Poe wrote the tale when the mysterious crime was still fresh in the public’s mind. These weaknesses arise from the very origins of the story. As the critic Howard Haycraft observed, “The characters neither move nor speak” There is no active pursuit of a criminal all activity relating to the crime has already taken place before the story begins and we do not know if Dupin’s suppositions are valid or not. The main problem with this tale as a short story is that it lacks any sense of dramatic movement and it certainly doesn’t have any genuine resolution. We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation - to make a point - than to further the cause of truth. This critique of press irresponsibility was made more than one hundred and fifty years ago – and may be regarded as still valid today. The irresponsible highlighting of these graphic details actually obscures the truth of what really happened in the crime and impedes its solution. Not only are the police incompetent in failing to solve the crimes, but the newspapers merely highlight sensational details – to increase their sales. He also makes plain a scathing critique of the newspapers and superficial journalism which runs through all of the Dupin stories. The proper question in cases such as this, is not so much ‘what has occurred?’ as ‘what has occurred that has never occurred before?’ He has a fresh and original way of looking at the evidence: That is the major weakness of this story, and the reason why it is not so successful as its companion pieces, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter.īut in drawing up his explanations for what might have happened, Poe makes some interesting observations which throw light onto the secondary subject of the story, which is the character of Dupin himself. His conclusion is that further investigations might confirm the veracity of his speculations, but we do not know if these theories are valid or not. He draws up a list of what might be the solution(s) to the mystery. We do not know if Dupin’s interpretation of events is correct or not. There is a missing third part to the story which makes itself quite noticeably felt. Dupin examines all the evidence related to the crime – then speculates on possible explanations.Marie Roget disappears, then her corpse is found in the Seine – everyone is baffled by the problem.The structure of the story then follows in essentially two parts – the presentation of the evidence, then the analysis of the facts. Dupin is then landed with the difficult problem of a crime which the police cannot solve. An un-named narrator presents the hero-detective Dupin as a somewhat world-weary bohemian with an outstanding intellect. The story follows the formula Poe devised for The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The original murder was never really solved – which is perhaps why Poe leaves his story technically ‘unfinished’. Marie Roget is based on a real-life crime that took place in New York City in 1841 when the corpse of a young girl called Mary Rogers was found floating in the Hudson River.
This intellectual super-sleuth made his first appearance the year before in The Murders in the Rue Morgue and appeared for the last time in Poe’s 1844 story, The Purloined Letter. The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) is Edgar Allan Poe’s second story featuring his philosophic amateur detective the Chevalier C. Tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links
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