e is also the fact of the lady's memory of experience in terms of higher status; she was better than the bums who competed for her tobacco ash, always the center of attention at the fancy hotels and nightclubs in the company of top-grade gentlemen. This reflects Tannen's view (You 24-5) that men experience life in hierarchical terms; Kennedy's woman does so s well.
The lady's advice to marry young implies that marriage is somehow a cure for and shield against being socially marginal ized on account of faded beauty. However, the social truth of married and unmarried women's experience both before and since 1961, when the poem was written, is that marriage is no cure or shield against being left by the roadside on account of faded beauty. "First wives" are routinely traded for younger models, as a recent popular film demonstrates, and the plain fact is that had the lady in skunk been married young she might nevertheless be in the prominent bar. Additionally, the fact that the lady in skunk defines herself and other women en tirely in terms of their relati
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