Ligeia | Themes
Poe loads enough references to the will and to human striving to make "Ligeia" seem to be more than the record of an hallucination. At the least, the story dramatizes the human yearning for (if not the fulfillment of) power over life and death. Ligeia masters "moral, physical, and mathematical science," but cannot exert mastery over her own being. The story allows her and her husband to achieve this godlike mastery, perhaps only as a wish-fulfillment, or perhaps as a supreme triumph of human potential.
D. H. Lawrence, in his quirky and lively Studies in Classic American Literature...
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