Posthumous Marriage - Posthumous Marriage in Fiction

Posthumous Marriage in Fiction

In Lisa See’s novel Peony in Love (New York: Random House, 2007), set in 17th century China, the main character, Peony, dies as a teenager and is later married in a ghost marriage to a poet that she fell in love with during her lifetime.

In Season 2, episode 16 of the television series Bones, a woman was murdered and her bones were sold for a Minhun ghost marriage. During the final season of the television series ‘’Without a Trace,’’ an episode titled “Devotion” featured a young woman who was kidnapped and set to be killed and ghost married by the Chinese parents of her deceased ex-fiancé.

In season 5, episodes 13 of the television series Numb3rs, Chinese women are being murdered and then their bodies are buried atop the coffins of unmarried Chinese males. The brides were picked by the parents of the deceased males. Before the murders a short traditional wedding ceremony was held so that the deceased sons would have marriage in the afterlife. While it appears that the murders are part of a long standing tradition, the writers acknowledge that the tradition did not involve murder.

In Elizabeth McCracken’s romance The Giant’s House, a librarian named Peggy Cort meets an eleven-year-old boy named James Sweatt, who suffers from a rare disease called Gigantism. Cort develops an obsession for Sweatt and after his death she conceives a child with his father and claims that it is James’s and declares herself as the first Posthumous Bride in history.

In the film Corpse Bride, a living man accidentally marries a dead woman after she died. When he agrees to remain married to the dead woman, he is told he has to take poison and die, (because the marriage vows state; "Until death us do part", and death has already parted the living man and the dead woman). Although he agrees to drink the poison and die, they decide it is better for him to marry a living woman (he was previously engaged to) and remain alive until his natural death. The deceased woman then transforms into group of white butterflies and flies away into the night.