![]() Major themes īesides warning readers to obey their eye doctors, Poe seems to be addressing the concept of "love at first sight" – in fact, the first line of the story points out that "it was the fashion to ridicule the idea". The editor of the Dollar Newspaper printed "The Spectacles" with the comment that "it is one of the best from chaste and able pen and second only to the popular prize production, ' The Gold-Bug.'" Editor John Stephenson Du Solle reprinted the story in his daily newspaper The Spirit of the Times in Philadelphia, saying, "Poe's Story of 'The Spectacles' is alone worth double the price of the paper." It was first published overseas in the May 3, 1845, issue of London-based Lloyd's Entertaining Journal. Upon its reprinting in the Broadway Journal in March 1845, Poe himself acknowledged he was "not aware of the great length of 'The Spectacles' until too late to remedy the evil". Critics suggested that the piece was paid by the word, hence its relatively high length, especially for a work of humor. "The Spectacles" was first published in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper in the Maissue. He ends by marrying Madame Stephanie and vows to "never be met without SPECTACLES" - having acquired a pair of his own at last. When the elder Madame Lalande discovered that he had mistaken her for a young woman because of his eyesight, and that he had been openly courting her instead of being civil to a relative, she decided to play a trick on him with the help of Talbot and another confederate. Whenever the narrator spoke of "Madame Lalande", everyone assumed he meant the younger woman. She was accompanied by a much younger relative, Madame Stephanie Lalande. Simpson, had come to America to meet her husband's heir. He realizes that she is his great-great-grandmother. She begins a rant about a very foolish descendant of hers, one Napoleon Bonaparte Froissart. He expresses horror at her appearance, and even more so when he learns she is 82 years old. When he puts on the spectacles, he sees that she is a toothless old woman. He courts her and proposes marriage she makes him promise that, on their wedding night, he will wear his spectacles. His companion Talbot identifies the woman as Madame Eugenie Lalande, a wealthy widow, and promises to introduce the two. He describes her beauty at length, despite not being able to see her well he requires spectacles but, in his vanity, "resolutely refused to employ them". At the opera he sees a beautiful woman in the audience and falls in love instantly. The narrator, 22-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte Froissart, changes his last name to "Simpson" as a requirement to inherit a large sum from a distant cousin, Adolphus Simpson. Illustration by Byam Shaw for a London edition dated 1909
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