Poe's Stories: Ligeia Summary & Analysis

Like many of Poe’s narratives, Ligeia begins with a memory. But the narrator’s efforts to conjure the memory of Ligeia—his wife—are unclear. Ligeia’s origins are a mystery, even to her husband. The figure of Ligeia is immediately linked to an indistinct, dream-like feeling, and in this way she becomes connected also to all longing or senses of loss.

The list of descriptors create a powerful impression of Ligeia. Her quietness, her ability to sneak up on the narrator, her low voice, and pale skin—all of these features combine to create an image of a ghostly, ethereal woman. She seems already to be haunting the narrator, in a way.

Ligeia’s eyes are an important symbol of the story, because they provide a warning sign of the supernatural, superstitious side of the narrator. Whenever Ligeia’s eyes appear in the story, the narrator is under a kind of spell – they fascinate him. Their unnatural size and the way they swell and fill with a superhuman passion put Ligeia into an unknown category, somewhere beyond the other characters, somewhere beyond human. Whether she truly was beyond human, or become so in the narrator’s mind after the grief of her death affected him, is not entirely clear.

Ligeia has a strange effect on the narrator’s mind. His memory of her is made up of ethereal qualities that are neither human nor inhuman. The objects and animals and heavenly bodies that she inspires give her an otherworldly, larger than life character that looms over the narrator and the story.

The connection of Ligeia to the divine gives her a power not just over the narrator but over his whole world. She becomes larger than a human character and transforms into abstract concepts like energy and will. Giving his wife this power and comparing her to a goddess on one hand shows the depth of his love. At the same time, it’s unclear if these traits of Ligeia’s were real, or are rather products of the narrator’s own overpowering sense of loss at her death. It is possible, in fact, to see Ligeia as a kind of embodiment of grief—calm, with outbursts of powerful energy. Poe’s triumph in the story is to have Ligeia be both—both a kind of supernatural being and potentially “enhanced” by the narrator’s grief-filled memories.

Poe gives Ligeia not only a physically intimidating character but also an intellectual superiority over the narrator, so that she becomes a kind of ultimate figure, both lover, mother and teacher.

Like a flame about to go out, Ligeia’s supernatural qualities begin to wither on her death bed and the narrator suffers a horrible realization of what he is about to lose. The loss of strength in the eyes removes Ligeia’s extraordinariness and makes her seem more human, which in turn makes her tragic refusal to accept death all the more upsetting.

In addition to Ligeia’s qualities of intelligence and beauty, the narrator finally sees evidence of her affection for him, a quality that he never expected. This show of love in the last hours of her life gives Ligeia more humanity that fills the narrator with sympathy, and with a sense of loss.

As we’ve heard earlier in the story, there is a special connection between Ligeia and certain volumes of literature and poetry. She shows the force of this connection on her deathbed and seems to especially embody her own words and becomes very frantic with the idea of the worm. The final quote will be instrumental in the story that follows because it alludes to her refusal to submit to death.

Fitting Poe’s tendency to connect place and person, the narrator finds the old city tarnished by the memory of Ligeia. But his escape does not free him from this condition. He chooses an old, Gothic abbey, which represents the grieving, maddened state of his mind. By confining himself in this way, and surrounding himself with rich, dark decorations, the narrator only exaggerates his dark mood.

When we were introduced to Ligeia, the narrative was entirely composed of descriptions of her appearance and intelligence and all the qualities that the narrator loved about her, but in the first months of marriage with Rowena, the narrator is more concerned with the architecture that surrounds them than the woman herself. Ligeia’s memory looms in the background.

The moving images on the walls of the abbey make the structure itself seem restless—it doesn’t feel homely at all. The figures mimic the characters in the story, changing in mood and always on the verge of monstrosity.

Grief and the absence of Ligeia has transformed the narrator’s experience of love. He is unable to love Rowena. And to make matters worse, his sensations are exaggerated by the effects of opium, making us, as readers, unable to determine what in the story to come is supernatural and what is the product of his opium-drugged state.

The similarity between Rowena and Ligeia continues, and their lives seem to follow the same pattern, with Rowena now falling victim to a similar condition that leaves her bed ridden. But instead of the narrator’s love to surround her, there are the tomb-like images and decorations of the abbey’s fateful bridal chamber.

Fitting the description of her as a kind of double of Ligeia, Rowena seems to have a sixth sense for the paranormal menace of this room. The narrator is in an altered state, drugged up on opium, and though his visions appear to him in a hallucinatory daze, they also seem to conjure this angelic presence that are reminiscent of Ligeia’s hold on him from beyond the grave.

The visions that began as dim, hazy mirages become clearer and the red color of the wine is definite now. Though the narrator excuses his visions as a product of the drugs, there is a definite correlation between them and Rowena’s state – after the mysterious addition to the wine, she loses all strength. Are these the narrator’s drug-filled visions? Is something supernatural going on? Is the narrator himself half-unknowingly killing Rowena and reenacting the death of Ligeia? Nothing is clear.

A pattern has occurred in the sightings of this angelic presence and the fading of Rowena’s spirit. Now, as the hallucinations cease, the paranormal spirit and Rowena are acting as one.

The illusion of the wine can be seen in Rowena’s blushing cheeks and the ebb and flow of Rowena’s strength corresponds exactly with the narrator’s dreams about Ligeia. This shows how god-like the narrator’s mind (or Ligeia’s ghost?) is at this point, and how much of an empty vessel his new wife has always been to him.

These signs of life in Rowena are the most life and beauty we have seen yet in the narrator’s description of her. It is as if the thoughts of Ligeia are bringing her back to life, fuelling the narrator’s passion so strongly that the dim impression he had of his new wife is erased.

The narrator cannot get away from Ligeia. His inability to stop thinking about her seems to have resulted in the haunting of his mind becoming a reality – the physical world has formed before him in the image of his grief. His obsession with Ligeia, the influence of opium, and Ligeia’s larger-than-life personality have together created an unstable reality, where death and life cannot be separated, where Ligeia can return to him. Whether she truly has supernaturally returned, whether it is in fact the narrator’s drug-fueled mind, and whether he is truly an innocent in all this—none of that is clear. But, regardless, and in part because of the lack of clarity, the overpowering, reality-altering, and even monstrous power of his grief for his lost wife is profoundly tangible.