The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

A traveller narrates his visit to a Maison de Santé in the south of France, having heard of it from medical friends in Paris. Leaving his companion, who fears lunatics and will not enter, he is admitted by the superintendent, Monsieur Maillard, a portly and dignified man who greets him at the gate. Maillard leads him into a neat parlor where a beautiful, pale young woman in mourning sings at a piano; Maillard identifies her as his niece. The narrator, cautious because he has heard the establishment operates on the "soothing system" of humoring lunatics rather than punishing them, guards his remarks in case she is a patient. Over refreshments, Maillard explains that the soothing system—indulging patients' delusions, avoiding confinement and punishment, setting lunatics to watch one another—has recently been abandoned after weeks of trial, deemed too dangerous despite being fashionable elsewhere in France. He credits his new system partly to his own invention and partly to a "Doctor Tarr" and "Professor Fether," names the narrator has never heard, to his host's astonishment. At dinner, the narrator joins some twenty-five or thirty oddly, extravagantly dressed guests, all seemingly cultivated and well-spoken, along with musicians producing discordant noise. Conversation turns to anecdotes of former patients and their delusions: a man who thought himself a teapot, another a donkey, one who imagined himself a Cordova cheese, another a bottle of champagne, a frog, a pinch of snuff, a pumpkin, a man with two heads (Cicero's and a composite of Demosthenes' and Lord Brougham's), a human teetotum named Boullard, and Madame Joyeuse, who believes herself a chicken-cock and crows at the table, provoking Maillard's sharp rebuke. A young lady describes Eugénie Salsafette, who insisted on dressing by getting outside her clothes rather than inside, and begins demonstrating before being stopped. Sudden yells from elsewhere in the château interrupt repeatedly, alarming the company, though Maillard dismisses them as routine lunatic outbursts. Pressed by the narrator, Maillard reveals that once, under the old soothing system, the patients—led by a cunning lunatic who believed he had invented a superior system of governance—overpowered the keepers, imprisoned them, and ruled the house themselves for about a month, living luxuriously on the household's wine and wardrobe while admitting almost no outside visitors. As Maillard describes this "treatment" approvingly, the yells return, now approaching. The doors and shuttered windows are violently assailed and finally broken in, and a horde resembling chimpanzees, orangutans, or baboons bursts into the dining room amid chaos, while the orchestra strikes up "Yankee Doodle" and the assembled guests dissolve into their respective manias—crowing, croaking, braying, spinning, popping like champagne. The narrator is beaten and hides under a sofa. Listening from concealment, he pieces together the truth: Maillard himself was the former superintendent turned patient who had led the uprising; the ten real keepers had been tarred, feathered, and imprisoned underground for over a month, fed only bread and water, until one escaped through a sewer and freed the rest. The soothing system, with modifications, has since been restored at the château, though the narrator admits Maillard's tar-and-feather "treatment" was, as its author claimed, "simple—neat—and gave no trouble at all." He closes by noting he has never succeeded in finding any published works by Doctor Tarr or Professor Fether.

By Edgar Allan Poe · First published 1845 · Genre: Gothic Fiction, Satire, Dark Comedy · 8,445 words

First lines

During the autumn of 18 -- , while on a tour through the extreme southern provinces of France, my route led me within a few miles of a certain Maison de Santé or private madhouse, about which I had heard much, in Paris, from my medical friends. As I had never visited a place of the kind, I thought the opportunity too good to be lost; and so proposed to my travelling companion (a gentleman with whom I had made casual acquaintance a few days before), that we should turn aside, for an hour or so, and look through the establishment. To this he objected -- pleading haste in the first place, and, in the second, a very usual horror at the sight of a lunatic. He begged me, however, not to let any mere courtesy towards himself interfere with the gratification of my curiosity, and said that he would ride on leisurely, so that I might overtake him during the day, or, at all events, during the next. As he bade me goodbye, I bethought me that there might be some difficulty in obtaining access to the premises, and mentioned my fears on this point. He replied that, in fact, unless I had personal knowledge of the superintendent, Monsieur Maillard, or some credential in the way of a letter, a difficulty might be found to exist, as the regulations of these private madhouses were more rigid than the public hospital laws. For himself, he added, he had, some years since, made the acquaintance of Maillard, and would so far assist me as to ride up to the door and introduce me; although his feelings on the subject of lunacy would not permit of his entering the house.

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Psychological Thriller · Short Story · Satire · Social Commentary · Mental Institution · Madness · Deception · Identity Crisis · Duality of Human Nature · Morality Play · Absurdity · Dark Humor

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