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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Berenice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mental Illness and Physical Disease
Death and Resurrection
Repressed Sexuality
Summary
Analysis
The narrator begins with the statement: “Misery is manifold.” He describes “misery” and “wretchedness” as capable of coming in a number of different forms and in a number of different “hues.” The narrator questions how he had managed to create “unloveliness” from something beautiful and, instead of bringing “peace,” brought “sorrow.” However, he asserts that “evil is a consequence of good” and that some of the worst emotional pain comes from the remembrance of better, happier times.
Egaeus’s opening statement prepares the reader for some kind of tragedy—specifically, a tragedy of which he is the author. It is, after all, Egaeus himself who creates “unloveliness” out of something beautiful. By portraying himself upfront as the villain of the story, Egaeus also suggests that he may be an unreliable narrator. It’s clear from the start that readers perhaps shouldn’t trust everything Egaeus says.
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The narrator shares that his “baptismal name” is Egaeus, but he does not share his family name. Egaeus does note that his ancestral home is very old and “time-honored.” However, it is also “gloomy” and “gray.” His family has the reputation and long history of being “visionaries,” which is reflected in the “character of the family mansion,” which is full of antique books, paintings, and tapestries.
Egaeus’s refusal to share his family name further indicates his guilt in the story he’s about to tell; it seems as if he could do irrevocable harm to his family’s reputation if their name were connected with it. Egaeus mentions that his ancestors were known as “visionaries,” which is possibly a clue that they shared some of the same peculiarities of character as Egaeus—and that they may have suffered from some of the same symptoms of mental illness as Egaeus does.
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Egaeus describes the particular connection he has with his home’s library. It was the room in which he was born, and where his mother died. He spent a lot of his childhood reading the “peculiar” books the library held. Although he was born in the library, Egaeus notes that “it is mere idleness to say that [he] had not lived before,” and he describes vague memories of “aerial forms” that he associates with his past life.
Egaeus describes his birth as “awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not.” By being born in the library, he entered a “palace of imagination,” and believes this is part of why he spent his childhood studying the library’s books. Egaeus then describes how, as he grew older, a “stagnation […] fell upon the springs of [his] life” and made the real world seem like visions while his imagination seemed more like reality.
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Egaeus introduces Berenice, a cousin whom he grew up with in his family home. While Egaeus describes himself as “ill of health, and buried in gloom,” Berenice is “agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy.” Egaeus buried himself in books, while Berenice explored the countryside and was always cheerful. Egaeus says that just saying her name brings up memories of what she had been like in her childhood, but that “a fatal disease” took over her life and changed everything about her until Egaeus no longer recognized her as his cousin.
Berenice suffers from a number of symptoms connected to one “primary” disease, but Egaeus says the most worrisome one is that she sometimes falls into a “trance” that looks like death. From these trances, however, she abruptly awakes. Berenice’s primary disease not only takes a toll on her physical well-being, but her “moral” one, as well.
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As Berenice’s disease worsens, Egaeus says that his own disease (which he “shall call […] by no other appellation”) also intensifies and develops a “monomaniac character” that takes over his life completely. Egaeus doubts his ability to adequately convey to the reader how intensely his mind can focus on very ordinary things.
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Egaeus describes how his monomania forces him to “muse for long unwearied hours” on mundane objects like “a quaint shadow” or “the steady flame of a lamp.” Sometimes, however, Egaeus focuses on a certain word or phrase, and he will “repeat [it] monotonously” until the words don’t mean anything anymore. Most alarmingly, Egaeus will sometimes “lose all sense of motion or physical existence” while he is fixated on a certain idea, image, or word.
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Egaeus differentiates between the “undue, earnest, and morbid attention” he pays to things that are “frivolous” from the common human tendency to dwell on meaningless thoughts. Egaeus believes the primary difference between his “undue” interest and that of the casual thinker is that normal people will lose sight of what started their thoughts, as they develop new ideas or pictures in their minds that bring them joy. In contrast, Egaeus will never create something substantial with his ruminations and they never brought him pleasure. Egaeus also notes that his interest in certain lines from his books took up weeks of his time as he dwelt on certain passages or ideas.
