The Irony of E.A. Poe’s Lunatick Asylum

When “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” was published in 1845 (the same year in which The Lunatics Act was implemented in England, dramatically changing the concept of the insane from prisoner to patient), Poe’s readers were already familiar with a whole gallery of “madmen.” Up to that point, though, their mental disorders had been described as inherited faults, primarily qualified as “hypertrophy of the senses” and acted out within domestic spaces. “The System,” by contrast, is the first and only short story by Poe that deals with mental illness as a recognized pathology and with a lunatic asylum, the ideal locus for its treatment and, in particular, for Philippe Pinel’s “moral treatment” here called “the system of soothing.” Because of its humorous tone, most of Poe’s critics classified this tale as a satire. What I argue is that Poe’s irony is directed to America at large through the narrator. Poe’s intention is to cast doubts on the supposed philanthropic aims of these institutions’ founders, while operating in the historical context of social policy development. Lastly, I address a larger subject: how Poe’s fiction manifests scientific knowledge and ideas on madness as legitimized by contemporary psychiatry.