Lynda Williams
Dr. Craig White
Literature 5535
13 June 2002

Desire and Loss:  The American Experience

            Initially, the American Romantic writers seem to mark a complete reversal of thought in comparison to the times that preceded them, appearing on the stage as a new group that has flung aside all the stifling trappings of the Old World. Indeed, the Romantic evokes the image of a contentious teenager rebelling against stodgy parents, specifically in this case, the Neoclassicists.  And, in many respects, that observation certainly has some validity as the Romantics do indeed take many of the tenets of Neoclassicism and substitute opposite values; for example, the Romantics value emotion over reason, the worth of the individual over the general, and the environs of nature over those of the city.  However, the Romantics do not disregard the past completely, a point that becomes more and more evident as one reads the writers that preceded them. The theme of desire and loss, a theme that dominates American Romantic literature and also later American thought, has its roots in its forebears.  One need only read early American writings, beginning with Christopher Columbus’s letters, to see this theme in full flower.  This theme comes to America via Europe through the two predominate sources:  the Hebrew/Christian myth of the Garden of Eden and the classical Greek writings of Homer, both didactic in purpose.  In Christianity, desire and loss become linked to hope through salvation.  Certainly, Adam and Eve have the desirable perfect world in the Garden, but then they lose it, and although, according to Christian interpretation, they lose it for all of humanity, humanity still has the hope of everlasting life through Christ.   Therefore, life becomes a continuous playing out of the desire for what was lost, a seeking of that “perfect” world, the lost Garden of Eden.  This myth plays a formidable part in the making of America, as evidenced by the early American writers.  Additionally, the idea of desire and loss also has Greek origins.  In Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey, Odysseus must leave his idyllic Ithaca and his “perfect” Penelope in order to right the wrongs of Paris and the Trojans.  Moreover, the twenty years he spends away from Ithaca represent the trials and tribulations sent by the gods to test and to ensure his worthiness of his “heavenly” Ithaca and family.  Likewise, the Greeks also give a view of perfection: in the land of King Alkinoos, a land described as a veritable Garden of Eden, Homer illustrates the "gifts of heaven" that await those who obey and respect the gods (Odyssey, 7.141).  Those two cultural influences reverberate through the Western world, and America, the New World, proves no exception.  In America, the theme of desire and loss, coupled with the idea of redemption/hope/salvation, appears in early writers such as Christopher Columbus and Susanna Rowson.  However, Edgar Allen Poe, a Romantic writer, also uses this theme in “Ligeia,” and although Poe alters the theme of his predecessors by omitting the third ingredient of salvation, he has not flung aside all his “parents” precepts.  In short, the cultural influences have become too deeply engrained.

In 1493, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) begins the record of the American immigrant experience, setting the stage with letters home that frame his experience in terms that the Romantics would later integrate into their writings:  desire and loss.    As a European Christian, Columbus grew up in a place and time during which Christianity and the Church reigned supreme.  Undoubtedly, he knew well the biblical stories as he seemingly draws upon them effortlessly to illustrate his findings and discoveries in this new land.  Furthermore, he also knew that his audiences, Luis de Santangel, the merchant who had supported his trip, and Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Spain, would understand and respond favorably to his allusions.   To begin, Columbus describes his newfound land in terms that conjure up the Garden of Eden image.  To Santangel, he writes:

This island and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree [. . . .]  In it there are many harbors on the coast of the seas, beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and large, which is marvelous.  Its lands are high, and there in it very many sierras and very lofty mountains, beyond comparison with the island of Tenerife. (12)

In that passage, one can see Columbus’s desire for that land of perfection: his use of “beyond comparison” twice and of other descriptions, such as “fertile to a limitless degree” and “marvelous” and “high” and “lofty,” gives the reader the feeling that he does indeed believe he has found the land that all Christians desire.  In this same vein, he also describes the trees as “never los[ing] their foliage” and tells of the abundant number and types of flora and fauna that flourish in this place.  In addition, Columbus envisions himself as a new Adam, as he “[gives] a new name” to each of these lands (12). 

