Beauty and Strangeness – Poe’s Ligeia
Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic tale “Ligeia” is a study in the supernatural and feminine beauty. In exploring Ligeia’s physical beauty, Poe quotes Elizabethan politician and scholar Francis Bacon: “There is no exquisite beauty,” says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all forms and genres of beauty “without some strangeness in proportion. “.
In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we find that Stephen Dedalus translated Aquino’s model of beauty using the following words: integrity, balance, and radiance. “Balance” is often translated as “proportion” by others. So if something is missing from any of the three items above, then the observed beauty will be flawed.
In Ligeia, Poe’s neurotic and unreliable storyteller is determined to uncover that ‘strangeness’ that he found so disconcerting: “He was possessed by a passion to discover.” After examining Ligeia’s hair, skin, nose, lips, teeth, smile, chin, and eyes in great detail, he concludes that her eyes carry the unmistakable light of strangeness: “They were, I must believe, much larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were fuller than the fullest gazelle eyes … “And in the end it is the eyes that convince him that the revived corpse is Ligeia and not Lady Rowena Trevanion. by Tremaine.
As part of his study of the resplendent Russian aristocracy, in Anna Karenina, Leon Tolstoy explored Anna’s physical beauty: face, arms, neck, hair, feet, hands, and even her dress and accessories:
“An unearthly force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating were her round arms with her bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck with its pearl thread, mesmerizing the loose curls of her hair. loose, fascinating the graceful and light movements of her little feet and hands, fascinating was that beautiful face in her impatience, but there was something terrible and cruel in her fascination. “
But it is nowhere in particular that he finds fault with Ana. Nothing is faulty. It is the whole – the totality of the fascination – that gives off the smell of cruelty and strangeness, thus destroying the balance of its beauty.
Scott Fitzgerald not only created a healthy American beauty in Daisy Buchanan, the beauty from The Great Gatsby, but an American beauty with mental problems and moral flaws. Understanding is not easy for Daisy, and when she gives an opinion, it is always a trivial or silly opinion that often borders on the absurd. Notice how he deals with a single idea by repeating the same idea three times: “In two weeks it will be the longest day of the year.” He looked at us all beaming. “Do you always look at the longest day of the year and then lose it? I always see the longest day of the year and then lose it.” If you count the pronoun “that,” you will notice that she has mentioned the longest day of the year five times. And throughout the novel, Daisy keeps stuttering and repeating herself; a problem that Nick Carraway – the narrator – calls “echolalia.”
For the fictional reader, nothing can be more moving than the downfall of a beautiful, intelligent, and honorable character; but when the character is female and of the upper cortex, the situation becomes pathetic. Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth chronicles the disappearance of an old beauty from New York society. Of all the beautiful women portrayed in novels by male and female authors, Lily Bart remains the epitome of exquisiteness and elegance. Harassed by the financial problems left by her bankrupt husband, Lily’s mother hopes for a better future through her daughter:
“Only one thought comforted her, and that was the contemplation of Lily’s beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as if it were a weapon that had gradually been forged for her revenge. It was the last asset of her fortunes, the nucleus around which his life would be rebuilt. “
When Lily poses for a living painting, she dazzles viewers with her beauty. Yet readers gasp and shudder in anticipation of impending death. Selden, Lily’s sedated lover and the most insipid character in the novel, senses the strangeness in Lily’s beauty: they look at her with rather admiring eyes; that “she was so evidently a victim of the civilization that had produced her that the links of her bracelet looked like handcuffs that chained her to her destiny.”
Hidden (most of the time) from easy detection are the strange traits of the beautiful female characters. Thanks to Edgar Allan Poe, armed with Lord Bacon’s axiom, “There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in proportion,” readers may be looking for the strangeness – the lack of balance – that makes a particular character unique. handsome.