A Married Woman – 1900s
The years teach
much which the days
never
know. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Being a plain looking woman,
and small,
her father had first encouraged Alice
to develop her mind, thinking she
was not a good marriage prospect.
She had excelled in school,
and even
was given a job teaching for a year,
before old enough to take her county exams.
But when Perry began to
court her,
and she was told she would not be hired
for a second year,
her father urged her
to consider marriage.
Perry seemed attracted to
her fine mind,
and idealizing a marriage of partnership
and equality, Alice held great hopes
for theirs at first.
But like most young women
of that time, she became pregnant
and a son was born a year later.
Alice, having endured three
days in childbirth,
was told by her doctor, that another child
would assuredly bring her death.
She looked upon her son as
her one and only
chance to be a mother and she treasured him.
Poem © by Ruth Zachary
This Poem and this illustration are included in a book of stories, letters and poems, Theories of Relativity © by Ruth Zachary, published in 2012 by Xlibris. Available at Amazon.
