. The Lady
Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine is, therefore, as I have already hinted,
not really a character, but only a necessary adjunct to the final
scene, an indispensable piece of stage property. In order to indicate
this fact, Poe was obliged to abstain carefully from describing her
in detail, and to seek in every possible way to prevent the reader's
attention from dwelling long upon her. Hence, although, in writing the
first part of the story, he devoted several pages to the description
of the heroine, he dismissed the Lady Rowena, in the second part,
with only two descriptive epithets,--"fair-haired and blue-eyed," to
distinguish her briefly from the dark-eyed and raven-haired Ligeia.

With the help of this convenient body, it was easy for Poe to develop
his final scene. The intense struggle of Ligeia's soul to win its way
back to the world could be worked up with enthralling suspense: and
when at last the climax was reached and the husband realized that his
lost love stood living before him, the purpose of the story would be
accomplished, Ligeia's will would have done its work, and there would
be nothing more to tell. Poe wrote, "These are the full, and the
black, and the wild eyes--of my lost love--of the Lady--of the
LADY LIGEIA": and the story was ended.

For it must be absolutely understood that with whatever may have
happened after that moment of entire recognition this particular
story does not, and cannot, concern itself. Whether in the next
moment Ligeia dies again irrevocably, or whether she lives an ordinary
lifetime and then ultimately dies forever, or whether she remains
alive eternally as a result of the triumph of her will, are questions
entirely beyond the scope of the story and have nothing to do with the
single narrative effect which Poe, from the very outset, was planning
to produce. At no other point does he more clearly display his mastery
than in his choice of the perfect moment at which to end his story.

It would, of course, be idle to assert that Poe disposed of all the
narrative problems which confronted him while constructing this story
precisely in the order I have indicated. Unfortunately, he never
explained in print the genesis of any of his stories, and we can only
imagine the process of his plans with the aid of his careful analysis
of the development of "The Raven." But I think it has been clearly
shown that the structure of "Ligeia" is at all points inevitably
conditioned by its t