What Ligeia Means

Ligeia represents the narrator’s romantic and spiritual side and is associated with the good mother, while Rowena, who represents his more mundane and materialistic side, is associated with the rejecting mother.

What is the main idea of Ligeia?

‘Ligeia’ is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1838. Weaving together a number of Poe’s favourite themes and preoccupations, it’s an unsettling and ambiguous tale about love, beauty, death, resurrection, and drugs (yes, we’ll come to that).

Does the supernatural play a role in Poe's short story Ligeia?

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. … So when Ligeia dies, the narrator of “Ligeia” is left alone, without both his teacher and wife. He is like a lost child.