Bride's Strike

THE WEDDING--Grace Lumpkin--Furman ($2.50).

Five years ago proletarian novels appeared, if not quite as frequently as the strikes they celebrated, at least more frequently than they have since. Leader of this radical literary movement was Grace Lumpkin, whose To Make My Bread was one of the first U. S. proletarian novels as well as one of the best. Last week she published her third novel, a slight, simple story of a Southern wedding, which is as far from the subject of her first book as a picket line is from a pulpit. The Wedding is an interesting novel in its own right. But it is more interesting as an indication of how the proletarian novelists are developing, of what they find when they leave the union halls and look at things on the other side of the tracks.

Story of The Wedding is just the wedding. Jennie Middleton of Lexington on the Santee River is going to marry Dr. Gregg, a newcomer to the sleepy Southern town which is becoming an industrial centre without the old inhabitants knowing it. The time is 1909. The night before the ceremony they quarrel; Jennie says she won't marry a man who has sworn at her; mother, father and the doctor's friend act as peacemakers; the Confederate veterans assemble to take part in the ceremony; the minister refuses to have Confederate flags in the church; the groom begins to drink; when the time comes Jennie goes to the altar, just as everyone knew she would.

What makes The Wedding an original and provocative piece of work is Grace Lumpkin's attitude toward the ceremony.

Jennie's pathetic, irritating, irrational and commonplace little rebellion is not merely an outbreak of Southern emotionalism. It is, rather, the last stand of her independence. All society, exemplified by aunts, veterans, parents and brothers, seems to be forcing her into a complicated ritual which has nothing to do with her relations with the doctor. As a result all the trappings--the flags, costumes, bridesmaids--seem as quaint and unreal as an anthropologist's description of some South Sea Islanders' marriage rite. Jennie surrenders, but only after she has discovered, by making eyes at the best man, that there is more than one way of getting her way, that conforming to society's demands may not mean so much after all.

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