# The Wedding Knell



## PrettyPistol (Oct 29, 2007)

Has anyone here read, and studied Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story The Wedding Knell? I have to participate in a 45 minute group presentation / panel on The Minister's Black Veil tomorrow, and since Hawthorne alludes to The Wedding Knell in the story, I thought it would be nice to give a summary and draw some similarities in the stories. So the following is my summary, but I want to make sure my interpretation is correct. If you have studied this, please let me know how accurate I am, because I couldn't find any existing summaries, or articles on the story.
Thanks:

In The Wedding Knell, Mrs Dabney (a woman who married and was widowed twice) is going to be marrying Mr. Ellenwood, a 65 year old who had been attracted to Dabney in the past. When Mrs. Dabney enters the church for the wedding, the bell let out a deep knell, usually reserved for funerals. The bell continued to ring until the groom arrived. The groom arrived with a funeral precession, and claimed that Mrs. Dabney's youth was given to other husbands, and he was forced to live an unhappy life because he couldn't have her. Now that he was finally asked to marry her, there was nothing left for him but old age and death, so he stated "Let us be married; and then to our coffins!". Though shocked, she continued with the marriage, and they would let their love last for eternity.


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