LIFE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

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.