This story by Pramoedya Ananta Toer is set in 1930s Java. A six-year-old boy’s best friend, an eight-year-old girl, is married off to a seventeen-year-old-man. The naïve girl, who has no idea what marriage entails, is excited only because of the new clothes and make-up she will wear at the ceremony. Her family are neighbors, and for months afterward the boy is kept awake by her screams at night. A year later she is divorced, a tainted “woman” facing a miserable future. Themes include cultural tradition, innocence, friendship, child marriage, brutality, patriarchy, shame, compassion vs. social correctness.
Prior to the marriage, the girl had been placed in service with the boy’s mother. She begs to be taken back after her divorce, but his mother refuses because of “propriety”. There is an ironic sting in the last paragraph, where the mother is subsequently praised for continuing to “uphold the family’s good name”.
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