Ligeia

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For other uses, see Ligeia (disambiguation).
Ligeia

Illustration of "Ligeia" by Harry Clarke, 1919.
Author Edgar Allan Poe
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language English
Genre(s) Horror short story
Publisher The American Museum
Publication date September 1838
Media type Print (Journal)

"Ligeia" is an early short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1838. The story follows an unnamed narrator and his wife Ligeia, a beautiful and intelligent raven-haired woman. She recites "The Conqueror Worm" before she dies and suggests that life is sustainable only through willpower. After her death, the narrator marries the Lady Rowena. Rowena becomes ill and she dies as well. The distraught narrator stays with her body overnight when Rowena slowly comes back from the dead - though she has transformed into Ligeia. The story may be the narrator's opium-induced hallucination and there is debate if the story was a satire. After the story's first publication in The American Museum, it was heavily revised and reprinted throughout Poe's life.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The unnamed narrator describes the qualities of Ligeia, a beautiful, passionate and intellectual woman, raven-haired and dark-eyed, that he thinks he remembers meeting "in some large, old decaying city near the Rhine." He is unable to recall anything about the history of Ligeia, including her family's name, but remembers her beautiful appearance. Her beauty, however, is not conventional. He describes her as emaciated, with some "strangeness." He describes her face in detail, from her "faultless" forehead to the "divine orbs" of her eyes. They marry, and Ligeia impresses her husband with her immense knowledge of physical and mathematical science, and her proficiency in classical languages. She begins to show her husband her knowledge of the metaphysical and "forbidden" wisdom.

After a few years Ligeia dies after reciting a poem and suggesting that death only comes as a result of a "feeble will." The narrator, grief-stricken, moves to England where he buys and refurbishes an abbey. He soon enters into a loveless marriage with "the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine."

In the second month of the marriage, Rowena begins to suffer from worsening fever and anxiety. One night, when she is about to faint, the narrator pours her a goblet of wine. Drugged with opium, he sees (or thinks he sees) drops of "a brilliant and ruby colored fluid" fall into the goblet. Her condition rapidly worsens, and a few days later she dies and her body is wrapped for burial.

As the narrator keeps vigil overnight, he notices a brief return of color to Rowena's cheeks. She repeatedly shows signs of reviving, before relapsing into apparent death. As he attempts resuscitation, the revivals become progressively stronger, but the relapses more final. As dawn breaks, and the narrator is sitting emotionally exhausted from the night's struggle, the shrouded body stands and walks into the middle of the room. When he touches the figure, its head bandages fall away to reveal masses of raven hair and dark eyes: Rowena has transformed into Ligeia.

[edit] Analysis

The narrator relies on Ligeia as if he were a child, looking on her with "child-like confidence." On her death, he is "a child groping benighted" with "childlike perversity." The story is psychologically deep because, despite this dependency on her, the narrator has a simultaneous desire to forget her (perhaps causing him to be unable to love Rowena). This desire to forget is exemplified in his inability to recall Ligeia's last name or, more importantly, if he ever knew it.[1]

Ligeia, the narrator tells us, is extremely intelligent, "such as I have never known in a woman." Most importantly, she served as the narrator's teacher in "metaphysical investigation", passing on "wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden!" So, her knowledge in mysticism, combined with an intense desire for life may have led to her revival. The opening epigraph, which is repeated in the body of the story, is attributed to Joseph Glanvill, though this quote has not been found in Glanvill's extant work. Poe may have fabricated the quote and attached Glanvill's name in order to associate with Glanvill's belief in witchcraft.[2]

Ligeia and Rowena serve as aesthetic opposites:[3] Ligeia is raven-haired from a city by the Rhine while Rowena (presumably named after the character in Ivanhoe) is a blonde Anglo-Saxon. This symbolic opposition implies the contrast between German and English romanticism.[4]

Exactly what Poe was trying to say in the metamorphosis scene has been debated, fueled in part by Poe's own denial that Ligeia was reborn in Rowena's body.[5] If Rowena had actually transformed into the dead Ligeia, it is only evidenced in the words of the narrator, leaving room to question its validity. The narrator has already been established as an opium addict, making him an unreliable narrator. In fact, perhaps tellingly, the narrator early in the story describes Ligeia's beauty as "the radiance of an opium-dream." He also tells us that "in the excitement of my opium dreams, I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night... as if... I could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned... upon the earth." This may be interpreted as evidence that Ligeia's return was nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination.

