Horrifying Obsession: Reading Incest in Edgar Allan Poe’s 'Ligeia

This article examines American author Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Ligeia” (first published in 1838) through the lenses of sibling and other forms of incest in the first half of the nineteenth century along with more recent knowledge regarding incest and its ramifications. Research into legal documents, newspapers and magazines, literature, and other written works from around Poe’s lifetime reveal social, scientific, and cultural tensions regarding “appropriate” levels of incest and the usage of opposite-sex siblings as templates for future erotic love. Although other works by Poe, such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), have previously been evaluated for references to incest and its resultant trauma, “Ligeia” has not been considered in this manner. Despite such exclusion, the undertones of sibling incest in “Ligeia” serve to enhance Poe’s strategic development of horror in the reader by merging ambiguity with a reflection of late-eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century shifting sentiments on incest stemming from previously sanctioned familial attachments that precluded idealized romantic love.