Kathleen E. Breaux

LITR 5931.2 American Romanticism

9 October 2008

Desire, Loss, and the Language in Between

Idealistic love is a cloaked visage, eternally pined for, but yet to be determined as a terrorist or a saint.  This kind of love, this all encompassing can’t-live-without-each other kind of love, flocks innumerable empty hearts surging forth in search of it, some of them so far as to the point of no return.  These people, these martyrs of optimism, wander about placing hopes on one passing stranger after another, expecting that, just maybe, this one will be the fairytale for which they have been patiently counting rose petals.  Though damned to delusion by song lyrics and silver screen one liners, these nomads of romance are not entirely at a loss.  For, this love for which they search, this unabashed hope for the attainable fairytale does exist.  And to search for it, their past has been blessed to know the feeling of its grasp, even if only for the briefest of moments.

            There is a kind of love that believes in the best of endings, that has no concept of time, change, or circumstance.  It defends the Shakespearean notion that two people are cosmically destined to live with one another or not at all.  This love exists outside the realm of heartache and lessons learned, and it hears not the aged advice of reality threatening its life within the moors.  This kind of love boasts an eternal existence in the heart of humanity, earned by a temporal tempest in the lives of each person it chooses to dance upon. 

            This love of reverberating wings exists only for a fleeting breath in the lives of it’s followers, but garners a timeless existence in the crooning waves of radio, on the urgent kiss of the movie screen, and in the words dutifully diatribed in honor of its passing.  This love that has sparked centuries of searching words, has come to be acknowledged in romantic literature as much for its life as it has for its death.  Romantic literature has bequeathed an appreciation onto the notion of not only the desire for love, but the loss of it as well.  This literary appreciation offers expression of the pleasure in the belief of perfection and the all-encompassing pain after the loss of such. 

And so, this mysterious countenance is just as alive in its memory and the pain that lingers after its passing, as in its overwhelming grasp upon the lover and the beloved.

            A review of several canonical works notes a change in expression as a story moves from elements of desire to loss.  When overwhelming desire is supplanted by even more encompassing loss, the feeling, setting, and language begin to shift from the florid romantic to the darkness of the gothic.  A study of American Romantic works by Susanna Rowson and Edgar Allen Poe reveals this shift from the idealistic romance of desire to the dark and morose language of the gothic when the attainment of that longing is replaced with loss. 

            Though written as a warning of the impossible coexistence of benevolence and passion, Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth, by Susanna Rowson, is representative of this shift from romantic elements of language to the gothic with the burgeoning journey from desire to loss.  Montraville epitomizes the escapism that Rowson forebodes when he says, “I never think of the future, but am determined to make the most of the present” (2).  His concern lies not in the repercussions of the present or even in thoughts of reality, but only in his immediate pleasure at hand, which in this Tale of Truth happens to be the young and untainted Charlotte Temple, his idealized object of desire.  This idealism is furthered when he assures the unwitting Charlotte, now blinded by her overcoming and treacherous heart, that her fears of her parents’ disapproval “are merely the chimeras of a disturbed fancy… they will, be assured, forgive an error which love alone occasioned… and receive [her] with open arms and tears of joy” (11).  Montraville and Charlotte, both consumed with desire for an idealistic love in unaccommodating circumstances, are ignorant to reality and surge forth to pursue the passions which are sure to leave them burning. 

As Corrigan’s essay points, Charlotte does embark on an exploration for the attainment of her desire, but at the cost of her family, her morally favorable future, and eventually her life.  Rowson presents a foreshadow to Charlotte’s doom and to the gothic elements waiting in the latter pages of the story when Charlotte, in recognition of her own imminent demise says, “…while discretion points out the impropriety of my conduct, inclination urges me on to ruin” (11).  Shortly after this foretelling of loss, Charlotte is approached by a horrified Mrs. Beauchamp, who finds the haggard and emaciated ghost of the once fair and virtuous young girl who fell victim to her passions long ago.  After the loss of Montraville, Charlotte is surrounded by visions of sickness, poverty, and the stench of thin gruel that nearly wafts off the page.  Though Rowson paints Montraville as a thief of innocence, he too was affected by the inescapable demise, which accompanies the loss that ensues in desire’s wake.  The villain becomes a victim in the dismal scenes of mourning the demise of Charlotte and the death of his desire.  Montraville, introduced as a charming soldier festooned in a handsome coat and military sash, is left to bid the reader adieu from a bottomless well of illness, delirium, and depression of gothic proportions.   