However, the loss Columbus experiences surfaces in his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, in which he describes how these lands that “are more extensive and richer than all other Christian lands” have caused his ruination (14).  Cast out of the Garden of Eden, he can rely only on the king and queen’s and on God’s mercy to “save” him.  Not only does Columbus liken himself to Adam, but also to the biblical character Job, a man “perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.”  In this comparison, the theme of desire, loss, and hope also comes into play.  As Columbus tells how his “years of service,” his desire to serve God and the King and Queen, have taken away not only his material wealth and his physical health, but have also caused him dishonor even from “[his] brothers” (all events which also happen to Job), clearly he expects the same reward as Job gets in the end (14). He hopes for the restoration of his material goods and the approbation of Ferdinand and Isabella and of God.   With those images, Columbus sets the stage for future immigrant generations as they too will seek America as the desirable “land of milk and honey” for various and sundry reasons, but they too will sustain losses.   

            Then, in the writing of Susanna Rowson (1762-1824), we see a later version of the working out of the desire and loss theme.  In comparison to Columbus’s letters, Charlotte:  A Tale of Truth (1791) seems a more “modern” approach in literature, one that seems light years removed from the time and place described by Columbus.  Nevertheless, Rowson, writing during the Neoclassic period, still shows the influence of the Christian theme of desire, loss, and hope seen in Columbus’s letters.  In addition, we can also see the influence of the classical, as the Neoclassicists often looked to the classical world for their models.   In fact, Rowson seems to have adopted the approach to storytelling that Homer takes in the Odyssey—that, yes, a work should moralize, but it should also entertain.  Obviously, this brand of literature that entertains as well as preaches worked well during Rowson’s time period as evidenced by the work’s popularity. 

Like Columbus, Rowson uses Garden of Eden imagery as she tells the tale of the “ruined poor Charlotte,” a tale of desire and loss and hope.   However, Rowson uses the imagery in a different manner; she places her heroine in the midst of the Garden of Eden to begin with, much like Adam and Eve in the beginning.  Unlike Columbus who believes he has stumbled upon the lost Garden of Eden, Charlotte has grown up in the Garden.  And like Adam and Eve, she has lived in a state of innocence.  To explain, Rowson’s description of Mr. and Mrs. Temple make them seem god-like, the perfect parents.  Indeed, Rowson’s choice phrase, “as [Mr. and Mrs. Temple] were walking together in the garden” (378), echoes the phrase in Genesis when God comes to question Adam and Eve: “the Lord God [was] walking in the garden.”   Thus, Charlotte, in a sense, reenacts the Eve version of desire, loss, and hope.  Like Eve, Charlotte has been warned about the temptations of the world, and, to continue the analogy, Charlotte’s serpent, her tempter, comes in the form of someone she does not fear.  Like the serpent in the Garden, Mme. La Rue “[is] more subtil than any beast [woman] of the field.”  For example, she knows how to manipulate Charlotte and how to use Charlotte’s youth and innocence to cause the young girl’s downfall and her expulsion from the Garden of her parents.  She knows Charlotte basically trusts people because, like Eve, Charlotte has never encountered anyone who has wanted to deceive her or cause her harm.  And Charlotte does trust La Rue, her teacher and “protector.”  Therefore, she follows La Rue’s example and meets Montraville, reads his letters of love, and eventually accompanies him across the ocean.  Thus, Eve’s desire for the unknown, the forbidden fruit, plays yet again in Charlotte’s tale.  And when Charlotte “knows” Montraville in the biblical sense, her Garden might as well have the “Cherubims and a flaming sword” guarding against her return as an ocean separates her and it and also communication between parents and child has ceased.  In her desire for the unknown, Charlotte loses her Garden of Eden, her innocence, and her god-like parents. 

To complete the temptation analogy, Rowson also has the three main characters punished: Charlotte dies, Montraville suffers from “severe fits of melancholy” for his entire life, and La Rue, “the viper that stung [the Temples’] peace,” dies in poverty and sickness (406-07).  Interestingly, like the serpent that God curses with slithering on the ground, one can imagine La Rue’s fall from a high, upstanding member of society to a poor, drunken woman wallowing on the ground.  Like Columbus, Rowson also includes the element of hope in her narrative.  In the end, as Charlotte lies on her deathbed, her father comes to her, just in time for the forgiveness as he embraces “his long lost child” (404).  Like God, Mr. Temple forgives, and as a silent blessing flows from him to her, a “sudden beam of joy [passes] across her languid features, she raise[s] her eyes to heaven­—and then close[s] them forever” (405).  In essence, Charlotte receives salvation, and hope continues as Mr. Temple takes Charlotte’s newborn baby girl home with him, back to the Garden of Eden.  

