Presentation: Edgar Allan Poe, “Ligeia” 2390-2400; “The Fall of the House of Usher” 2400-2413

Reader: Natalie Cizmar

Objective 2: To study the contemporaneous movement of “Romanticism,” the narrative genre of “romance,” and the related styles of the “gothic” and “the sublime.”

focusing on “Ligeia” because all of these elements are present

The narrator’s descriptions of Ligeia are very sublime. She is beautiful, but there is something strange about her. “Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity—although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed ‘exquisite,’ and felt that there was much of ‘strangeness’ pervading it” (2391). Because she is so beautiful, yet with a beauty that is so strange and abnormal, she is sublime.

Question 1. Is there anywhere else in the story where Ligeia or anything else is made to seem sublime?

The gothic can also be seen in Ligeia herself, as well. The narrator speaks of her “white arms” (2395) and her “masses of long and dishevelled hair” that was “blacker than the raven wings of the midnight” (2400). This color scheme is an example of the gothic.

The gothic is also seen in the description of the bridal chamber the narrator shares with his second wife. The architecture is of the Gothic style. “The ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device” (2396). There is also a lot of black furniture, such as the couch “sculptured of solid ebony” (2396). The “golden candelabra” and the “gigantic sarcophagus of black granite” also make the room very gothic. The gothic is also seen later in this room when strange things start happening. Rowena claims to see things, the narrator thinks he sees something, and after Rowena dies, she constantly seems to come back to life and then die again. All of these things can represent the gothic because they are frightening and mysterious.

Question 2. Can the reappearance of Ligeia at the end be seen as both gothic and sublime, or is it just gothic?

Romanticism is also seen in this story because of the love the narrator and Ligeia feel for each other and then the fact that she dies. “For long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry” (2394). Ligeia loves him so much, she worships him. This is a very Romantic notion of love. Also, when the narrator speaks of Ligeia’s knowledge and how she was never wrong, he says, “How singularly—how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention!” (2393) In this passage, he is remembering his wife and realizing only after her death what a truly special person she was. This would go with the Romantic idea of remembering how things were better in the past.

Also, I think the facts that he can’t remember how he met her and how he didn’t even know her last name are both gothic and romantic. They are romantic because it gives the reader the idea of a love that is so strong, none of those trivial things matter, but it is also gothic because it makes Ligeia mysterious, and you don’t know where she came from and what she is capable of.

Question 3. Do you think Ligeia really came back, or was the narrator romanticizing so much that he only thought she came back? At the beginning, he is thinking back on what happened, and he speaks of her as “her who is no more” (2390), which makes me think that she really is gone forever.

Summary: In his Spring 2003 presentation, Robert S. Andresakis says, “All one has to do is put their fingers on a passage in Ligeia and the Fall of Usher to find example of objective 2.” This is especially true in Ligeia because I believe the elements of the sublime, gothic, and romantic can all be seen in this story. The sublime is in Ligeia’s strange beauty, the romantic is there because it’s a love and loss story, and the gothic is there because she comes back from the dead.