Poe Fridays: The Spectacles

The short story The Spectacles was the Poe Fridays choice for this week. You can read it here.

This is an amusing story that takes a couple pages to get going but then it's quite quick and humorous. The narrator is a young man who is quite vain and refuses to wear spectacles to improve his poor vision. He is at the opera with a friend and notices a woman of exquisite form up in a box. He decides that she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and that it is love at first sight. He then attempts to meet her but is thwarted by not having an introduction. He writes her a letter but nothing more can be done properly. Eventually he throws propriety to the wind and finds her on a twilight walk and professes his love. She takes him to a dark salon and eventually agrees to marry him on one condition -- that he begin wearing spectacles. He says he will start on the day they are married which they decide should be the next day. They marry before dawn and what follows is somewhat predictable but still hilarious!

This was a strangely lighthearted piece for Poe. There was no gruesome side to it and in fact the ending was better than the narrator deserved. Perhaps Poe was doing well at this point and had a temporarily brighter outlook on life.

We will postpone next week's Poe Fridays due to the festivities of BBAW (Book Blogger Appreciation Week). Our next date will be September 25 and the selection will be the first of our seasonal stories, The Premature Burial.

Not letting vanity make a fool of me,
K