Inspiring Death: Poe's Poetic Aesthetics, "Annabel Lee," and the Communities of

Mourning in Nineteenth-Century America

Author(s): Adam Bradford
Source: The Edgar Allan Poe Review , Spring 2011, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 72-
100
Published by: Penn State University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41506434

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72 Inspiring Death

Inspiring Death: Poe's P

the Communities of Mo
Adam Bradford

On the evening of Decemb

presented a play and a panto
residents of Richmond, Virgi
or Family Feuds," was a rousi
pantomime, entitled "Raym
company's actors, a Mr. Robe
and crying, "The House is on
leaped from their seats and s
while the fire - racing along
house in a matter of minutes
morning, seventy-two of the

Had Eliza Poe, mother of Edg

Theater Company, she would
Eliza, however, had passed a
most likely of tuberculosis,
little to no importance in Poe
event could have had little eff
a few days of Mrs. Poe's dea
Poe had already been taken
MacKenzie were of Richmond
Mrs. Allan at the home of Bo
his plantation at Turkey Islan
Allans, in a very real sense, "

And yet, in another sense, the

Edgar, along with the Allan
of Richmond regardless of th
of the staggering losses that
writer would later reflect up
and steam-boats or war had
city of Richmond was engulf
memorializing of their dead
respectable first-family of R
part. At his mother's death, th

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and associates don mou
surrounding death, but
of black crepe, hat we
more, Edgar's entire w
gentlemen, the shopke
slaves, donned the mark
sought consolation and

Critics have understan

at so early an age as th
works are drawn, claim
career . . . may be und
losses.5 However, in fo
introduction to grief, t
while they certainly we
rituals, practices, and b
at the time period tha
and not just for Poe b
many wonder about th
a disturbed psyche, th
dialogue with an anteb
conceptualizing and co
aesthetic philosophy is d
culture of mourning an
production of poems th
of just such a culture,
more conventional mour
of the sentimental cultu

Community in Ninet

It would be relatively
in poems and tales li
"The Fall of the House
of the nineteenth-cen
mourning and memor
fear, and dismay - ther
associated with mourn
work to recuperate gr
Perhaps one of the m

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74 Inspiring Death

critics, is "Annabel Lee," wh

my darling - my darling - my
sea," shunning both the "angel
because he fears they wish to
Annabel Lee."7 David Reyn
conventional ideas regarding
speaker favor a "purely imagin
"envious angels in heaven ki
connection to her is not gro
death as a sphere of divine r
angels nor hell's demons can se
each night in her tomb by t
similarly, that Poe's critique
elements of the consolation
death of children, its delinea
moralism."9 Karen Weeks an
critiques sentimental culture a
a ] husband who nightly slee
"Annabel Lee appear [as] ...
th
as demons."10 Indeed, such "
have led Monica Pelaez to c
observes the tradition of mem
struggle to keep her memory
struggle to commemorate a l
exacerbates the sorrow of th
Kennedy, which "[t]he narra
for "why does he try to achi
if his love is indeed spiritual
betrayal of anxiety, a reflex
the poem itself seeks to deny
and understandings of the w
narrator seem "bizarre" and
nineteenth-century practices a
actions of the poem's speaker
performed, are, like Poe's ow
and far more typical than m

The nineteenth-century cult

ways, an appropriation of
cosmologies of death" foun

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as the Protestant R
curious mixture of
Farrell, "Americans
the stark fact of de
Victorians collected
to create satisfying
characteristically Ch
the more Protestant
century America - fo
damnation and more
of family and love
and the afterlife du
mourning rituals an
geographical, and, at
example, appeared in
from the Ohio Valle
was written by blac
females in Dover, V
worn by disparate cl
memorial rituals and
conducting wakes and
mourning portraitur
their promise for aid
and social groups so
an entity than the f
creating a "national"
North and South) an

The fact that death

century Americans
such practices and le
collaborative creatio
portraiture, photogra
either by mourners o
beds, bodies, walls an
its populace.20 Such
"effects" for mourn
himself). As Mary L
consolation "poems, g
to preserve the memo

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76 Inspiring Death

would deny that loss .... [and

that the separation of death m
order to counter loss and alien
a sense of loss and alienation
through the use of objects th
beyond the grave" (897) - to
immortality. po In mourning
frequently depicted enjoyin
continued association with p
affectively charged images, as
reunion for the deceased and t
time, these objects - associat
deceased- were intended to fun
weavings were capable of repre
absence, essentially functioni
the existence elsewhere of a
helped preserve and protect th
kind of "prescience of the glor
a mourner's grief-inspired de
community.22 Because many o
century were either given as g
individual in order to be crea
individual problem of . . . grie
group or the community."23 T
or distributed as gifts, these o
and alienation] and to rebind th
objects became a means for n
social bonds that were necess

