Roberto Armenteros
April 25, 2000

Thesis: Obsession in "Ligeia" and "A Rose for Emily" ends up destroying the
protagonists: the husband of Ligeia goes insane and Emily kills her lover
to keep him with her.


Obsession in "Ligeia" and "A Rose for Emily"

In the story "Ligeia" by Edgar Allan Poe and " A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, the main

characters' behavior is controlled by their obsession with the individuals they love. In "Ligeia", the

main character, who is also the narrator, was obsessed with his wife Ligeia. The reader gets to

know the main character in this story through his own thinking. In this way, the increasing

dread, terror and amazement through the narrator's actions are all part of being locked in his own mind,

for he controls the reader's feelings. In "A Rose for Emily", the main character Emily was obsessed with

a young man named Homer form the north. Emily always had a mystery around her and her actions

were unpredictable since everything in her life was happening inside her house, as if the walls were

hiding some evil. The reader gets to know Emily and her obsession with Homer through the people

from town, who were trying to get close to her and look inside her house to find out about her.

The fascination of the main character in "Ligeia" with his wife Ligeia was present from the beginning

of the story. His words always emphasized that his wife was the greatest and most enchanting woman he

had ever known:

…in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet
placid cast of beauty, and her thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low
musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and
stealthily progressive that they have been unnoticed and unknown.1

The way in which he describes his wife shows his overwhelming attraction to her, which makes him see

her as if she were his whole world, his only reason to live. Things became even more intense when his Ligeia

grew ill:
The wild eyes blazed with a too---too long glorious effulgence; the pale
fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue
veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the
tides of the most gentle emotion (Poe, 1157).

Now his obsession grew stronger as he fought against death to protect his beloved one. He was willing to

do anything in order to make things the way they used to be. Eventually she died from her illness. With her

death, the character's mental collapse was complete. That's why soon after her death he married another

woman, Lady Rowena Trevanion. In his mind, his new wife was going to be the way to connect to his

wife Ligeia, hence to reincarnate her and bring her back from death.

In the story "A Rose for Emily," Emily was a well-respected woman in a southern town, whom most

people admired and viewed as a "tradition," "a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town."2 Emily, as

well as the main character in "Ligeia," was obsessed with the person she loved, in this case Homer. People

could often see them:

as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy,
Miss Emily. with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked
and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove (Faulkner, 671).

Before knowing Homer, the only man in Emily's life was her father, whom she excessively loved. Emily's

father, while still alive, managed to keep men away from her. Homer was the one who changed Emily's life.

Now her father was not there to chase him away. For the first time people could see Emily having a social

life as she shared her love with Homer. She had always lived inside a dark world, but Homer brought light

to her eyes. However, Emily was afraid Homer would leave her as most of her previews romances did.

She could not stand the idea of losing the man of her life. This is the main reason for Emily's obsession

with this new romance.
As both stories progress the main characters' obsessions were growing stronger. The narrator in "Ligeia"

never stopped loving Ligeia even after her death. At his stage, he was no longer in touch with reality and his

plan of reincarnating his dead beloved one was his priority. His obsession reaches a climax when he kills his

present wife Lady Rowena Trevanion, so Ligeia would defeat the "conqueror worm" (Poe, 1158) and return

to his arms through the dead body, and so she did in his distorted mind. This suggested that the great love he

felt was not only for Ligeia, but also for death. In the case of Emily her obsession also dictated her actions.

For a moment, Emily's romance with Homer was going well, until Homer apparently disappeared from the

town. Everybody thought he had really left, but they were wrong. He was now closer to Emily than ever.

Emily did not want to take the risk of losing Homer and decided to kill him so he would be her lover forever:

The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but
now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of
love, had cuckolded him (Faulkner, 673).

For as long as thirty years she was sleeping with the dead body and she never stopped loving him. Only her

death put an end to her relationship with death itself. After observing each character's attitude toward death

of their respective loved ones, they have something in common, the fact that they were both in love with death.