As a connoisseur of Southern Gothic, Edgar Allan Poe journeys through the debatable lucidity of a man thrown in the depths of desire and loss in the tale of Ligeia.  Lurid language of almost sublime dimensions is employed in the narrator’s nostalgic portrayal of the past, one that is a characteristic element of romanticism.  With no concept of time or place, Poe expresses a romantic belief in the perfection of Ligeia, particularly in the idealized descriptions of her beauty.  From her pale, faultless forehead to a “harmoniously curved nostril speaking the free spirit” (680), he paints an almost inhuman kind of beauty seen through the eyes of an all-consuming desire. 

Upon the untimely death of beloved Ligeia, Poe’s florid language employed toward her beauty shifts to extensive descriptions of the dreary and desolate abbey, a building described as having an “almost savage aspect” (683).   This desolate domain that the narrator adopts as home “[has] much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which [drive him] into that remote and unsocial region of the country” (684).  He goes on to offer further sinewy descriptions of the bridal chambers of the abbey, which later provide setting for the morbid death of his new bride and the delivery quarters for the rebirth of Ligeia.  The romanticized language employed by desire in the descriptions of the past, shift to gothic, desolate, and drug-induced portrayals of the narrator’s shattered life after the loss of his love.     

Poe continues to reveal his expression of desire and loss, with language representative of both romantic and gothic elements in the poem, “Annabel Lee.”  He employs the nostalgic element of romanticism as he embarks on a love story from “…many and many a year ago / In a kingdom by the sea” (1-2).  The poem reads throughout like a song, but shifts from a tale that seems to foretell a prosperous ending to one of death and eternal longing for that which has been lost.  Poe presents a man’s description of his beloved, who while portrayed as flawless, embodies no substantial or individual qualities.  The poem embarks on an introduction that is wrought with idealism, as Annabel Lee is described to have no other thought except to love and be loved by the narrator.  Florid and romantic language flows off the page, as even angels covet the two that “loved with a love that was more than love” (11). 

The sublimity of Poe’s expression drifts into more dolorous tones with the death of Annabel Lee, as the poet is eternally forsaken to pine for his lost beloved.  As the work shifts into loss from a focus of admiration and desire, the elements of language move into expressions of death.  While not grotesquely descriptive, Poe does employ images of morbidity with reference to the kinsmen that took her away “To shut her up in a sepulchre / In this kingdom by the sea” (19-20).  This definitively romantic poem flourishes from idealistic elements of desire into a tone of darkness, as readers are left with an image of a man who will for eternity lie down by the side of the tomb of his beloved, Annabel Lee.

Desire and loss will forever live in juxtaposition, for one cannot exist without the fear of or the want for the other.  Desire will eternally want for a love, that when attained will in turn fear loss; and this loss will always lie pining for the love that was desired.  Whether the love expressed in classic works is eventually lost to circumstance or literary romantic fate, it is known not.  Rowson and Poe both provide telling counts of romantic literature that characterizes the infinite circle of desire and loss with language to match the flourished tone of each all-encompassing emotion.

Works Cited

Corrigan, Danny.  Sample Student Midterm, LITR 5535: American Romanticism,

            Professor Craig White.  <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4232/

            models5/2005/midterms/mt05corrigan.htm>

Poe, Edgar Allan.  “Annabel Lee” and “Ligeia.”  The Norton Anthology of American

            Literature.  Ed. Nina Baym.  New York:  Norton & Company, 2008.  678-688.

Rowson, Susanna.  Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth.  Webpost: University of Houston

Clear Lake. <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4232/research/pritexts/ Charlotte.htm>