These are the some of the pr

century, and they are easi
themselves. The examples of
mourning portraits, and memo
objects that were created, and
who produced and used them.
to understand a mourning po
producing these types of "ef
from when conceptualizing h
dialogue with when articulatin
It is also within such a cultur
heard him proclaim such a p

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 Transcendent Mater
Century Mourning

It is well known that

sites serving to memo
worn by men (which P
and flowing black ve
of this culture. 25 Wh
from the body of th
common way in whic
of hair became a pow
means of envisioning
such cultural practic
and kept them bound
objects in their own
objects that could be
a conduit through w
deceased could be im
and a wide variety o
ones, and because of
An article appearing in
once the most delicat
of our materials and survives us
like love. It is so light, so gentle,
so escaping from the idea of death,
that, with a lock of hair belonging
to a child or friend, we may almost
look up to heaven and compare
notes with angelic nature - may
almost say; T have a piece of thee
here, not unworthy of thy being
now.'"27 These hair clippings and
weavings seemed primed not only
to aid in the memorializing of
departed loved ones, but granted
mourners a kind of imagined access
to the afterlife, encouraging them
to "look up to heaven" and see the
"angelic nature" of their departed
in that realm.

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78 Inspiring Death

As individuals knotted and wo

and more complex mourning p
to their dead. The finished pr
of the deceased but something
producer as well. No longer
finished hair weaving now
to the dead and supposedly
glorious (re)union of mourn
afterlife. If such an object w
mourner, it still retained it
in such a case, it would argu
mourner at the same time t
with the deceased, the "gift"
willingness of the producer to
process. Then the object bec
and counteracting the mourne
still functioning as a catalys
existence. All told, these hai
individuals to "look up to he
and, in many cases, bound t

Hair was thought to memor

and it was, at times, even in
objectsof the period, the m
mourning picture on silk,"
academies for young female
the nineteenth century befor
as post-mortem portraiture
mourning aids were, like the
not only intended to be aest
help the bereaved successfu
mourning aids such as "post
for the bereaved; contemplat
these images "the bereaved [ha
with "the gap [between the

An entry from the diary of S

testifies to this. In 1865, M
infant niece Camille passed
approximately a week later pr

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 family. His notes are
telling. He claimed,
family seemed surpr
delighted with [the pa
and to me it was a re
have been the instrument in
affording so much comfort to
all. Joshua and Edna would sit
before it for an hour together,
and Mr. and Mrs. Searing are
in raptures with it. I have
framed it and hung it up for
all to see and love - for next
to the dear babe herself - it is
now the idol of the family."31
For the family, little Camille 's
painting certainly functioned
as an "icon for the bereaved"
and "contemplating it" was
William Sidney Mount (1807-1868)
unquestionably a type of Portrait of Camille Mount, 1868
"mourning ritual" for those Oil on canvas 17 1/8 x 14 in.

The Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages. Gift of the
who sat "an hour together . . .
Estate of Dorothy deBevoise Mount, 1959.
in raptures with it."32

Poe, himself, testified to his belief in

the power of such objects when he
commissioned the painting of a post-
mortem mourning portrait shortly after
the death of Virginia. While attribution
is unclear, it is thought that this portrait
was painted by Mary Louise Shew, the
benefactor of Poe and Virginia while
they lived at Fordham cottage, and
the individual who arranged Virginia's
funeral and purchased her coffin.33 The
portrait is a compelling one for several
reasons. It would be difficult to surmise,
if one did not already know, that this is,
in fact, a post-mortem portrait. Virginia
wears what appears to be a white dress,

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so Inspiring Death

with a piece of white cloth

right, her eyes half-open; h
skin is pale white, although
eyebrows are brown. The im
she wears and the white "clo
burial shroud, but in the abse
mistaken for more "celestia
turned, her lips are slightly p
how her head fell and her e
death. But on canvas - wher
background of her deathbed (
reclining) - it might just as
a celestial afterlife as it doe
indicates that it was clearly
Fordham it see community,
this painting. Indeed, Poe e
when, following her death
saying that he preferred to
Maria treasured this portrai
potential of the picture to
a means by which they wer
still "living."

Like hair weavings and pain

bound them to both their d
the death of an individual,
quilters and mourners who
gifted quilt squares to on
as well as gathered in "qu
to collectively decorate a
the larger quilt together
S. Howell Quilt (circa 1840) is an
apt example of this, and its work is
testified to not only in the quilt's squares
and stitches, but in the verse that she
inscribed on its central square - verse
which seemingly guided Eliza through a
mourning process similar to that which
the Searings experienced as they looked
at the picture of Camille. The first poem

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 Bradford 81

serves to call up a vision of the absent friend. Entitled "Friendship," it reads:

