Ligeia. Rowena is the stereotypical woman, a classical example of what women were supposed to be during the era. Interestingly, Rowena also dies, and the narrator, who we learn is an opium addict, supervises the body overnight. The story ends with Rowena coming back from the dead, transformed into Ligeia. Throughout the entirety of the story, Poe provides the reader with countless examples of his bias towards romantic ideals and his mastery of American Romantic literature.
The most obvious aspect of American Romanticism in this short story is the rejection of classicism. During the romantic period, America was thriving economically and the focus of most people s lives was on economic and material success. The Romantic Revolution that took place in 19th-century America was a revolt against the economic realities of the day and the theories of Locke and Franklin. American romantics sought to break away from traditional literary forms; they did not agree with the commonly accepted principals of classicism and formality as being indicators of literary merit. On the contrary, these romantics believed that inspiration, enthusiasm, and emotion mattered much more than outdated standards of merit that required conforming to a set of rules. The world is emotional and organic, not mechanical or rational. Good literature should have heart, not rules ... This explains why Poe makes the narrator s first wife, Ligeia, have such remarkable beauty; for the narrator, Ligeia s beauty serves as a source of love and endearment. As the narrator of the story puts it ... the character of my beloved ... made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily progressive that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Ligeia s singular yet placid cast of beauty is in sharp contrast to Rowena s fair-haired and blue-eyed classical beauty. Poe repeatedly points out the superiority of Ligeia s beauty because it does not conform to the typical definition of beauty. Ligeia s features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen. Poe undoubtedly sees flaws in the narrator s second wife because she fits the mold too easily. And perhaps the most extreme example of Poe s rejection of the ordinary and embracing of the strange can be seen in certain passages describing Ligeia s mysterious characteristics. He describes the narrator s beautiful wife as one would describe a ghost: She came and departed as a shadow. He describes her eyes as unreal and superhuman because of their large size: far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. Ironically, at times Ligeia even frightens the narrator with her grotesque appearance. However, throughout the entirety of the story, these odd appearance traits are objects of reverie for the narrator, and he makes clear to point this out repeatedly. Poe rejects classical values ??and welcomes the supernatural through the vivid descriptions of Ligeia s uncanny beauty. Poe also manages to display another key trait of American Romantics-fervent idealism-in this morbid and frightening tale. Idealism was embraced by American romantic writers because they firmly believed in the lofty goals of democracy, even though at many times these goals were never realized. In this sense, American romantics were optimists. They were champions of individualism and believed firmly in the possibilities of humankind and man s good nature. This optimism can be seen in the narrator s account of his wife s reincarnation in the body of another woman. Although the narrator s story appears sincere and is certainly not lacking in detail, he is a self-proclaimed opium addict, which makes him an unreliable narrator. However, the romantic optimism of Poe is apparent because upon seeing Rowena rise from the dead, he assumes that it is Ligeia that has actually come back from the dead in Rowena s body, however unlikely. This exaggerated optimism could have been caused by Ligeia s knowledge of metaphysical investigation, knowledge described as ... wisdom too divinely precious to not be forbidden. In this sense, the narrator s opium addiction can be seen as a form of optimism-even idealism. Indeed the narrator even admits this optimism to himself: ... in the excitement of my opium dreams, I would call aloud upon her name, during the silences of the night ... as if ... I could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned ... upon the earth. Of course, these dreams are nothing more than hallucinations and false hopes caused by the opium drug. Still, they contain embedded within them a sense of optimism against all odds. Nowhere is this clearer than Ligeia s assertion that Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will. This implies that Ligeia s return from death could actually be literal, and that a strong will can actually keep someone alive. Th...
