Day 9: Of Weddings and Suspenders

I friggin' almost missed my class this morning... For some reason, I kept thinking it starts at 11.30am, not 9.30am... Eurgh... But anyway, here's today's outfit:

I tried to make it look brighter but it just doesn't work! I just like the way the suspenders crosses at the back but I can't get a good, clear picture of it.

Today, we studied Abraham Cahan's "A Ghetto Wedding" for Late American Lit. It's not one of my favorite stories, but it does have its moments where the phrases just smack me. Here're a couple of lines I picked up:

(as said by the female protaganist, Goldy) "Are you really angry? Bite the feather-bed, then."

"The bard, half starved himself, sang the anguish of his own heart; the violins wept, the clarinet moaned, the cornet and the double-bass groaned, each reciting the sad tale of its poverty-stricken master."

(One of the best lines I've seen so far.) "Goldy looked at the rows of plates, spoons, forks, knives, and they weighed her down with the cold dazzle of their solemn, pompous array."

"A poor woman who dares spend every cent on a wedding must be ready to walk after the wedding."

I liked that last phrase exclusively, only because I've seen how Goldy was the antithesis of that statement before her wedding. Her fiance, Nathan, and her were crawling through the economic repression in late 19th century Manhattan. But she wanted to have a wedding of such grand a scale that people on the streets would talk about it for days. And they did, only that they weren't precisely singing praises of it.

The wedding scene was so morose, that I couldn't stop laughing. Goldy had planned the ceremony for 150 people, when only 20 showed up. This line pretty much sums up how she felt about the entire ceremony:

"As the procession came filing in, she sat blinking her round dark eyes in dismay, as if the bard were an executioner come to lead her to the scaffold."

The wedding, thus, became an execution and later, a funeral. The descriptions were gold, guests crying, bride fainting, I couldn't ask for a better wedding crasher. Thankfully, she redeemed herself at the end. She finally views marriage as something to be cherished, not lavished. That glimmer of marriage, as it illuminates the couples solemn passage through the dark void of economic depression and repression. Sigh...