Egaeus notes that the reader must believe that, “shaken from its balance” and taken hold of by small details, his mind must have found ample material to dwell on in the changes to Berenice’s “moral” condition. However, according to Egaeus, the reader would be wrong to think that. It was in “the lucid intervals” of his illness that Egaeus really thought about Berenice’s condition. He felt bad for her and was interested in the personality changes her disease produced, but thoughts about Berenice’s character never took the monomaniacal turn that characterized his mental illness. Instead, his mind focused on the changes he could see happening to her physical being.
Egaeus asserts that even when Berenice was young and extremely beautiful, he never loved her. He says this is because his “passions” were never rooted in his heart, but in his mind. He had always seen Berenice as an idea to be analyzed, not as a person to be loved. Now that she was ill and physically altered, however, Egaeus shows signs of falling in love with her. Finally, in what he calls “an evil moment,” he proposes to her and they become engaged.
Shortly before their wedding date, Egaeus describes sitting in his library when Berenice enters and stands in front of him. Her appearance has altered: her black hair has turned blond, she is emaciated, and she appears taller. The lighting in the room gives Berenice a dream-like appearance, which intensifies when she does not say anything to him. Egaeus also says nothing, and he experiences an “insufferable anxiety” while she’s standing there. As he stares at her and notes that her eyes look “lifeless,” Berenice smiles at Egaeus and exposes her teeth. Egaeus wishes he “had never beheld them, or that, having done so, [he] had died!”
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The sound of the door shutting snaps Egaeus out of his thoughts and he notices that Berenice has left. However, in the “disordered chamber” of his mind, he develops an obsession with Berenice’s teeth. He imagines that he sees them almost everywhere and tries, in vain, to fight against the obsession. Egaeus imagines observing them in “every light” and taking note of every detail in them. His thoughts take an even stranger turn as he imagines they have a “sensitive and sentient power.” He comes to believe that if he could possess them, they could give him happiness by “giving [him] back to reason.”
Egaeus spends the rest of the night, the next day, and the beginning of the next night thinking about Berenice’s teeth. At some point, however, a maid screams and Egaeus goes to investigate. The maid tells him that Berenice became “seized with epilepsy” that morning and has just died. By the end of the night, Berenice is prepared for burial.
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Egaeus says he “[finds] himself” sitting in the library alone, feeling as if he has just woken up from a dream. He knows Berenice was buried, but has no recollection of anything that has happened since then. He does, however, have a feeling of “horror” associated with the intervening time. He tries to piece together the “dim […] recollections” that he does have, but cannot put them together. As he thinks, he believes he keeps hearing a “shrill and piercing shriek” in a woman’s voice. He knows that he did something, but cannot remember what.
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Egaeus notes that, sitting next to him, there is a lamp and a small box. He knows that the box belongs to the family doctor, but has no idea why it is sitting on the table next to him. Also on the table is a book by Ebn Zaiat that is open to a passage that says: “Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas.” Although he does not know why, Egaeus says that this line makes his hair stand on end and his blood run cold.
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A servant knocks on the door and comes in looking white as a ghost and very scared. Egaeus only hears him talk in “broken sentences” about someone hearing a scream at night and the household gathering together to find the source. The servant tells Egaeus that they followed the sound to Berenice’s grave and found that it had been “violated,” but that Berenice’s “disfigured body” was there and she was “still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!”
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The servant then points out to Egaeus that his clothes are “muddy and clotted with gore,” that there are human nail marks on his hand, and that there is a spade in the corner of the room. Egaeus, “with a shriek,” goes to the table and grabs the box. He can’t open the box, but it falls out of his hands and breaks. Inside of it are some dental tools and “thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances” that scatter to the floor.