"In Vain - in different paths we tread - /And though no more mayest soothe
or cheer;/Yet we have those hours of friendship shed,/A sweetness that still
lingers here;/Thy form & look, in memory's glass, /I still distinctly see;/Thy
voice and words, in fancy's ear/Are whispering still to me." Having called up
"in memory's glass" (which in this case is both the mental imagination and
the quilt - for both make the absent "visible") the "form and look" of those
she can no longer "see," Eliza then moves to conceptualize a shared afterlife
in "Eternity" - the second piece of verse. It reads: "When the dream of life
is fled, /When its wasted lamp is dead, /When in cold oblivion's shade, /Beauty,
power, wealth are laid;/Where immortal spirits reign, /There may be all we meet
again;/On the tree of life eternal/Man, let all the hope be staid/Which alone,
for ever vernal, /Bears a leaf that shall not fade."35

Through its verses, this quilt articulates Eliza's mourning process, which begins
by remembering the deceased and ends with Eliza imagining herself bound to
them in a new realm where "immortal spirits reign" and where the "tree of life"
offers a kind of "shade" that covers all and gives them "hope" for continued
existence and association, "ever vernal" in the afterlife. And at the same time
that the quilt functions as a means of collecting and imagining a spiritual
community of now immortalized loved ones, it also binds together a "worldly"
community of mourner, family, and friends - family and friends who stitched
themselves into the social and material fabric of Eliza's mourning process as
they first produced the squares, and then gathered with Eliza to bind those
squares into the larger quilt. Thus, on multiple levels, such an object worked
to console the bereaved and to "prevent the alienation that the separation of
death might otherwise entail."

As one might guess from the verse presented on Eliza Howell's quilt, the
writing (and circulation) of poetry was an important part of the nineteenth
century's culture of mourning and memorializing. Inscribed on paper, quilts,
headstones, urns, memorial samplers, mourning pictures, and more, poetry
became a valuable means of inspiring individuals to imagine the "glories
beyond the grave" that they and their deceased might someday enjoy together.
Given the ubiquity of such poetry, it is perhaps no wonder that throughout the
nineteenth century mourning poetry was not only written and exchanged by
mourners and sympathetic friends, but was widely published and circulated
by otherwise "professional" writers. Indeed, the career of Lydia Huntley
Sigourney, the "Sweet Singer of Hartford," is a testament to the appeal of such

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82 Inspiring Death

poetry throughout the early

verse,perhaps the most com
time, was a mainstay of Sigo
frequently, producing volum
was designed "for those who
wept, pointing through the sh
that 'this light affliction, whi
exceeding and eternal weigh
her consolation poetry as a
"through the shade" of grief a
that it was intended to work
integral to the culture of m
the poetry itself bears out.

In her poem, "The Good Son

has died while on a voyage. T
mother's mournful state, griev
he lies in a "foreign grave" w
close by where she might visit
evidence of the deceased per
trained, the home he made so
a certain "sunshine o'er her w
that has certainly claimed fo
isno remove, A life no death
from this state of "heavenly
incite[s],/To that blest home

Sigourney's work in this po

mourning and memorial obje
the mourners by providing
afterlife but provides them
after all, 'guides' the grievin
all about her, but in the hea
she and her son will enjoy imm
meantime, she has friends to

These mourning objects, wh

sought to confirm the immort
afterlife, and connect mourne

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Such objects countered
immortal beings, now e
one day share. Such a re
into a more "pleasurab
inability to share imm
experience happiness a
Poe was unquestionabl
such mourning objects
had not only seen such
community of Richmon
death of Virginia - pr
using black-bordered c
consolation. Given the
broader culture as wel
that Poe borrowed ex
articulation of his aesth
that Poe felt such poe

In what is arguably
aesthetic philosophy
"deserves its title only
poetry achieved this
was one of the "immo
"sense of the Beautifu
only allows a reader t
and odors and sentim
awakens within that r
words, "Beauty" was r
being recognized, also
As Poe says, the rea
consequence and an in
to appeal to and make
moment. Furthermore
the reader's "immorta
Beautiful, that "awaken
is still a something in
"supernal" or heavenl
"wild effort to reach th
supernal" - incited th

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84 Inspiring Death

[a reader to] ... an ecstatic pr

that reader to hope "to attain
perhaps appertain to eternit
the poetry that Poe describes
of man's immortal nature. A
work to inspire viewers to im
Poe's literary philosophy arg
to a "prescience of the glorie
that Loveliness whose very e

Moreover, the experience of

brought readers to an aware
them to an ethereal forekno
left them - much as mourni
Poe termed, "pleasurable sad
when wrapping herself in h
sitting in "raptures" in fron
find ourselves melted into t
that is irreplaceable, but be
our inability to grasp now, w
divine and rapturous joys of w
indeterminate glimpses" (897
to enjoy those "divine and ra
to imagine, so Poe's poetry le
their recognition that they we
a realm of supernal beauty
"very elements appertain to

In articulating his aesthet

the "effects" of reading be
using mourning objects - w
experience of "beauty" was a
or otherwise - "effective" (s
concern or a reality for the
with "beauty" may largely
whose "effects" were capabl
of the glories beyond the gr
mourning and memorializing
Poe's reliance on such a cultu

