Edgar Allan Poe's Desdemona: The Untold Story.

Many commentators on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" attribute the writer's interest in Gothic and psychological themes to his short, unhappy life. Others endeavored to analyze his stories and probe his characters in the light of the historical era in which they were written. In "The Black Cat," for instance, critics find in the story an allegory of racial relations and intemperance control, two of the most important issues of the time. Still, little attention has been paid to the domestic issues in the story, especially the relationship between the narrator and his wife. This article aims to read the story as an allegory of marital jealousy by comparing the relationship between the narrator and his wife to that of Othello and Desdemona in Shakespeare's Othello. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]