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Marriage In Anne Tyler's Ladder Of Years

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Jenny was in awe reading this letter and agrees to marry Harley Baines. However, it is only later, during the fall of their marriage, that she realizes how artificial the letter is. She even scrutinizes the format of the date, ‘18 July, 1957’; and it struck her as pretentious (103). The ostentatious language she overlooked before now stands out. Anne Tyler reiterates the domineering behavior of men over women through this letter. It seems as the written proposal is “advancing the marriage like a corporate merger” (103). This proposal that she initially thought is endearing now embodies arrogance. Indicating that the marriage is like a corporate merger conveys that Harley has his own motives. Although he proclaims that he loves her and he indicate …show more content…

This reiterates that in a binary society, men should provide for women. While financially assisting Jenny is reasonable due to her financial problems, this should not be a factor of whether or not they should get married. The advocacy for feminism finally becomes explicit in Ladder of Years when Delia abandons her family at the beach, wearing only a bathing suit and carrying a beach bag with five hundred dollars. This is fairly an impulsive act, however, it is not surprising due to the prolong dissatisfaction. Delia feels immensely liberated and “an airy sense of exhilaration filled her chest. She felt so lightweight, all at once” (81). This indicates that her marriage and familial confinement is a ‘burden’ to her and prohibits her from accelerating as a person. She finally succeeds in achieving the feeling of excitement and happiness - a feeling she has not felt since she is sheltered from the world. She obtains the freedom she longs and desires. She is starting a new life of her own and becoming a “person without a past” (108). This shows that her previous life can easily be forgotten with no hard feelings and she is expressing that forgetting her past is for the better. Moreover, her development to becoming self-sufficient, an option she

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