Ligeia

Edgar Allen Poe does a great job of combining the gothic grotesque with a love story in this short story. Many parts of this story were similar to Poe's short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher." The rise of the dead and the existence of a mysterious illness were both key parts of each short story. Personification was frequently used with the description of Lady Ligeia's "black eyes and their brilliancy," and Rowena's "fear that the gold tapestries were alive."  The description of Lady Ligeia's beauty was so in depth and precise that it was hard to imagine an existing flaw that she might carry.  Health seemed to be a reoccurring issue in this short story, considering the mysterious illness that arose in each of the narrator's two wives. What I felt really spoke to me in this story was the difference in the love that the narrator had for each of his wives. Lady Ligeia obviously stole the narrator's heart causing him to continuously think and dream about memories of them. The love that the narrator had for his second wife was much different. The passion was not there. The love and emotion in the second marriage was obviously not mutually consistent. In the end it was Lady Ligeia who overtook Rowena's corpse and was found standing in the bridal chamber. In my opinion, the narrator and his addiction to opium had a great affect on the outcome. I personally believe that the narrator longed for the presence of Lady Ligeia so much that it was only an imagined sight of her standing in the bridal chamber, nothing more.