by Susan Hampton
The pressures of a wedding affect everyone involved, especially the bride and groom. In a different view on the event, Susan Hampton write a satire based around the ‘ugly-side’ of weddings, and to explore the over-glorification of this age-old tradition.
By saying, ‘The young woman felt uncomfortable.’ Hampton is able to alienate the main protagonist in this story, as she felt ‘she had been put in the wrong movie,’ and that she was an ‘amazon’ not a ‘princess’. This alienation of the bride allows the bride to show her true feelings towards this event, and how she felt pressured to succumb to the idea that she had to be married. Having the bride ‘not worry’ about the lack of wedding dress, and chopping her hair off Hampton is able to illustrate how the bride deems these traditions and disasters trivial, whereas most brides would proceed to freak out on anything going wrong on their ‘perfect day’.
The determination the bride has in this story represents the social pressure on women to aspire to and fight for a marriage, and the picturesque wedding day. This is shown through the bride dragging her ‘fainter’ of a father down the aisle to a sick a pale groom, and reminding herself that ‘I am not a princess … I am an amazon,’ to keep herself strong and sane through this ordeal.
The brides demeanour in this story also shows how people often lose sight of what the real meaning of the ceremony is; not a princess marrying a prince on the perfect day, but two people vowing to love each other under all circumstances, and fully committing to one another.
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