Student Question
What did Annabel Lee's kinsmen do after her death in Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee"?
Quick answer:
After Annabel Lee's death, her kinsmen, described as "highborn," took her away from the narrator and buried her in a sepulchre, a small tomb carved from rock, by the sea. This act may signify a proper burial or imply that her kinsmen reclaimed her due to her relationship with the narrator, who might have been of lower social status, thus separating her from an undesirable attachment.
Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" tells the story of two young lovers who lived together in a "kingdom by the sea." Their love was "a love that was more than love." For that reason (in the narrator's telling), the "wingèd seraphs of Heaven" became jealous of the lovers, and sent a cold wind that "chill[ed]" and killed Annabel Lee.
When Annabel Lee dies,
Her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
Narrowly speaking, this passage tells us that Annabel Lee's kinsmen buried her in a sepulchre—a small room, usually carved out of a rock, in which dead people are entombed.
The poem also says Annabel Lee's kinsmen "bore her away" from the narrator. The meaning of this phrase is more ambiguous. It may mean, very simply, that Annabel Lee's kinsmen took her body away from the narrator in order to properly bury it. The fact that the kinsmen are described as "highborn" suggests that the narrator may have been of lower social status, however, and that in "bearing her away," the kinsmen are also reclaiming Annabel Lee after she made an undesirable attachment to someone below her station.
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