Gender In The Tell-Tale Hearts By Edgar Allen Poe

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Have you ever read a story where you believed the character was one gender through the book but then you are suddenly dumbfounded when realizing it is the opposite? The Tell-Tale Hearts is a short-story written by Edgar Allen Poe where the narrator describes how they murdered an old man. However, the narrator does not give you much detail about themselves, including their gender, which leaves readers questioning. Many have assumed that the narrator is a male, yet there is evidence to show that the narrator is a female rather than a male. To begin with, she could’ve been a housekeeper, which is mainly a job for females. According to Kulkarni, a housekeeper “nearly ruins her own health and life” (11). In the text of the Tell-Tale Hearts,

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