Not only does Ligeia's unusual beauty represents a reoccurring theme throughout the story, but the text portrays Poe's method of rejecting the "ordinary," a common theme in past literature, while still promoting the ideas of Romanticism. One example of this is how Poe repeatedly points out how flaws in the classical appearance of Rowena, "the fair-haired, the blue-eyed," by comparing her to Ligeia whose "features were not of that regular mould which we have been …showed first 75 words of 294 total…

…showed last 75 words of 294 total…Romantic themes particularly since the narrator describes her eyes and voice further as "which at once so delighted and appalled me - by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her low voice." In this statement, Ligeia almost frightens the narrator because of her "grotesque" and supernatural qualities. He cannot explain what he sees, but in Romanticism, many times the writers threw out the rational and replaced it with the irregular and unexplained.