THE BRIDE

The mother and father, and the bride herself- as they look back retrospectively and indulge in reveries on the future ahead-after the fact of Mary's wedding to Phillip. For the Maddens, Mary's parents, well born and well heeled, there are many qualms, aggravated by their unacknowledged resentment of the boy who has taken their daughter away from them, and eventually propitiated by the prospect of the grandchildren which will be substituted. While for Mary, naive- to a point of immaturity, frightened and exhilarated, there is the constantly changing panorama the man she has married presents; as he makes love to her (and this is not all it should be); as he talks down to her (Phillip is a hazy liberal) and plans to ""educate"" her; and as he indulges in a first show of temper which has its catharsis in the renewal of their love for each other. And the tenor of their honeymoon, aboard Phillip's sailboat, is paralleled by uneven skies and a sudden storm and the danger it brings with it helps to strengthen the new rapport... There's a girlish flutter to most of this, an exposed intimacy, if you can bear it- or with it.