Why did she have to Annabel Lee-ave??

 This week we're working on literary analysis and we started off strong with my favorite poem; Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe.

If you haven't seen Shipwrecked's Poe

series then my oh my do I have a

recommendation for you! 

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

    Now I'm not a big poem person; I have nothing against them, it's just not a medium that's ever really spoken to me or has been able to reach me on an emotional level. The one exception is Annabel Lee. I love this poem and I'm not exactly sure why, but it's so moving and tragic.  

     We were discussing how Annabell Lee dies at the end and some people had takes on it that I had never considered or heard. Some of the interpretations were that the author of the poem has a stalker/obsession with her and kills her as a way to keep her to themselves, ending with them lying next to her corpse in her tomb, after having a mental breakdown at her death. Or that the author is mentally unwell and imagined the whole thing and is having a mental and emotional crisis.  

    I disagree with this interpretation. For me, Annabel Lee has always read like a tragic love story about two people who are soulmates, with a deep love for each other and when Annabel Lee dies, the author is left heartbroken to have lost their other half. I have a few theories about what happens to Annabel Lee, some of which are definitely seen through a more modern lens but I think they're fun nonetheless. 

Theory 1: Annabel Lee simply dies of an illness.

"That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee."

She caught a chill and nature took its toll and she didn't survive. At the time of this being written, people died of mysterious illnesses quite often so it's not uncommon for someone to catch a cold and be gone by the next week and the heartbreak of losing someone, especially if they're young like she's described is a terrible and sad event that no one could do and so the author is processing their grief. 

Theory 2. Annabel Lee is an angel or celestial being who is then forced back to Heaven by the other angels who were jealous of her love with a mortal. 

"With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me."

"My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me"

"The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me"

    The author brings up multiple times how the angels envy and covet their love and the " her highborn kinsmen" makes me believe that the people who took her away are either noble or celestial beings themselves and Annabel Lee is also one of them. An angel comes down to earth to be with her human lover and when the other angels find out where she ran away to, or if she's breaking some kind of rule that angels cannot live with the humans, she is kidnapped and brought back to the Heavens. 

This concept reminds me of the stories of Selkies, where the Selkies, seal people who have the ability to remove their seal skin and transform into humans but they must always keep their seal skin safe and taken care of, otherwise they grow sick because they cannot change back and go back into the ocean. In many tales about Selkies, they have to choose between a life on land with the person they love or back in their home and their original form.

Theory 3. Annabel Lee is a noble and the author is common-born, and her noble family demanded she marries someone else or performs her noble duties. 

"So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea."

"That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee."

"And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea."

 My other interpretation of this line is along the lines that she is either royalty or noble-born and falls in love with the author who is of a lower class, and to prevent her from being with someone below her station, they lock her up in their castle/kingdom by the sea, and she dies of either heartbreak or suicide by jumping from her locked tower/tomb and into the ocean at night and the author is grieving the loss by joining her "in her tomb by the sounding sea" and both lovers die. 

Theory 4: This is a Sapphic love story and the author is also a woman.  

The Sapphic flag 

This theory comes from the fact that nowhere in the poem is it confirmed the author is a man. It's mostly assumed but it never says "he" or anything to implicate the author is male. If the author is a woman and they're in a queer relationship that they must keep secret for their safety. But it gets discovered by Annabel Lee's family and they are separated, forced to either marry a man or be locked away in punishment and Annabel Lee dies being locked up and the author goes to join her. 

Similar to the story of Achilles and Patroclus who were in love and wished to be buried together as lovers but were buried separately or how their story has been retold in a way that erases the queer aspect of their relationship. 

What is your take of Annabel Lee and what next Poe poem would you want to analyze? I'm very tempted to bring out my giant book of all Poe's work and re-read them again and give a deeper look this time through!