he primary way Tennyson gives In Memoriam a sense of closure is by making his sister Cecilia's marriage to Edmund Lushington the subject of his epilogue. By gaining a brother-in-law from this ceremony, Tennyson has found a sort of surrogate for Arthur Hallam — for Tennyson had anticipated having Hallam, who was engaged to his sister Emily, as a member of his family.
No doubt Tennyson is aware that in replacing Hallam with Lushington, he is standing on very delicate ground; section 85 (addressed to Lushington) and section 90 not only anticipate the ending but suggest the difficulties Tennyson would have with such a resolution. How has his state of mind changed between (the writing of) these poems and the ending?
We might note that Tennyson's sister Emily married Richard Jesse the same year (1842, nine years after Hallam's death) Cecilia married Lushington. Why did Tennyson choose not to write about Emily's marriage? If we can see Lushington as displacing Hallam in some capacity, then it's a displaced displacing as Emily's role in the drama has been preempted by her sister. Are Emily and Richard conspicuously absent at the close (did they not attend the ceremony Tennyson describes)? Would their presence in the epilogue have upset its tenuous balance?
What else has the author suppressed to make the ending work? What do we mean when we say that it works?
How do we measure Tennyson's success in bringing his poem to a close?
Other points to consider: If the poem is to be "cheerful at the close," as Tennyson suggests, why then does he take such pains to undermine the signal cheer? For "The crowning cup, the three-times-three" (104) surely recalls, at a height of celebration, the "thrice three years" (10) that have elapsed since Hallam's death. How can we interpret this overdetermined phrase?
In the most general terms, how has Tennyson's relation with Hallam changed so that he is able to complete the poem (or at least bring it to an end)? What does it mean for such a poem to come to a close?
Does Hallam continue to play a role in Tennyson's later work? If so, is this because Tennyson did not properly resolve his relationship with Hallam in In Memoriam? Is it despite the fact that he resolved his feelings for him?
Last modified 1988