No Second Friend?: Perpetual Maidenhood and Second Marriage in In Memoriam and "The Conjugial Angel"

Abstract

In Memoriam (1850) opens with a parallel between the situations of the grieving poet and the poet's grieving sister after the death of his friend and her fiancé, Arthur Henry Hallam. Framed by a discussion of how A. S. Byatt treats this triangular relation in "The Conjugial Angel" (1992), this essay reconsiders the poem in light of Victorian thinking about the centrality of familial ties to both heterosexual marriage and male same-sex friendship. Revising even as it maintains its initial parallel, In Memoriam installs differing norms for women and men regarding the possibilities of second marriage and second friendship.