Annabel Lee: A Critical Appreciation

Edgar Allan Poe wrote "Annabel Lee" in May 1849, a few months before his
death, and it first appeared in The Southern Literary Messenger posthumously
in November 1849. Although the poem may refer to a number of women in
Poe's life, most acknowledge it to be in memory of Virginia Clemm, Poe's wife
who married him at the age of thirteen and who died in 1847 before she turned
twenty-five. The work returns to Poe's frequent fixation with the Romantic
image of a beautiful woman who has died too suddenly in the flush of youth. As
indicated more thoroughly in his short story "The Oval Portrait," Poe often
associated death with the freezing and capturing of beauty, and many of his
heroines reach the pinnacle of loveliness on their deathbed, as with Ligeia of the
eponymous story.
The poem specifically mentions the youth of the unnamed narrator and
especially of Annabel Lee, and it celebrates child-like emotions in a way
consistent with the ideals of the Romantic era. Many Romantics from the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries viewed adulthood as a corruption of the
purer instincts of childhood, and they preferred nature to society because they
considered it to be a better and more instinctive state. Accordingly, Poe treats
the narrator's childhood love for Annabel Lee as fuller and more eternal than the
love of adults. Annabel Lee is gentle and persistent in her love, and she has no
complex emotions that may darken or complicate her love.
The poem's setting has several Gothic elements, as the kingdom by the sea is
lonely and in an undefined but mysterious location. Poe does not describe the
setting with any specificity, and he weaves a hazy, romantic atmosphere around
the kingdom until he ends by offering the stark and horrific image of a
"sepulchre there by the sea." The location by the sea recalls the city of "The
City in the Sea," which is also located by the sea and which is conceptually
connected to death and decay. At the same time, the nostalgic tone and the
Gothic background serve to inculcate the image of a love that outlasts all
opposition, from the spiritual jealousy of the angels to the physical barrier of
death. Although Annabel Lee has died, the narrator can still see her "bright
eyes," an image of her soul and of the spark of life that gives a promise of a
future meeting between the two lovers.
As in the case of a number of Poe's male protagonists who mourn the premature
death of beloved women, the love of narrator of "Annabel Lee" goes beyond

simple adoration to a more bizarre attachment. Whereas Annabel Lee seems to

have loved him in a straightforward, if nonsexual, manner, the protagonist has
mentally deified her. He blames everyone but himself for her death, pointing at
the conspiracy of angels with nature and at the show of paternalism inherent in
her "highborn kinsmen" who "came and bore her away," and he remains
dependent upon her memory. While the narrator of the poem "Ulalume" suffers
from an unconscious need to grieve and to return to Ulalume's grave, the
narrator of "Annabel Lee" chooses ironically to lie down and sleep next to a
woman who is herself lying down by the sea.
The name "Annabel Lee" continues the pattern of a number of Poe's names for
his dead women in that it contains the lulling but melancholy "L" sound.
Furthermore, "Annabel Lee" has a peaceful, musical rhythm which reflects the
overall musicality of the poem, which makes heavy use of the refrain phrases
"in this kingdom by the sea" and "of the beautiful Annabel Lee," as well as of
the repetition of other words. In particular, although the poem's stanzas have a
somewhat irregular length and structure, the rhyme scheme continually
emphasizes the three words "me," "Lee," and "sea," enforcing the linked nature
of these concepts within the poem while giving the poem a song-like sound.