Poe: A Second Example

The narrator's depiction of Ligeia's eyes in paragraphs three, four, and five provides another good example of writing the body. Her eyes are black and perhaps larger than "normal" eyes. Many different attributes could be written on those eyes, depending on one's point of view, personal experiences, etc. To the narrator, however, these eyes contain a "strangeness," which is apparent not in their physical appearance but in their "expression." This writing of the body tells us two important things about the narrator. First, he cannot see Ligeia without writing her body; second, his writing of Ligeia's body is beginning to tell the reader more about the narrator's demeanor than Ligeia's. The narrator recognizes the beauty of Ligeia's eyes but can't fathom their significance for himself. In paragraph four, he engages in "intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes" and "[y]et not the more could [he] define [their] sentiment [meaning], or analyze, or even steadily view it." The narrator is by now unsteady in his own grip on life. He admits in paragraph five that "of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me." Clearly the narrator is writing Ligeia's body as the center of both the positive and negative emotions that torture his soul.

Poe: A Transition

The narrator's change in attitude and grip on reality are reflected in the way he writes Ligeia's body in paragraphs seven and fifteen. He sees both Ligeia and the Lady Rowena grow ill, and his combination of physical characteristics with an overactive imagination when writing meaning on their bodies jumps off the page. Check out these passages yourself, and see how writing the body transforms pure descriptive narration into a revealing look into the psyche of a main character. Particularly notable is this line in paragraph fifteen: "I could not fail to observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperment, and in her excitability by trivial causes of fear." By this point in the story it is clear that the narrator has a nervous temperment, but he reveals this to the reader through how he writes Lady Rowena's body. Also, "her excitability by trivial causes of fear" actually describes the narrator's sensibilities later in the story when he is alone with the corpse of the Lady Rowena.