If Ligeia's return from death is literal, however, it seems to stem from her assertion that a person dies only by a weak will. This implies, then, that a strong will can keep someone alive. It is unclear, however, if it is Ligeia's will or her husband's will that brings Ligeia back from the dead.[6]

The poem within the story, "The Conqueror Worm", also leads to some questioning of Ligeia's alleged resurrection. The poem essentially shows Ligeia's belief that life's only meaning is to feed the worms while in the grave, an admittance of her own inevitable mortality. The inclusion of the bitter poem may have been meant to be ironic or a parody of the convention at the time, both in literature and in life. In the mid-19th century it was common to emphasize the sacredness of death and the beauty of dying (consider Charles Dickens's Little Johnny character in Our Mutual Friend and or the death of Helen Burns in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre). Instead, Ligeia speaks of fear personified in the "blood-red thing."[7]

Poe's friend and fellow Southern writer Philip Pendleton Cooke suggested the story would have been more artistic if Rowena's possession by Ligeia was more gradual; Poe later agreed, though he had already used a slower possession in "Morella".[8] Poe also wrote that he should have had the Ligeia-possessed Rowena relapse back to her true self so that she could be entombed as Rowena, "the bodily alterations having gradually faded away."[9]

[edit] As satire

There has been some debate that Poe may have intended "Ligeia" to be a satire of Gothic fiction. The year that "Ligeia" was published, Poe published only two other prose pieces: "Siope - A Fable" and "The Psyche Zenobia", both Gothic-styled satires.[10] Supporting evidence for this theory include the detail that Ligeia is from Germany (a main source of Gothic fiction in the 19th century) and that the description of her hints at much but saying nothing, especially in the description of her eyes. The narrator describes their "expression", which he admits is a "word of no meaning." The story also suggests Ligeia is a transcendentalist, a group of people Poe often criticized.[11]

[edit] Major themes

[edit] Publication history

"Ligeia" was first published in the September 18, 1838 edition of American Museum Magazine, and was edited by two of Poe's friends, Dr. Nathan C. Brooks and Dr. Joseph E. Snodgrass. The magazine paid Poe $10 for "Ligeia."[12]

The story was extensively revised throughout its publication history. It was reprinted in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), the one volume of Phantasy Pieces (1842), and Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1845), the New York World (February 15, 1845), and the Broadway Journal (September 27, 1845). The poem "The Conqueror Worm" was first incorporated into the text as a poem composed by Ligeia in the New York World.[13]

[edit] Critical reception

Irish critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw said, "The story of the Lady Ligeia is not merely one of the wonders of literature: it is unparalleled and unapproached."

[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Roger Corman adapted the story into The Tomb of Ligeia in 1964. It would be the last of Corman's eight film adaptations of works by Edgar Allan Poe.

The story has also recently been adapted into the 2008 independent feature Edgar Allan Poe's Ligeia by writer John Shirley. The film stars Michael Madsen, Eric Roberts, and Wes Bentley

[edit] References

  1. ^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. pp. 139-40
  2. ^ Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. ISBN 0807123218 p. 248
  3. ^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. Yale University Press, 1987. p 83. ISBN 0300037732
  4. ^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. "Poe, 'Ligeia,' and the Problem of Dying Women" collected in New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, edited by Kenneth Silverman. Cambridge University Press, 1993. pp. 119-20. ISBN 0521422434
  5. ^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. "Poe, 'Ligeia,' and the Problem of Dying Women" collected in New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, edited by Kenneth Silverman. Cambridge University Press, 1993. p. 119. ISBN 0521422434
  6. ^ Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. ISBN 0807123218 p. 249
  7. ^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. Yale University Press, 1987. pp. 1-2
  8. ^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0801857309. p. 270-271
  9. ^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0801857309. p. 271
  10. ^ Griffith, Clark. "Poe's 'Ligeia' and the English Romantics" in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe's Tales. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971. p. 64
  11. ^ Griffith, Clark. "Poe's 'Ligeia' and the English Romantics" in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe's Tales. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971. p. 66
  12. ^ Ostram, John Ward. "Poe's Literary Labors and Rewards" in Myths and Reality: The Mysterious Mr. Poe. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1987. p. 38
  13. ^ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. Checkmark Books, 2001. p. 134

[edit] External links

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Works of Edgar Allan Poe