THE DEEP ONES: "The Wedding-Knell" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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THE DEEP ONES: "The Wedding-Knell" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

2housefulofpaper
Juil 4, 2021, 9:09 pm

Not selected for inclusion in the Tartarus Press collection The Snow-Image and Other Stories of the Supernatural, so online for me. It does mean this one will be a first-time read for me.

(the Touchstone looks to be going to a different collection, but it's showing the cover of my book. One for the combiners I presume).

3elenchus
Juil 5, 2021, 12:35 pm

Online for me as well, unless I discover it's in some collection not listed above.

4AndreasJ
Juil 8, 2021, 4:39 pm

Got around to reading it today.

There's nothing Weird in it, for all that the bridegroom's practical joke, or what to call it, certainly is weird.

5housefulofpaper
Juil 8, 2021, 7:14 pm

The sensibility of this story seemed Victorian to me, albeit it was published a year before Victoria became Queen (and of course Hawthorne was American not British, although the US and the UK literary worlds seem to have been closer in the 19th century than subsequently).

There's a scene in one of Dickens' more obscure stories - one of the linked stories he wrote for others for the Christmas number of his magazine (as "The Signalman" is part of Mugby Junction) where there's a shipwreck (I think) and the survivors' various stories are followed. At one point a mother thinks she has lost her child, but it's found alive, and restored to her in an emotionally charged tableau (created by the other characters, not contrived by the author but supposed to be naturalistic "in story" - they are putting on a kind of show) which more than oversteps the bounds into manipulative emotional cruelty. Okay, Dickens was a strange man, and probably he had the ending of The Winter's Tale in mind when he wrote that. But even so it chimes with this story, with an essay by Thomas De Quincey ("The English Mail-Coach"), the time's love of melodrama, it all contributes to the feeling that something has happened to Romanticism, there's a change of mood or taste, and suddenly the Victorian period is here (it's more than 30 years since I last read it, but I remember the feeling that it was almost happening before my eyes as I read "The English Mail-Coach").

Compared to those examples, Hawthorne's tale and his protagonist's behaviour seem almost moderate by comparison. And although Hawthorne seemed at times to be about to lash out at old people ("old" being - what, about 60 in this context?) trying to enjoy their twilight years, in the end the sensibility seemed not so far away from a modern-day "heartwarming" real-life television show (I have read some Hawthorne stories where he plays with ideas of youth and age, regained youth, and so on. So it seems to be a subject that exercised his imagination. But then, who doesn't reflect on their own mortality at least sometimes?)

There were some effective descriptive touches, and the behaviour of the guests seemed psychologically convincing as the uncanny events were unfolding. Undeniably a minor work, but interesting and I'm glad to have a chance to read it.

6elenchus
Juil 8, 2021, 8:25 pm

Or even supernatural.

I wonder were Hawthorne's intended readers more delicate of social mores or sensitive of atmosphere, that the very suggestion of Death at a wedding ceremony was experienced as blasphemy and horror?

7RandyStafford
Juil 9, 2021, 6:03 pm

I liked this one though it's not a weird tale, just has a central weird image. It's moralistic, as you would expect, but more humorous than I would expect from Hawthorne.

I have to admit that, despite the heavy foreshadoing, the engagement of Ellenwood and Dabney in their youth did surprise me.