First Marriage
Bethany first married Jerry Fickland after their masters consented to the union and told them to simply be together. Bethany, however, wanted to be legally married and the couple eventually found someone to marry them. Bethany wrote of how the couple, however, was unable to make traditional vows – like white people – because their circumstances as slaves could result in distancing the couple at the will of the owners.
A few months into their marriage, Jerry was arrested. He escaped and ran away but couldn't evade capture. His escape, attempts to avoid detection and subsequent capture seemed to have broken Jerry. He was sent away and Bethany and Jerry never saw each other again.
Read more about this topic: Bethany Veney
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“Adultery is the vice of equivocation.
It is not marriage but a mockery of it, a merging that mixes love and dread together like jackstraws. There is no understanding of contentment in adultery.... You belong to each other in what together you’ve made of a third identity that almost immediately cancels your own. There is a law in art that proves it. Two colors are proven complimentary only when forming that most desolate of all colors—neutral gray.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“A woman asking “Am I good? Am I satisfied?” is extremely selfish. The less women fuss about themselves, the less they talk to other women, the more they try to please their husbands, the happier the marriage is going to be.”
—Barbara Cartland (b. 1901)