. It is short, brutal, and unrelenting. It provoked immediate controversy; the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger expressed discomfort with its graphic intensity. Poe, characteristically, defended his work. He was not interested in comfort. He was interested in the borderlands where love curdles into obsession and obsession mutates into madness.
The story is narrated by Egaeus, a bookish, sickly young man of a distinguished family. He suffers from what he calls a “monomania”—a pathological fixation on trivial objects, a tendency to stare at a word until it loses meaning, to contemplate a shadow until it consumes the light. He is engaged to his cousin, Berenice. She is beautiful, vibrant, full of life. Then she falls ill. Her beauty fades. Her vitality drains away. And Egaeus, watching her decay, finds his attention drawn to one feature that seems untouched by disease: her teeth.
On this page, you can experience the story that made Poe notorious and demonstrated, for the first time, the full range of his terrible powers. We offer the complete 1835 tale for online reading.
Book Info
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Title | Berenice |
| Author | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Year of Publication | 1835 |
| Genre | Gothic Fiction, Horror, Short Story |
| Language | English |
| Legal Status | Public Domain Worldwide |
| Format | Online Reading |
Read Berenice Online
Enter the library where thoughts breed like maggots. Begin this masterpiece of morbid psychology by exploring Egaeus’s chamber interactively below.
This preview introduces the melancholy house and the doomed cousins at its heart. However, the full, horrifying narrative—the long illness, the obsession, the sudden awakening, and the box upon the table—is available in the complete text for our subscribers.
A subscription unlocks this essential work of American Gothic and the complete tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Discover the writer who looked into the abyss and refused to blink.
About the Story Berenice
Berenice is not a story for the squeamish. It is a story about the violation of the beloved, the reduction of a living woman to a collection of parts. It is also, indisputably, a masterpiece of psychological horror.
The Teeth
Poe fixates on teeth with an intensity that borders on the comic and crosses into the unbearable. Egaeus describes them: “The teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development.” He dreams of them. He obsesses over them. He wants to possess them. The teeth are the irreducible residue of Berenice’s beauty, the part of her that does not sicken and fade. They are also, of course, bone. Egaeus does not love Berenice; he loves the skeleton she will become.
The Monomania
Poe was fascinated by what he called the “imp of the perverse”—the irrational fixation, the thought that cannot be dismissed, the act committed precisely because it is forbidden. Egaeus is the first full portrait of this psychological type in American fiction. He is not insane in the conventional sense. He reasons clearly, speaks eloquently, understands his condition. He simply cannot stop it. His mind is a trap and he is the bait.
The Premature Burial Motif
The possibility that Berenice is not dead when Egaeus extracts her teeth is the story’s central horror. Poe plants the suggestion carefully: Berenice suffers from catalepsy, a condition that mimics death. Egaeus finds her in her grave clothes, “still palpitating,” after his work is done. Did he violate a corpse or murder a living woman? The story refuses to answer. The ambiguity is the terror.
The Gothic Apparatus
Berenice deploys the full arsenal of Gothic convention: the ancestral mansion, the vaulted library, the dying maiden, the ancient lineage decaying into madness. Yet Poe uses these conventions not for atmosphere but for pressure. The library is not picturesque; it is a prison. The family vault is not somber; it is a charnel house. Poe strips the Gothic of its melancholy beauty and reveals the rot beneath.
The Controversy
Contemporary readers were horrified. The editor of the Messenger wrote that the story was “too horrible” and that “we do not wish to see such things frequently repeated.” Poe responded with a defense of his artistic choices: “The subject is by no means an objectionable one… taken in its abstract principles.” He was right, and he was also wrong. The subject is objectionable. That is why it is effective.
Why Read the Story Berenice Today?
Berenice is Poe at his most challenging. It lacks the supernatural framework of “Ligeia” or “The Fall of the House of Usher.” There is no ghost, no vampire, no occult resurrection. There is only a man, a woman, and a pair of pliers. This is horror stripped of metaphor, the violation of the beloved rendered in surgical detail. It is not pleasant. It is not meant to be. It is, however, unforgettable.
FAQ
Is this based on a real event?
No. Poe invented the scenario. However, his preoccupation with dying women had deep biographical roots. His mother, Eliza Poe, died of tuberculosis when he was two. His foster mother, Frances Allan, died of the same disease. His wife, Virginia Clemm, was already ill with tuberculosis when “Berenice” was published. Poe knew the shape of the sickroom.
Why teeth?
Teeth are the hardest tissue in the human body, the last to decay, the only part of us that survives intact into the grave. They are also intimate, hidden, revealed only in speech or smile. Poe recognized their symbolic potential: the part of the beloved that outlasts her vitality, the relic that can be possessed.
Is this a love story?
No. It is a story about the impossibility of love for a man who cannot see beyond surfaces. Egaeus does not love Berenice; he loves her teeth. This is not romance; it is pathology.
How long is it?
Approximately 20 minutes of reading time. Poe was a master of the short form. He does not need 300 pages to destroy you.
Can I read it on my phone?
Yes. It is the ideal length for a single sitting. Read it in daylight.