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Indeed, of the eleven
profoundly "elevatin
at least nine, and sev
"Bridge of Sighs,"
easily be described
given the narrownes
that Poe reviews in "
only in the context of
articulating his aesth

Moreover, Poe confir

tied to a culture of m
famously, in "The Ph
the world" is "the dea
arbitrary and misogyn
his reliance on a cultu
the death of beautiful
Wide World) in hope
book's readers) migh
and a kind of "presc

Poe's characterization
similar to the "effec
part of the culture
awaken their users t
them to a greater aw
them in a state of "p
to experience more
Moreover, Poe drew
poetry, itself a power
which poetry should
that culture's most i
it to be "the most po

Poe enters into a d

philosophies, but in p
earlier mentioned m
have seen this poem
attitudes, and thinki

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86 Inspiring Death

failed to locate anything su

viewed it, in essence, as analo
mainstay during the time per
otherwise notorious editor an
(or fabricated) instances from
Griswold (not only a well-know
a Baptist minister as well), ne
Lee" that he could use against
poetry" owing to the "allusion

The "allusions" that Griswold

overtly treated by a reviewe
that "[t]he Pathos of Annabel
even if he were ignorant of t
its tenderness seems still mo
was, a tribute to his dear wif
of Poe's desire to "hold sweet
the departed."45 Similarly, A.
claimed that '"Annabel Lee' is
deepest emotion of conjugal l
Poe's, called it "the most natur
his songs."47 Finally, an unsig
Graham 's Magazine remarkab
gentle sadness . . . delicate and
helplessness and despondent g

What seems most remarkable

various reviewers failed to see a
fact that it takes a rather skept
to custom. Rather, each of th
articulations of the speaker a
remarkably despondent grief
his wife, a grief that would "
reviewers perceived as articulat
excused their otherwise rem
were arguably prone to do th
individuals within the culture
"the immediate, individualize
remains of a close relation did n

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of behavior .... [P]riv
an opportunity to im
ways of mourning . .
by interpreting Poe
Virginia, these reade
central to the larger
it was, as more mod
"Annabel Lee" that
not regenerative" (a
personal embrace o
was itself subverted
death, mourning an
such, was made poss
as Laderman points
behavior, behavior w
in hope of mitigatin

Moreover, these rev

poem as a rather "na
love," given that th
"lay down by the side
individualized emo
grief had yet to be
who included, rema
wife, Caroline Searle
Griswold, who had
vigil, embracing her
Griswold refused to
forced him to do so
cemetery and persua
the lid to her coffin
"cold black forehead
Griswold apparently
the city found him t

Griswold's behavior
the actions of Poe
with respect to a cu
subversive" characte

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88 Inspiring Death

editor of such texts as "Scen

of England and America," an
A Book of Consolation." Wh
Kennedy, trying "to achieve
to the idea that "his love [w
"action . . . [constitute an] an
"of the very [type of] separ
defied?52 The preface to Gr
answers to these questions an
individualized" and otherwis
during the time period:

Besides the Scriptures .

admirable discourses and
addressed to the heart-bro
among the tombs. This lit
desultory reading while h
will leave upon the minds o
portion of that happy influ
his own; leading them to
resignation, and to look mo
scene and source of blessedness.53

Apparently, for Griswold, his otherwise unconventional actions at the death of

his wife were part of a grieving process which began in such intensities of grief
as to inspire him to seek out a continued association with her corpse, but over
time and through the intercession of family, friends, and consolation literature
eventually ended with him "view[ing] the Father's dispensations with resignation,
and . . . look[ing] more and more to the future life as the scene and source of
blessedness." Certainly, then, his reading of "Annabel Lee" was tempered by
the lens of his own experience, and even as he wrote disparagingly of Poe he
could nevertheless see this poem as a rather beautiful expression of love.54

The experience of reading "Annabel Lee" would have been remarkably different
for individuals such as Griswold than for modern readers who are largely isolated
from the bodies of their deceased. Certainly the desire to act in this manner
would not have surprised or repulsed such antebellum individuals, and more
likely than not, the ending of Poe 's poem, when the speaker confesses to his
practice of nightly visiting the sepulcher of his beloved, would likely have been

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 Bradford 89

viewed with a sense of empathetic commiseration instead of Gothic abhorrence

or even indignation at a supposed challenge to cultural ideologies, rituals and
practices. In such a context, the poem becomes a display of "the deepest emotion
of conjugal love," and a depiction of "the helplessness and despondent gloom of
a distracted and despairing soul." In short, what these readers "saw" when they
looked at Poe's poem was a speaker driven towards alienation and isolation by an
overwhelming grief - an alienation and isolation which the culture of mourning
generally sought to ameliorate by consoling the mourner with objects that testified
that the mourner was not alone in his grief- which is precisely what these readers'
responses do. Whether or not Poe, in fact, wrote "Annabel Lee" to mourn the
loss of his wife, these reviewers nevertheless felt compelled to respond with a
kind of compassionate acknowledgement of the extent of what they assumed was
Poe's grief. In essence, their reviews acted like mourning objects, testifying to
Poe that he was not alone in his grief but had sympathetic (or empathetic) friends
who could see past the unconventionality of his "grief-stricken" expressions of
love to understand them for what they "really" must be - evidence of his desire
to "hold sweet and unceasing communion" with "the soul of the departed."

