American Literature: Romanticism Sample Final Exam Essays 2015 final exam assignment #1: Desire & Loss

Roslynn Kelley

Desiring Desire and Preventing Loss: An Examination
of Different Approaches in the Romantic Tradition of Desire and Loss.

          In American Romantic literature, the theme of desire and loss occur so frequently it becomes a pattern easily detected in a variety of texts.  Desire and loss serve “as the driving force in the “romance” narrative and as indexes for Romantic values” because they are features inherent in many of the themes that appear in Romantic literature (White, Course website). The term “nostalgia” incorporates the idea of desire and loss intricately in its use, and the heroic individual upholds the value of the quest towards a desire for transcendence and self-transformation.
          The “rescue” or “reunification” aspect of a romance narrative reinforces the connection to the theme of desire and loss; this pattern is evident in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Ligeia.”   In life, Ligeia is an object of the narrator’s desire.  Although a person cannot desire what they already possess, the narrator does not seem to possess Ligeia despite descriptions of their time together: “She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my study save by…her…voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder” (Poe).  In this account, the narrator is unaware of the ebb and flow of how desire and loss become a repeatable pattern of desire for desire since he does not initially know he has lost anything in his story.  He does not feel her loss because she reminds him--by speaking to or touching him--that she is near.  It is not until she dies that he notices her absence and begins a journey intent to transcend the environment which reminds him of her: “…I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine….I purchased…and abbey…in…fair England” (Poe).  The narrator returns to the clay from which he came and embarks on a quest to rebuild himself in the decaying English abbey.  Motivated by his desire to reunite with Ligeia, the narrator’s heroic individualism in his separation from the masses into the “pentagonal…capacious[ly] size[d]” bridal chamber demonstrates how his journey is one in which he desires to transform—by marrying the Lady Rowena—but is unable because he cannot transcend his desire for his idea of what  Ligeia represents to him, which is desire (Poe). 
          The fluctuation between desire and loss in “Ligeia” contains the elements of romantic values and maintains the integrity of what it means for a story to be a romantic narrative; however, Poe uses desire and loss to show how loss does not always motivate desire; that is, in this story, desire motivates desire.  Because the narrator is telling his story after it occurred, this suggests that he was unsuccessful in obtaining his desire, despite Ligeia’s return from the dead via Lady Rowena.  The desire to reunite with what is lost or to gain transcendence through an individualized heroic journey does not need to occur in the traditional European setting to be a successful journey; that is, the journey does not need to be a success at all.  The idea of a failed journey or a quest to obtain desire by desiring is not a disappointment to the romantic narrative; instead, it gives the romance a different direction by which the author can dictate alternative means of transcendence or reunification with the desired.  
          Nostalgia and the heroic quest for transformation unite in the romantic theme of desire and loss.  Nostalgia hearkens back to a simpler time and embodies the romantic value of a connection to nature; the loss of this desirable environment or relationship with nature is motivation for a journey.  The individual in nature, separate from the masses has an obligation to unite with their environment and in Sarah Orne Jewett’s, “The White Heron,” Sylvia understands this obligation to uphold the innocence of this romanticized world.  Separated from the familiar, Sylvia is living in an ideal setting: “…it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, if seemed as if she never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm” (Jewett).   A feature of this passage is that Jewett states that Sylvia “tried to grow,” which implies that the city restricts the growth of its inhabitants.  Instead of fantasizing about a simpler time or an idealized environment, Sylvia goes to this perfect pastoral place of “…all the time there was” allowing her to grow unimpeded outside of the expanding city (Jewett). 
          Sylvia’s journey is to protect this sacred place from the influence of the city: “She did not dare to look boldly at the tall young man, who carried a gun…” (Jewett).  The young man and his gun represent “industrial civilization,” the same civilization that inhibits Sylvia’s growth (White, course page).  His presence in her idealized world indicates that she is responsible for maintaining the desire of the place so that it does not become lost.   The man desires to stuff and preserve a rare white heron; these acts symbolize the encroachment of an industrial society into the purity of an idealized setting.  What makes this situation interesting is that the heron is not something that the man lost; he does not want a reunion with the bird.  By killing the heron, the man creates a loss through his desire.  This loss is what Sylvia has to rescue; that is, Sylvia has stop nostalgia from happening to the sacred ideology of her world. 
          One of the values of Romanticism are the achievements of the heroic individual and after she climbs the “old pine-tree” she becomes part of nature’s aviary; Sylvia achieves a transcendence and transforms—at least mentally—into another creature.  She becomes a bird and is able to understand the significance of the heron’s life: “she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away” (Jewett).  She completes her quest successfully because she not only preserved the desire of her idealized world but she did not contribute to its loss by giving in to desire.  Although she is a young girl, she comprehends the destruction of loss through desire. 
          In “Ligeia” and in “The White Heron” both authors use familiar tropes of Romanticism to create stories that move away from the traditional ideas of desire and loss.  In “Ligeia,” Poe circumvents loss by having the narrator desire desire instead of desiring only what he has lost.  Jewett uses language to tangle up the straightforward desire and loss narrative by having a young girl save something that someone desires to lose; she prevents the bird and pastoral setting from becoming a memory or a nostalgic ideology.   These stories do not necessarily represent a departure from traditional European models, but they do show how American authors take the values and features of romance narratives and create something uniquely theirs.