Edgar Allan Poe was a Gothic American writer best known for his unparalleled short stories and poems. He uses many Gothic characteristics in his writings to create suspense, mystery, and ambiguity. In Poe’s short story “Ligeia” he writes about a beautiful woman who dies and how the narrator deals with her passing. In “Ligeia” Edgar Allan Poe brilliantly showcases the Gothic American characteristics of self-destructing characters, a rundown, gloomy house, and an unnatural relation between life and death.
Poe demonstrates self-destruction in “Ligeia” through the thoughts and actions of both the narrator and his wife, Ligeia. As the story opens with the unnamed narrator struggling to remember how he met his mysterious wife, the reader is told …show more content…
The narrator buys this shabby-looking abbey shortly after Ligeia’s death and around the same time that he meets his second wife Lady Rowena Trevanion. The condition of the house is reflective of the narrator’s mental state and personifies memories that “are identified with the narrator’s feelings of loss” (Bieganowski 1). Since the house is bought shortly after Ligeia’s passing, the narrator is still grieving over the loss of his one true love and he does that through dressing up the house. The narrator “leaves the exterior of the building in its sagging state, but inside he furnishes the rooms lavishly and strangely” with richly gold curtains, towering walls, and a solid ebony bridal couch (Kincheloe 1). He tries to revive the inside of the melancholy house, but he leaves the outside alone. Because the house can be aligned to the narrator’s mental state, this decision signifies that the narrator has no intention to fix the structural problems of his mind, and only wishes to cover them up - just as he is doing with the house. Another way the narrator employs the house to demonstrate his mental state, is his choice of weird and unusual furnishings and decorations. In the bridal chamber, the curtains are embroidered with imposing, black arabesque figures. These ornamentations are peculiar as they “[partake] the true character of the arabesque only when regraded from a single point of view” and from any other view their forms change (Poe 5). From one stance, the figures are monsters, but from another they transform into dignified people. Ligeia can also be described like this; to some she has eerie, monster-like qualities, but to the narrator she is the definition of beauty. A hefty gold censer hangs from the middle of the room from a gold chain. Censers are mainly used in religious or holy ceremonies and hold burning incense. Ligeia is often associated with angels and divine beings, so the narrator could have
Poe demonstrates self-destruction in “Ligeia” through the thoughts and actions of both the narrator and his wife, Ligeia. As the story opens with the unnamed narrator struggling to remember how he met his mysterious wife, the reader is told …show more content…
The narrator buys this shabby-looking abbey shortly after Ligeia’s death and around the same time that he meets his second wife Lady Rowena Trevanion. The condition of the house is reflective of the narrator’s mental state and personifies memories that “are identified with the narrator’s feelings of loss” (Bieganowski 1). Since the house is bought shortly after Ligeia’s passing, the narrator is still grieving over the loss of his one true love and he does that through dressing up the house. The narrator “leaves the exterior of the building in its sagging state, but inside he furnishes the rooms lavishly and strangely” with richly gold curtains, towering walls, and a solid ebony bridal couch (Kincheloe 1). He tries to revive the inside of the melancholy house, but he leaves the outside alone. Because the house can be aligned to the narrator’s mental state, this decision signifies that the narrator has no intention to fix the structural problems of his mind, and only wishes to cover them up - just as he is doing with the house. Another way the narrator employs the house to demonstrate his mental state, is his choice of weird and unusual furnishings and decorations. In the bridal chamber, the curtains are embroidered with imposing, black arabesque figures. These ornamentations are peculiar as they “[partake] the true character of the arabesque only when regraded from a single point of view” and from any other view their forms change (Poe 5). From one stance, the figures are monsters, but from another they transform into dignified people. Ligeia can also be described like this; to some she has eerie, monster-like qualities, but to the narrator she is the definition of beauty. A hefty gold censer hangs from the middle of the room from a gold chain. Censers are mainly used in religious or holy ceremonies and hold burning incense. Ligeia is often associated with angels and divine beings, so the narrator could have