The fact that someone like Griswold identified strongly with the "allusions"
of Poe's poem also raises the possibility that it contained the power, as other
mourning objects did, to foster a sense of empathetic community for other
bereaved readers who found themselves, as Griswold once was, "heart-broken
. . . desponding . . . [and] lingering] among the tombs." Consider that for those
mourners then experiencing a grief as intense as that depicted in "Annabel
Lee," the poem held the potential to begin the process of mourning by helping
individuals see that they were not alone in their experience of "anger, fear
and dismay" at the loss of "such a defining relationship."55 There is someone,
the poem seems to say, who feels as you do now. As such, the poem holds
the potential to invoke a sense of empathetic community, a community of the
otherwise currently inconsolable. The establishment of such a community
would, according to the logic of contemporary cultural practice, subvert
the mourner's inconsolability by ameliorating the "sense of alienation" that
otherwise inhibited successful mourning and trapped a griever in his grief. As
such, "Annabel Lee" could be viewed not only as an expression of intense grief
in need of being mitigated, but it can also be understood as a poem capable
of instantiating a powerful sense of empathetic community for those (like
Griswold) whose grief was so intense, so raw, that more "conventional" means
of consolation were, as yet, ineffectual, a sense of community which, according
to the logic of contemporary cultural practice, was itself a prelude to a more
complete and successful process of mourning.

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90 Inspiring Death

A broader understanding of n
surrounding grief and mourn
the work of an otherwise ma
an awareness of this culture,
our understanding of the wor
conventional consolation poet
Kete asserts, antebellum Am
cynicism, discontinuity, isola
borders of distance and death
one could understand and iden
Lee," offers "connections" to
otherwise isolated. It does this
"shadows" of his own intense
a community of reader and sp
to be the poet).57 If a reader c
poem - can "see" himself or he
are no longer technically "isolat
kinship of grief. To "share" t
of "breaking] down the bor
to begin to "establish . . . con
that even seemingly insurmo
aforementioned affective comm
such affective community was t
which tore at society not only b
"isolated, dysfunctional 'one[s
"subversively" depict a mourner
incapable of successfully mour
subversion of the poem by in
articulation of grief capable of
and alienated mourner into as
ways quite similar to the rest of
these feelings" of grief by "r
act which by its very nature
of grief, opening the door to s

If Poe did hope that "The Rave

the articulation of intense gri
successful, for various readers
connections were generated thro

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 Bradford 91

the poem invoked grief in such profound ways that he claimed, "Nothing can be
conceived more effective than the settled melancholy of the poet bordering upon
sullen despair .... [I]t is, psychologically, a wonder. "60 And P. Pendleton Cooke
claimed that the poem gifted the reader with a "wild and tender melancholy,"
as if its excessive despair was not a challenge or a threat to a reader, but a kind
of "tender" offering.61 Another respondent wrote that Poe's work subsumed
readers, and brought them into a kind of commiseration with the speaker: "No
sooner does Poe enter on [his subject] than your attention is riveted, you lend
him your ears - nay, that is a feeble word, you surrender your whole being to
him for a season .... [Y]ou succumb, body and soul."62 Intriguingly, for at least
one other reader, Poe's poem not only seemed capable of bringing speaker/poet
and reader into a kind of affective union with each other - a union made possible
by the articulation of intense feelings of grief - but this empathetic connection
led this reader to hope for something "brighter and better than this world can
give."63 In short, this reviewer testifies that the poetic expression of grief could
not only form a sense of community, but also inspire a reader to think about
and to desire "the glories beyond the grave" (894):

[Poe's words are like] the meteor, or the lightning's flash, because
[the words last] only for the moment - and yet they speak the
power of God, and fill our minds with the sublime more readily
than does the enduring sunlight . . . Every moment there comes
across the darkness of his style a flash of that spirit which is not
of earth. You cannot analyze the feeling - you cannot tell in what
the beauty of a particular passage consists; and yet you feel that
deep pathos . . . you feel the trembling of that melancholy chord
which fills the soul with pleasant mournfulness - you feel that
deep yearning for something brighter and better than this world
can give - that unutterable gushing of the heart which springs up
at the touch of the enchanter, as poured the stream from 'Horeb's
rock, beneath the prophet's hand.' I wish I could convey to
you the impression which the 'Raven' has made upon me. I
had read it hastily in times gone by without appreciation; but
now it is a study to me - as I go along like Sinbad in the Valley
of Diamonds, I find a new jewel at every step. The beautiful
rhythm, the mournful cadence, still ring in the ear for hours after
a perusal - whilst the heart is bowed down by the outpourings
of a soul made desolate not alone by disappointed love, but by
the crushing of every hope, and every aspiration.64

