XML::DOM and extended characters

I am having a problem with extended characters when creating an XML
document.

I have a XML::DOM::Document object $DOC, and when I create a text
element with extended characters, such as

$DOC->createTextElement("value", "abcd=E9");

I am ending up with an element that looks like

abcdé

This conversion of the =E9 to an entity is causing all sorts of
problems. What is causing it and how can I avoid it?

Thanks

Dave I