Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe
"Ligeia" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that delves into themes of love, loss, and the supernatural. The narrative is presented through the eyes of an unnamed narrator who reflects on his passionate relationship with Ligeia, a strikingly beautiful and intellectually gifted woman. Her enigmatic nature captivates him, and he becomes obsessed with understanding her mysterious demeanor. As the story unfolds, Ligeia falls gravely ill, leading to a poignant exploration of her struggle against death, marked by a powerful declaration of will on her part.
After Ligeia’s death, the narrator retreats to a decaying abbey in England, where he marries a new bride, Rowena. However, his lingering attachment to Ligeia casts a shadow over his new marriage. Rowena becomes ill, and strange occurrences suggest the presence of Ligeia's spirit. The narrative builds tension as Rowena seemingly returns from death, culminating in a haunting climax where Ligeia's essence re-emerges. This story masterfully intertwines elements of gothic horror and metaphysical inquiry, inviting readers to ponder the boundaries of life, death, and the enduring power of love.
Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe
First published: 1838
Type of work: Short fiction
Type of plot: Gothic
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Germany and England
Principal Characters
The Narrator ,Ligeia , his first wifeLady Rowena Trevanion , his second wife
The Story
The narrator begins by saying that he cannot remember when he first met Ligeia, and he knows nothing of her family except that it is old. Ligeia herself, once his wife, he can remember in every detail, and he relates their story.
Ligeia is tall and slender, ethereal as a shadow. Her face is faultless in its beauty, her skin like ivory, her features classic. Crowning the perfect face and body is raven-black, luxuriant hair. Her eyes, above all else, hold the key to Ligeia’s mystery. Larger than most, those black eyes hold an expression unfathomable even to her husband. It becomes his all-consuming passion to unravel the secret of that expression.
In character, Ligeia possesses a stern will that never fails to astound him. Outwardly she is placid and calm, but she habitually utters words that stun him with their intensity. Her learning is immense. She speaks many languages, and in metaphysical investigations she is never wrong. Her husband is engrossed in a study of metaphysics, but it is she who guides him and unravels the secrets of his research. With Ligeia to assist him, he knows that he will one day reach a goal of wisdom undreamed of by others.
Then Ligeia falls ill. Her skin becomes transparent and waxen, her eyes wild, and he knows that she will die. The passion of her struggle against death is frightening. He has always known that she loves him, but in those last days she abandons herself completely to love. On what is to be the last day of her life, she bids him repeat to her a poem she had composed not long before. It is a morbid thing about death, about the conquering of Man by the Worm. As he finishes repeating the melancholy lines, Ligeia leaps to her feet with a shriek, then falls back on her deathbed. In a scarcely audible whisper, she repeats a proverb that has haunted her: that human beings do not yield to death save through the weakness of their own will. So Ligeia dies.
Crushed with sorrow, her husband leaves his desolate home by the Rhine and retires to an old and decayed abbey in a deserted region in England. He leaves the exterior of the building in its sagging state, but inside he furnishes the rooms lavishly and strangely. He has become the slave of opium, and the furnishings take on the shapes and colors of his fantastic dreams. One bedchamber receives the most bizarre treatment of all, and it is to this chamber that he leads his new bride, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.
The room, in a high turret of the abbey, is of immense proportions. It is lighted by a single huge window, the pane of which has a leaden hue, giving a ghastly luster to all objects within. The walls, floors, and furniture are all covered with a heavy, arabesque tapestry showing black figures on pure gold. The figures change as one looks at them from different angles, their appearance being altered by an artificial current of air that constantly stirs the draperies.
In rooms such as this, the narrator spends a bridal month with Lady Rowena. It is easy to perceive that she loves him but little, and he hates her with a passion more demoniac than human. In his opium dreams, he calls aloud for Ligeia, as if he could restore her to the earthly life she has abandoned. He revels in memories of her purity and her love.
In the second month of their marriage, Rowena grows ill, and in her fever she speaks of sounds and movements in the bedchamber, fantasies unheard and unseen by her husband. Although she recovers, she has recurring attacks of the fever, and it becomes evident that she will soon succumb to her illness. Her imaginings become stronger, and she grows more insistent about the sounds and movements she perceives in the tapestries.
One night, Rowena becomes visibly weaker and unusually agitated. Seeking to calm her, her husband steps across the room to get some wine, but he is arrested midway by the sense of something passing lightly by him. Then he is startled to see on the gold carpet a shadow of angelic aspect. Saying nothing to Rowena, he pours the wine into a goblet. As she takes the vessel from him, he distinctly hears a light footstep on the carpet and sees, or thinks he sees, three or four drops of a ruby-colored liquid fall into the goblet from an invisible source.
Immediately after drinking the wine Rowena grows worse, and on the third night, she dies. As her husband sits by her shrouded body in that bridal chamber, he thinks of his lost Ligeia. Suddenly, he hears a sound from the bed on which the corpse of his wife lies. Going closer, he perceives that Rowena has a faint color in her cheeks. It is unmistakable—Rowena lives. Unable to summon aid, he watches her with mounting terror. Then a relapse comes, and she subsides into a death pallor more rigid than before. All night this phenomenon recurs—Rowena returns briefly from the dead, only to sink once more into oblivion. Each time, he sees again a vision of Ligeia.
Toward the morning following that fearful night, the enshrouded figure rises from the bed and totters to the center of the chamber. Terrified, the narrator falls at her feet. She unwinds the burial shroud from her head, and there streams down raven-black hair that did not belong to the living Rowena. The spectral figure then slowly opens her eyes. He cannot be mistaken. Staring at him are the full black eyes of his lost love, Ligeia.
Bibliography
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