copy of final exam

Sample Answers to Question 1. 

Why do “desire and loss” re-appear so frequently in American Romantic texts . . . ?

Christine Ford

Exploring Desire and Loss Across Time, Gender, and Race

(Single Essay Option)

            I became intrigued with the topic of desire and loss after encountering the theme repeatedly in the young adult novel series Twilight. In fact, desire and loss were the driving forces behind the whole plot, the very things that make the books so addictive—Edward the vampire’s desire for human Bella’s blood competing with his love for her, her desire to be come a vampire so they can be together, his choice to leave her when he fears he’ll kill her, her desolation after he’s gone. Even though this was a love story about vampires and werewolves written by a Mormon mother of three, I could identify with her characters’ emotions completely, convincing me that desire and loss are truly powerful themes in Romantic narratives. Upon turning my thoughts to our class readings, I saw that desire and loss pervaded works across time, gender, and race, leading me to the conclusion that they are such common themes because they are so central to the human experience. In Eden we desired to be like God and ended up losing paradise, and we have been writing about our plight ever since. For this paper, I am exploring four stories—“Ligeia,” “The Gilded Six Bits,” “A Rose for Emily,” and “Winter Dreams”—to see how desire and loss are portrayed through diverse viewpoints and why it is that authors who vary so greatly all use the same motif.

            Of the four stories, Poe’s “Ligeia” has the most overt treatment of the desire and loss theme. As we mentioned in class, Poe probably intended his gothic works to be taken as parodies of earlier gothic writers—hence the “dark and stormy night” nature of his work—but this does not lessen his choice to use desire and loss his major theme. On the contrary, choosing this theme shows how commonly it must have been used by his predecessors and how it could still be effective for his audience, parody or not. The first part of the story could easily have been subtitled “Desire” with the way the narrator goes in extreme detail describing the absolute perfection of Ligeia and his tremendous attraction to her: “Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers” and “I saw not then what I now clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding” (Poe 681, 682). Then comes the abrupt shift to the “Loss” section, as Ligeia grows ill and dies, sending the narrator into a downward spiral of grief and possible madness.

            Just as Poe uses description to emphasize his theme in the Desire section, he uses the same technique for loss. The narrator buys an abbey “in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England,” choosing this particular building because “[its] gloomy and dreary grandeur…the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored connections with both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment that had drive me into that remote…region” (Poe 683-4). If Ligeia represents all that is beautiful and wonderful in the world, then the abbey and the “phantasmagoric” bridal chamber especially, represent the darkest depths of grief and loneliness. And in this use of representation we begin to see the primary reason authors use the desire/loss theme: it serves as a strong metaphor for more abstract problems. The narrator doesn’t just want Ligeia the person, he wants everything she represents, namely perfection in beauty and in knowledge, making her death not just her physical passing but the passing of those ideals. Without Ligeia or his ideals, all the narrator has left for him is perpetually dwelling in the physical manifestation of loss. He then marries Rowena, the complete opposite of his previous wife, and hates her for being different than Ligeia. Not unremarkably, Rowena falls deathly ill while the narrator slips into opium-induced madness. At the story’s supernatural ending, he believes Ligeia has come back from the dead in Rowena’s corpse, leaving him not with joy, but fear.

            About eighty years after “Ligeia,” Fitzgerald wrote “Winter Dreams”, a combination of Realist and Romantic influences that deals with desire/loss in ways similar to Poe. The main character Dexter isn’t a very self-aware young man, only knowing that he wants certain things without understanding why: “He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people—he wanted the glittering things themselves. Often he reached out for the best without knowing why he wanted it—and sometimes he ran up against the mysterious denials and prohibitions in which life indulges” (Fitzgerald 2188). He is absolutely taken in by Judy Jones, a lovely, wealthy socialite who is also a notorious flirt. He cannot help but be amazed by her: “She was arrestingly beautiful…This color and mobility of her mouth gave a continual impression of flux, of intense life, of passionate vitality—balanced only partially by the sad luxury of her eyes” (Fitzgerald 2189). She invites him to her house, they become lovers, yet he finds himself dissatisfied when he sees that “the helpless ecstasy of losing himself in her charm was a powerful opiate rather than a tonic” (2194-5). Judy is not good for Dexter; she runs off with other men, she won’t commit to a serious relationship, she is wholly self-absorbed—but Dexter wants her anyways.

            Even after she spurns him, he continues with the “illusion as to her desirability” (2195) until finally after several years pass, he realizes he can’t win her. Here we are given his thoughts as he contemplates life after marrying someone else, and all he can see are “fire and loveliness were gone, magic of night and hushed wonder of the hours and seasons…the thing was deep in him. He was too strong, too alive for it to die lightly” (2196). “The thing” here isn’t just Judy and her lips and eyes, but rather the ideal she has become. She is youth and beauty and wealth and happiness. He has one last affair with her before she passes out of his life, leaving him deeply hurt but with his image of Judy intact. It is only at the very end of the story when a business associate mentions that Judy now simply a nice, pretty girl that Dexter experiences his ultimate loss. “The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him” our narrator explains.