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92 Inspiring Death

For this particular reader, th

of poet/speaker and reader b
poem that both presumably "f
grief, or whether he simply
because cultural practice pre
the reviewer felt this affectiv
as for the "The others, Poe's
the culture of mourning an
a speaker currently trapped
his despair); rather, it was a
of "sullen despair" and "mel
shared space of mourning. F
of empathetic community w
pathos," but it seemingly brou
brighter and better than this
did. Indeed, part of what th
time "convey[ing]" is the wa
articulations perpetuate the h
and deceased, and therefore
desperate rejection of total los
contact with Lenore is never
'at odds'
with his raven-plum
therefore "exceeds" even the
hand. The fact that such des
exceeds its final lines indica
to the blackness that is his
which is not resignation, alw
poem's desperate yearning s
though it "Shall be lifted -
the "light" of a glorious shar
allows speaker and reader to
nevertheless "fill [their] mi
enduring sunlight" - in short,
and complete mourning.65

Confining an investigation o
to the speaker's articulation
subversive criticisms of a cu
which claimed to ameliorate

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poems forcefully de
a culture of mourni
them allows a new p
that seem most at o
Raven," in which mo
communities, and u
in much the same w
contemporary reade
antagonistic towards a
For them, awash as t
mourning samplers, p
Poe's articulations of
for the dead, and man
rituals and practices o
either giving voice t
a community of grie
feeling of pain, but
they enjoy "the glor
Poe's work refrained
literature, his willin
give it a "beautiful"
and a "prescience of
of, the most extreme
"mourning" poetry
those moments whe
portraits - might fa

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94 Inspiring Death

Notes

1. Martin ^Staples Shockley, The Richmond Stage , 1784-1812. (Charlottesville:

University Press of Virginia, 1977), 360-89. See also George Fisher, History and
Reminiscences of the Monumental Church, Richmond, VA, From 1814 to 1878.
(Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1880).

2. Arthur Hobson Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. (New York: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1998), 46.

3. Quinn, 46.

4. "Other Burned Theaters." New York Times (7 December 1876), 10. Quinn, 64.

5. Kenneth Silverman, Edgar A. Poe : Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. (New

York: Harper Collins, 1991), 78. See also Marie Bonaparte's seminal investigation of
the relationship between Poe's personal mourning and his literary expression in Marie
Bonaparte, The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho-Analytic Interpretation.
(London: Humanities Press, 1971).

6. As will be explained, the hoped for "effect" of making and using mourning objects
(of which consolation poetry was one) was to comfort the bereaved by reinforcing the
sense that death was the means of transcending earthly separations - the passageway
to enjoying a perpetual reunion with loved ones in a realm of immeasurable bliss - as
well as a means of ameliorating a mourner's tendency to "alienate" themselves from
the larger community in response to extreme feelings of grief.

7. Edgar Allan Poe, Complete Tales and Poems. (New York: Modern Library, 1938)
957. References to Poe's poems and tales are from this edition and noted parenthetically
in the text.

8. David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: the Subversive Imagination

in the Age of Emerson and Melville. (New York: Knopf, 1988), 46.

9. Silverman, 73.

10. Karen Weeks, "Poe's Feminine Ideal." The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan
Poe. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 152. John
E. Reilly, "Mrs. Osgood's 'The Life-Voyage' and 'Annabel Lee.'" Poe Studies/Dark
Romanticism 17.1 (1984): 23. With the exception of critics like Kenneth Silverman,
for example, who prefer to mine the (psycho)biographical resonances of the poem,
claiming that in the "neverending remembrance of her girlish beauty, and his pleasure
in joining her in early death, Annabel Lee represents all of the women he loved and

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 Bradford 95

lost" (402). Perhaps relatedly, if not somewhat antithetically, Scott Peeples claims
that Annabel Lee represents not an individual drawn from Poe's life, but "an absence,
as if Annabel Lee is his name for love and grief' [Scott Peeples, ( Edgar Allan Poe
Revisited (New York: Twayne, 1998), 171)], and Dwayne Thorpe, even more directly
and imperatively proclaims that while "This last poem is sometimes seen as a response
to the death of Virginia ... it is not, any more than "Ulalume" merely expresses Poe's
guilt feelings about courting Mrs. Whitman. Real disservice is done to Poe's work
by the assumption, perennial and predictable as spring peepers, that his works are
simply keys to his biography. Nothing could more sabotage his artistry ... "Annabel
Lee" is the climax of a career, not a response to Virginia's death" [Dwayne Thorpe,
"The Poems." In A Companion to Poe Studies. Ed. Eric Carlson. (Santa Barbara:
Greenwood, 1996), 103].

