Gender Irony in “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”

Gender Irony in “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”

This essay explores how Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842) questions the conventional gender binary in nineteenth- century America by representing its protagonist C. Auguste Dupin as a non-masculine figure. To make its point, however, the novel ends up relying on the very gender binary it questions. The irony that arises from the novel’s endorsement of the racialized gender dichotomy between a white female victim (Marie Rogêt) and a white male detective (Dupin) renders the latter incapable of demonstrating an impeccable example of ratiocination he has confidently set out to achieve by analyzing the documents about Marie Rogêt’s death.