The strongest tie to the best part of his youth is gone when Judy becomes a “nice girl”, and now “the thing” that previously wouldn’t die in him, is at last gone. In some ways, this story is very similar to “Ligeia” with the loss of the idealized female leaving her male lover desolated—yet Dexter’s loss comes across as being far keener than Poe’s narrator. Poe’s narrator does experience a metaphorical loss when his lover dies, but it lacks the pathos of Dexter’s pain. Dexter goes on living an outwardly normal life with this gaping hole in his heart while the Ligeia narrator goes into a wild drug-filled crash—we don’t doubt the reality of the pain of either loss, but Dexter’s response is one most of us are more likely to experience. And therein lies the tempering influence of Realism. Romanticism, with its ideals and emotional highs and lows, is not gone but is paired with people and situations that are closer to real life, giving us a world that is neither hugely excessive nor too cold and clinical.

Another reason desire and loss are such enduring, powerful themes are that they are not solely limited to narratives about or written by wealthy white men. They are, as I mentioned earlier, a universal experience, as we see evidenced in “The Gilded Six-Bits.” Joe and Missie May are a very happy people, a total departure from the people we’ve looked at so far. They may be a poor black couple living in the South, but their pleasure in one another is evident in their affectionate teasing: “Very little talk during the meal but that little consisted of banter that pretended to deny affection but in reality flaunted it” (Hurston 2163). At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much in the desire/loss category that could apply to these two in their blissful world, but a case of envy starts raising trouble.

 A new apparently rich black man is in town, with “a mouth full of gold teethes” and a “puzzle-gut,” things Joe wishes he could have since it would “make ‘m look lak a rich white man” (2163). Missie May assures Joe she loves him exactly as he is, but Joe continues to talk about Otis Slemmons’ finery, making her wish they could somehow get the gold that seems to mean so much to Joe even with his protestations that “Ah’m satisfied de way Ah is. So long as Ah by yo’ husband, Ah don’t keer ‘bout nothin’ else” (2165). Now desire has been set up—desire for wealth and hand-in-hand with that, to be wealthy like white men, something completely out of their reach which makes the desire all the more difficult. Loss comes with Missie May’s misguided attempt to get the gold from Slemmons by letting him sleep with her. Joe finds them and ends up with some of Slemmons gold, while Missie May tries to explain: “Oh Joe, honey, he said he wuz gointer give me dat gold money and yes’ kept on after me…” only to hear Joe reply “Well, don’t cry no mo’, Missie May. Ah got yo’ gold piece for you” (2166). Their happy world is shattered. Neither understands the others’ motivation or reaction and their happiness, the one thing they had on everyone else, is lost.

But unlike “Ligeia” and “Winter Dreams” this story does not end with loss. Though it is in the Realist time period, “The Gilded Six-Bits” is a Romance, both in the literary and popular sense. Slowly Joe and Missie May come back together, even as she finds out that the gold they both wanted wasn’t even real. She has a baby boy, a child that everyone owns is undoubtedly Joe’s, and their restoration is complete. At the close of the story, a white store clerk comments after Joe leaves “Wisht I could be like these darkies. Laughin’ all the time. Nothing’ worries ‘em” (2169) and the story comes full circle—in the beginning Joe is wishing for the white man’s wealth and in the end, the white man is wishing for Joe’s happiness. The desire/loss motif is less metaphorical here than we’ve previously seen, but that does not lessen its impact. The story is so grounded in real life struggles that desire and loss do not need to be representative of anything else; they are strong enough in the story’s literal embodiment.

Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is also from a differing perspective, this time a woman, though the story’s morbid trappings give it a definite kinship to Poe. Emily is a woman who has known nothing but loss her entire life. Her town sees her as simply being rich and entitled for many years, but slowly begins to realize that Emily has had little choice in her life’s direction. The townspeople repeatedly cite instances of her loss: “…two years after her father’s death and short time after her sweetheart…had deserted her”; “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her”; “…as if the quality of her father which had thwarted her woman’s life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die” (Faulkner 2219, 2220, 2222). As life deals her one hand of misery after another, Emily becomes more and more devoted to the idea of being well-respected, “demand[ing] more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson” (2221). Strange circumstances surround her—Homer Baron’s disappearance, the terrible smell from her house, the purchase of the arsenic—yet she clings to every piece of control she can muster. The opening anecdote of her refusal to pay city taxes ends with the statement “So she vanquished them, horse and foot,” a typical case of Emily’s intense need to control her life in whatever way she can.

In death just as in life, Emily attempts to hold onto whatever dignity she can. She dies alone, with no one but an old servant to witness her demise, and her town, sympathetic as they are throughout, “wait until Miss Emily is decently in the ground” before they investigate the secrets she left behind. They find a tableau worthy of any gothic narrative, yet offer none of the commentary as they have previously, the story simply ending with their last gruesome discovery.

            As with “The Gilded Six-Bits,” the source of Emily’s desire and loss theme is in her marginalized status. Since she is a woman, she does not have the same control over her fate a man in similar circumstances would; her desires and losses are the product of her status as a woman, just as Joe and Missie May’s are the product of their status as poor and black. Yet, as we’ve seen again and again, these characters struggles are completely relatable. I don’t have to be a turn-of-the-century woman or a rural black person to understand the things they want and the pain of their losses. Desire and loss do change some in their presentation from story to story, but not as much as I originally suspected. At bottom, they are all stories of the human condition,  and that is why authors across time, gender, and race continue to explore the theme of desire and loss.