Love Wandering In Dreamland

The paper holds the view that the feminine ideal itself is not a new thought. However, considering it together with a certain writer's works, we can discover something new. Edgar Allan Poe, whose important influence is never ignored, is one of the great writers of American literature in the 19th century. What'more, as a controversial writer in the history of American literature, he has an outstanding talent for writing, thinking, and literary theory. How does he express his vision of feminine ideal in his works, then? In his poems, the beautiful women, in his eyes, are dying, spreading an exquisite fragrance all around, ascend to heaven. Relying absolutely on the women'love, and because of their deaths, the men live a vacuous life, thus finding solace or being forgotten. In the men'mind, the women, who are romantic, and tender and affectionate, are all angels in his poems. And the poet himself is in the world of ideal and dream, living in a utopian fancy and in paradise. But in his stories, he adopts a way different from his poems, forming a sharp contrast between them. So many women are condemned to hell as ghosts. He shows his strong desire in advance of life by pinning his hopes on the women'deaths. His attitude in poems is completely different from that in stories. In reality, his vision of the feminine ideal appears in the various ways on the different levels. This way the contradiction is that the point of view of the women as the angels becomes that of them as the ghosts. In the two respects, the poems and stories explain, complement, and enrich his vision of the feminine ideal. From the shift of point of view of the women as the angels towards that of them as the ghosts, from the description of the desolate terror, and from the cruel world spurned by him, we thoroughly understand that he looks forward to and eagerly pursues a happy life. Though his works are full of hopelessness, loss, indifference, misery, desolation, and terror, they imply that the strong desire beyond life and the pursuit of it fills his inner heart that wishes to gain the beauty, warmth, and love. The life is composed of life and death, love and hate——a combination of the two ideals. His deep love of life expresses the death by producing his works; describing the death of the beauty, Poe makes widely known his true meanings of the feminine ideal. Therefore, the contradictions, pain, and loss in his writings give us a particular aesthetic conception. The shift of the view of the angels towards that of the ghosts means an expression of the unity of opposites in Edgar Allan Poe'feminine ideal.