First Things First…
As usual as I’m making my way through Poe’s stories, I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know if Morella is a person’s name or has some other meaning. I think, at least, that it’s actually horror. The last few I’ve gotten to have been, and I’m happy about that.
3 Things I Like
3. “… Not of Eros”
“With a feeling of deep yet most singular affection I regarded my friend Morella. Thrown by accident into her society many years ago, my soul, from our first meeting, burned with fires it had never before known; but the fires were not of Eros, and bitter and tormenting to my spirit was the gradual conviction that I could in no manner define their unusual meaning, or regulate their vague intensity.”
Narrator
In the very first sentence of the story, the narrator identifies Morella as his friend. But it sounds like his affection for her was much deeper and more intense than that which is felt in most friendships.
Still, he also says his feelings were “not of Eros.”
In other words, he was never in love with Morella. He couldn’t quite identify the nature of his feelings—why they were so intense—but he knew they weren’t romantic. This makes for an interesting jumping off point, especially when he reveals before the end of the opening paragraph that they got married anyway.
2. Dying Curse
On her deathbed, Morella tells her husband his days of happiness are over, while his days of sorrow are just beginning.
It’s odd because we never see things get bad between them. The narrator says that, as time went on in their marriage, he could bear his wife less and less. Eventually, he was practically praying for her to just die already. But we never see them fight or argue.
Nevertheless, based on what he’s said about Morella, it’s fitting that she gets to tell him how much the rest of his life is gonna suck without her.
1. Morella Reincarnated
I don’t know if reincarnation is the literal explanation for why, following Morella’s death, the daughter inexplicably and unnaturally develops into a carbon copy of her… or why her father names her Morella, almost against his will, even as his affection for her has darkened because of her likeness to her mother.
But it’s a fun twist when the daughter—Morella #2—dies and, when the father goes to bury her, he finds no trace of the mother’s body.
1 Thing I’m Mixed On
1. Rapid Loss of Affection
After Morella dies and the daughter is born, the narrator goes from…
“I loved her with a love more fervent than I had believed it possible to feel for any denizen of earth…”
To…
“But, ere long, the heaven of this pure affection became darkened, and gloom, and horror, and grief, swept over it in clouds…”
… with nothing in between. Those sentences are literally back to back. They’re the end of one paragraph and the start of the next.
Part of me is like, hey, can we get to know this new girl, at least a little bit, before having this relationship fall apart, too? But then part of me realizes she’s not really a character but a plot device. And we don’t need to know her for the twist at the end to make sense.
1 Thing I Don’t Like
1. The Vagaries of Being Married to Morella
Nothing about the narrator’s relationship with Morella is clear.
It starts with the intensity of his feelings for her. And though I already said I like how different it is for him to feel such strong emotions but for them not to be romantic feelings, he still never makes sense of why these emotions are so intense.
Once they’re married, the narrator says…
“I abandoned myself implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered with an unflinching heart into the intricacies of her studies.”
But why? Why only read what she’s reading? Why only study what she’s studying? He seems obsessed with her intellect, but at the same time, is this really what causes his feelings about her to nosedive?
Not only are his emotions intense when they first met, but they’re just as intense when he’s hoping she’ll die.
This relationship is the basis of the whole story, but it’s hard to wrap my arms around it.
Tim Matassa