            A Romantic writer, Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) writes in a style that on first glance seems to have nothing in common with the writings of Columbus and Rowson.  However, when reading Poe in the continuum of American writing, one can see that although his work has marked differences, he still works in the same realm of desire and loss as his predecessors.   “Ligeia” deals with the attainment and then the loss of a most desirable woman, the narrator’s wife Ligeia.  In Poe’s recognizable style, the narrator goes to great lengths to explain to the reader his feelings, the reasons he sees Ligeia as the most desirable woman in the world.  Recalling the past, the narrator tries to recollect her for us, saying, “There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory faileth me not. It is the person of Ligeia” (708).   The narrator makes this statement at the beginning of the second paragraph, a statement meant not only to assure the reader, but himself also.  To explain, he has already tried in the first paragraph, but failed to give any concrete details of Ligeia; in short, she seems too much a creature of heaven, too otherworldly, to describe in ordinary language.  Furthermore, when the narrator does attempt once again to give specifics, he again resorts to the ethereal, using such descriptions as “shadow,” “airy,” “spirit-lifting vision,” “wildly divine,” “ ‘exquisite,’” and “the triumph of all things heavenly,” just to name a few of his images (709).  Moreover, the narrator conveys Ligeia’s otherworldliness by actually using “strangeness” not just once but twice in his recollection.  And to add to the strangeness, the mysteriousness of his dead Ligeia, he recollects, “I have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend and my betrothed, who became the partner of my studies, and eventually the wife of my bosom” (708).  In addition, when the narrator focuses on Ligeia’s eyes, “the miraculous expansion of [. . .] which at once so delighted and appalled [him],” the reader again receives otherworldly imagery.  Recalling Ligeia’s last days, the narrator tells of her strong will to survive and of her deathbed testimony of love for him. Seeing himself as “cursed with the removal of [his] beloved,” once again the narrator admits his inability to portray his loss; he has “no utterance capable to express” it (712). 

When the narrator remarries, his memory of the perfect wife keeps him from having a normal relationship with his new wife as he cannot erase the memory of Ligeia; in fact, “[he] revel[s] in recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love” (714).  On a rational basis, one can understand what causes the Lady Rowena’s death; she can never live up to her predecessor.  In brief, the narrator has lost his Garden of Eden (his perfect wife), and although he continues to search for it (her), he cannot find it (her) again.  Poe’s description of Rowena’s deaths and revivals certainly plays out the theme of desire and loss, condensing what most people will experience in a lifetime into one night of horror.  In the end, when he sees the eyes of Ligeia looking out at him from Rowena, one can only surmise that the lost Ligeia will haunt him till the end of his days.  In contrast to Columbus and Rowson, Poe leaves the reader with no reassuring image of hope, probably best explained by his purpose (or lack of purpose):  Poe does not write this work to curry favor or to moralize.  At the end of the work, an unanswerable question remains:  Did Ligeia ever exist except in the narrator’s mind?  Interestingly, that question parallels the one many ask about the Genesis episode:  Did the Garden of Eden ever exist?             

Obviously, we will never have answers to the questions above, but that really does not matter.  What does matter is that those images of perfection do exist and evidently are deeply imprinted on our cultural psyches.  Moreover, these images of perfection keep the Western world in a recurring cycle of desire and loss that will continue to play a major role in our society. One need only to think of the role the “perfect mate” image plays in our society—how, in many cases, the expectations of (desire for) that perfect woman or man can cause marriages to fail when reality enters the stage and the ideal becomes humanized.  In another area, one also notes the attempts at different times in society to create a utopia on earth, all of which have failed because people are not perfect.  Obviously, some force quite large, quite powerful is at work here.   Hence, our artists, whether consciously or subconsciously, will continue to incorporate desire and loss into their works, a reflection of the society’s preoccupation with those images.  In other words, until society can exorcize those images from its cultural subconscious, we shall continue to see those images in the artistic recordings, especially in America as America itself is often viewed as “the land of opportunity,” that ideal land where all individuals can realize their dreams.  However, that image often causes many problems for new arrivals as they soon realize that American life is not perfect and that they will lose something while striving to attain that ideal.