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Berenice’s teeth are a tangible representation of Egaeus’s belief that “evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.” Both Berenice and Egaeus are completely altered by their respective diseases, but Berenice’s teeth remain fundamentally unchanged. They are a reminder of the “past bliss” they enjoyed when Berenice still had her beauty and her happiness, and Egaeus still had control over his mind and intellectual development. Berenice’s smile (possibly out of “joy” for her impending marriage to Egaeus) plants a seed of “evil” in Egaeus’s mind: if he possesses her “good” untarnished teeth, then they will restore his reason to him. Had Berenice never smiled at Egaeus and showed him her teeth, he would never have mutilated her body after she was mistakenly buried in a catatonic state. In this way her show of “joy” in smiling at him leads to the “sorrow” that occurs when he takes them from her. When the teeth are with Berenice, they represent all the happiness and the “good” that Berenice and Egaeus could have had, but once Egaeus digs up her body to take them out of her mouth, the teeth represent the “evil” that unchecked obsessive thoughts can lead to and the inevitable “sorrow” associated with the lives to which Egaeus and Berenice are now condemned.
Berenice’s Teeth Quotes in Berenice
The Berenice quotes below all refer to the symbol of Berenice’s Teeth. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Berenice
Quotes
I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. […] I felt that their possession alone could ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason.
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With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white, and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
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Berenice’s Teeth Symbol Timeline in Berenice
The timeline below shows where the symbol Berenice’s Teeth appears in Berenice. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Berenice
...her and notes that her eyes look “lifeless,” Berenice smiles at Egaeus and exposes her teeth. Egaeus wishes he “had never beheld them, or that, having done so, [he] had died!”
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...left. However, in the “disordered chamber” of his mind, he develops an obsession with Berenice’s teeth. He imagines that he sees them almost everywhere and tries, in vain, to fight against...
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...the night, the next day, and the beginning of the next night thinking about Berenice’s teeth. At some point, however, a maid screams and Egaeus goes to investigate. The maid tells...
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