Marriage plans were confirmed and Poe returned to Baltimore to file for a marriage license on September 22, 1835.
The couple may have been quietly married as well, though accounts are unclear. Their only public ceremony was in Richmond on May 16, 1836, when they were married by a Presbyterian minister named Rev. Amasa Converse. Poe was 27 and Virginia was 13, though her age was listed as 21. This marriage bond was filed in Richmond and included an affidavit from Thomas W. Cleland confirming the bride's alleged age. The ceremony was held in the evening at the home of a Mrs. James Yarrington, the owner of the boarding house in which Poe, Virginia, and Virginia's mother Maria Clemm were staying. Yarrington helped Maria Clemm bake the wedding cake and prepared a wedding meal. The couple then had a short honeymoon in Petersburg, Virginia.
Debate has raged regarding how unusual this pairing was based on the couple's age and blood relationship. Noted Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn argues it was not particularly unusual, nor was Poe's nicknaming his wife "Sissy" or "Sis". Another Poe biographer, Kenneth Silverman, contends that though their first-cousin marriage was not unusual, her young age was. It has been suggested that Clemm and Poe had a relationship more like that between brother and sister than between husband and wife. Some scholars, including Marie Bonaparte, have read many of Poe's works as autobiographical and have concluded that Virginia died a virgin because she and her husband never consummated their marriage. This interpretation often assumes that Virginia is represented by the title character in the poem "Annabelle Lee": a "maiden... by the name of Annabel Lee". Poe biographer Joseph Wood Krutch suggests that Poe did not need women "in the way that normal men need them", but only as a source of inspiration and care, and that Poe was never interested in women sexually. Friends of Poe suggested that the couple did not even share a bed for at least the first two years of their marriage, but that, from the time she turned 16, they had a "normal" married life until the onset of her illness. She died of T.B. at age 24, after being an invalid for years.
Debate has raged regarding how unusual this pairing was based on the couple's age and blood relationship. Noted Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn argues it was not particularly unusual, nor was Poe's nicknaming his wife "Sissy" or "Sis". Another Poe biographer, Kenneth Silverman, contends that though their first-cousin marriage was not unusual, her young age was. It has been suggested that Clemm and Poe had a relationship more like that between brother and sister than between husband and wife. Some scholars, including Marie Bonaparte, have read many of Poe's works as autobiographical and have concluded that Virginia died a virgin because she and her husband never consummated their marriage. This interpretation often assumes that Virginia is represented by the title character in the poem "Annabelle Lee": a "maiden... by the name of Annabel Lee". Poe biographer Joseph Wood Krutch suggests that Poe did not need women "in the way that normal men need them", but only as a source of inspiration and care, and that Poe was never interested in women sexually. Friends of Poe suggested that the couple did not even share a bed for at least the first two years of their marriage, but that, from the time she turned 16, they had a "normal" married life until the onset of her illness. She died of T.B. at age 24, after being an invalid for years.
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