1 1 . Monica Pelaez, Sentiment and Experiment: Poe , Dickinson and the Culture of Death
in Nineteenth Century America. ((Diss) Brown University, 2006.

12. J. Gerald Kennedy, Poe, Death , and the Life of Writing. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987), 71.

13. James J. Farrell, Inventing the American Way of Death. (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1980) 42.

14. Farrell, 42.

15. This is not to imply that differences did not exist depending on class, race, gender,
religious affiliation or geographical or regional location. Indeed, differences did exist
in the way in which mourning objects were styled, used, or produced based upon such
factors, nevertheless, as the above referenced-examples show, these practices were
regularly appropriated by a wide variety of individuals and shaped according to their
own personal preferences and ability.

16. See Phoebe Lloyd, "Posthumous Mourning Portraiture." In A Time to Mourn ;

Expressions of Grief in Nineteenth-Century America. Ed. Martha V. Pike and Janice
Gray Armstrong. (Stony Brook: Museums of Stony Brook, 1980).

17. See Erica Armstrong, "A Mental and Moral Feast: Reading, Writing, and Sentimentality
in Black Philadelphia." Journal of Women s History 16.1 (2004) for information on
antebellum consolation poetry written by black mourners, and Mary Louise Kete, "Harriet
Gould's Book." In Sentimental Collaborations : Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in
Nineteenth-Century America. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999).

18. See Barbara Hillerman, ""Chrysalis of Gloom': Nineteenth Century American

Mourning Costume." In A Time To Mourn. Ed. Martha V. Pike and Janice Gray
Armstrong. (Stony Brook: Museums of Stony Brook, 1980).

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96 Inspiring Death

19. See Drew Gilpin Faust, "Acco

the American Civil War. (New Y

20. While this essay focuses on t

bereaved by establishing a sense o
the mourner's tendency to alienate
notably Karen Haltunnen and M
these objects - and particularly m
into a means of asserting or claim
Karen Haltunnen, "Mourning the
Men and Painted Women : A Stu
(London: Yale University Press

2 1 . Mary Louise Kete, Sentimen

in Nineteenth-Century America

22. One of the prevalent fears of

the damage done to the social fabr
of its members would be perpetua
It was this belief, as Mary Louise
mourning objects as a "strategy fo
the ties of association necessary
short, it was their belief "that col
which spurred such objects' crea
(37). Perhaps the most popular lit
such an isolation is found in Eliz
Cabot - suffering the intensities o
and becomes a source of concern
community. Through the interc
into the community - leading M
mourning manual as well as a no

23. Kete, 9-10.

24. Kete, 55.

25. Dwight Thomas and David K.

in The Poe Log: A Documentary
Hall and Co., 1987), 685. The wea
exhaustively studied (and lampoo
studies in any extended way her
nineteenth-century see Lou Tay
(New York: Allen & Unwin, 1983)
Oxford University Press, 2000);

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 Mitchell, Daily Life i
and Armstrong and P

26. Jeffrey Meyers

York: Scribner, 1992)

27. "Hair Ornaments.

28. Phoebe Lloyd. "Po

in Grief in Nineteent
Brook, 1980).

29. Lloyd, 73.

30. Lloyd, 71.

3 1 . Martha V. Pike and Judith Armstrong, eds. A Time to Mourn : Expressions of Grief in
Nineteenth Century America. (Stony Brook: Museums at Stony Brook, 1980), 165.

32. Lloyd, 73.

33. Silverman, 327.

34. Mary E. Phillips, Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. (Philadelphia: Winston, 1926), 1203.

35. Sandi Fox, For Purpose and Pleasure: Quilting Together in Nineteenth-century
America. (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1995), 16.

36. Lydia Sigourney, The Weeping Willow. (Hartford, CT: Henry Parsons, 1847), vi.

37. Sigourney, 59-60.

38. And long before he became acquainted with the writings of Aristotle, Schlegel or
Coleridge - three figures to whom many scholars have looked as a source for Poe's
aesthetic philosophy.

39. Although the "mournful" state of the reader as described by Poe here has frequently
been analyzed in a psychoanalytic framework, I refrain from employing such a
framework largely because of the differences I see between the way in which Poe and
Freud conceptualize what is essentially a sense of "loss." Freud's analysis of mourning
operates under the assumption that one mourns when facing the loss of a desired object,
and that mourning ends when one is able to reinvest the emotional energy previously
assigned to the lost object into a new object. Thus Freud's ideas regarding mourning
operate, essentially, through the idea of replacement. Poe's readers do not mourn the loss

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98 Inspiring Death

of an object that they have previously been emotionally attached to; rather they mourn
their inability to experience a state of bliss of which they have been made aware but which
they cannot yet fully access. They mourn, in essence, their own inability to experience
a more complete "experience" of beauty of which the poem simply makes them aware.
In this sense, Poe's mournful readers mirror much more closely those nineteenth-century
mourners who employed mourning objects such as the ones I have been investigating
here. These mourners did not create these objects in order to "replace" the individuals
they had lost; rather they created them as a material reminder that at some point in time
the lost object (their deceased) would be "restored" to them (generally through a (re)
union in the "celestial" realm). For more on Freudian notions of mourning see "On
Mourning and Melancholia" in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
(The Standard Edition), Vol.1 4. (New York: Norton, 1976), 243-58.

