…yet she knew that being a potential divorcee was deeply pleasurable in somewhat the same way that being an engaged girl had been. In both cases there was at first a subterranean courtship, whose significance it was necessary to conceal from outside observers. The concealment of the original, premarital courtship had, however, been a mere superstitious gesture, briefly sustained. It had been, on the whole, a private secretiveness, not a partnership of silence. One put one’s family and one’s friends off the track because one was still afraid that the affair might not come out right, might not lead in a clean, direct line to the altar. To confess one’s aspirations might be, in the end, to publicize one’s failure. Once a solid understanding had been reached, there followed a short intermission of ritual bashfulness, in which both parties awkwardly participated, and then came the Announcement.
Mary McCarthy, “Cruel and Barbarous Treatment” , 1939