40. Poe would arguably have much more to say about the immortality of man and the
nature of that "realm of supernal beauty" in Eureka where he essentially articulates
an entire metaphysics out of his commitment to seeing death as a state of continuing
existence.

41. The only other "theme" prevalent in the poems Poe chooses to represent is love,
and even those poems which feature this theme prominently usually do so in context
of the death of either the narrator or the beloved subject.

42. Edgar Allan Poe, Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe. (New York: Harper and
Row, 1970), 567.

43. Even though some of the poems that Poe quotes in this section were produced
before the rise of this culture, such as Byron's "Stanzas to Augusta," he nevertheless
makes these poems effectively (and "affectively") a part of a culture of mourning and
memorializing by making the "effects" they produce essentially analogous to those of
the culture's mourning objects.

44. Ludwig (Griswold, Rufus), "The Death of Edgar Allan Poe." New York Tribune
(9 Oct. 1849), 2.

45. INCOG, "Poe as Poet." The Nassau Literary Magazine 18.8 (May 1858), 344.

46. A. J. Faust, Jr., "Lyric Poetry." A Ladies' Repository 17 (Dec. 1857), 737.

47. Qtd. in "American Literature." The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature 25.3
(Mar. 1852), 289.

48. "The Genius and Characteristics of the Late Edgar Allan Poe." Gr ahams America
Monthly Magazine of Literature, Art, and Fashion 44.2 (Feb. 1845), 23.

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 Bradford 99

49. Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death , 1 799-
1883. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 73.

50. Pelaez, 183.

51. Silverman, 218.

52. Kennedy, 69.

53. Rufus W. Griswold, The Mourner Consoled : Containing The Cypress Wreath.
(Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1844).

54. What may seem to us remarkable actions by Griswold after the death of his wife
were, in fact, engaged in, or desired, by many others. For example, Emerson regularly
visited his first wife's crypt, and some two years after her death, he "visited Ellen's
tomb and opened the coffin" [See Carlos Baker. Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A
Group Portrait. (New York: Viking Press, 1996) 11)]. William Peabody, a full-time
Reverend, "liked to sit by moonlight near [the] grave" of his departed wife and longed
to see her remains [Qtd. in Ann Douglas, "Heaven our Home: Consolation Literature
in the Northern United States, 1830 - 1880." In Death in America. (Philadelphia:
University Penn Press, 1975) 58)]. Louisa Park, after being informed by some relatives
that they had visited inside the tomb where her son was interred, exclaimed, "Oh what
would I not have given to have kissed once more his cold cheek before it moulders
to dust. What a satisfaction it would be to me - how much pleasure I should take if I
could, every day, enter his gloomy mansion and there indulge in meditation and give
vent to the feelings of my heart" (Qtd. in Laderman, 75). This grief-inspired desire to
maintain such a proximity to the deceased caused one Boston sexton to complain of
those who wished "to descend into the damp and dreary tomb - to lift the lid - and look
upon the changing, softening, corrupting features of a parent or child - to gaze upon
the moidering bones" (as quoted in Laderman, 76). Poe himself was known to have
been found "at the dead hour of a winter night, sitting beside [Virginia's] tomb almost
frozen in the snow" (Qtd. in Phillips, The Man , 1206).

55. Kete, 64.

56. Kete, 32.

57. This is not to imply that the speaker and the poet are to be seen as the same individual.
Only that those who might have encountered the poem and interpreted it in the way that
I am suggesting can imagine their connection extending not only to a fictitious speaker
but also to a "real" writer whose poem essentially testifies to such readers that they do,
in fact, have a "mediator" interested in helping them find a voice capable of expressing
the type of grief they are currently experiencing.

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юр Inspiring Death

58. Kete, 54.

59. Kete, 55.

60. "The Raven." The Southern Literary Messenger 11 (Mar 1845), 186.

61. P. Pendleton Cooke, "Edgar A. Poe." The Southern Literary Messenger 14.1 (Jan
1848).

62. "Edgar A. Poe." The Southern Literary Messenger. 20.4 (April 1854), 250.

63. Thompson, 695.

64. Thompson, 695.

65. Thompson, 695. It should be noted that this is not the end of this poem's function
when seen in light of a culture of mourning and memorializing, for the reviewer, writing
after the death of Poe, also saw this poem functioning much like a hair clipping, a "trace"
of the now deceased poet, one which, while he was alive, the reader treated perhaps
"hastily" or "without appreciation," but which now, when "studied," like Camille
Mount's mourning picture, generates an intimate, affective connection with the once
"desolate . . . disappointed" poet.

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