When the stage manager speaks about the wedding, he tells the audience that he cannot include every detail. He chooses the most appropriate aspects and leaves the rest to the viewers’ imaginations. This technique is a miniature of Wilder’s approach to the whole play. He takes a few isolated events and universalizes them. The resulting scene is typical of weddings the world over—the nervous bride and groom, sympathetic parents, suggestive wedding jests, and benign comments from idealistic wedding guests.
For George and Emily, the wedding is the high point of their lives. For the viewer, however, it is just another small-town wedding with nothing to set it apart from other similar ceremonies. Mrs. Soames, who is the gushy type, makes heartfelt comments about the loveliness of the event, but her glowing remarks fail to convince the audience that there is anything unique about this particular wedding. As the minister concludes, “Once in a thousand times it’s interesting ”.
In Wilder’s view of life, nature is the key factor in Act II. As he observes, people are born, grow up, marry, and then die. Thus marriage is a part of the natural order of things—a logical development in the process of living. Earlier, he spoke of the usual tendency of people to live by twos. Consequently, following the birth motif of Act I, the pairing of Emily and George follows quite naturally as the central image of Act II.
Mrs. Webb bemoans the fact that Emily knows so little of life. Her remarks prove prophetic in Act III, when Emily dies as a result of childbirth. Yet, the evolution of Emily’s love for George, whom she has known all her life, seems a natural outgrowth of their childhood friendship, both to the young people and their parents. The tragedy of Emily’s death is, like the joy of marriage, just a part of the life process.
It also seems natural that potential brides and grooms on the verge of matrimony experience last-minute hesitations—even though their love is well-founded. Wilder deftly works into this scene some of George’s and Emily’s last-minute fears. Both suddenly realize that they are exiting childhood, a time when they felt secure in parental warmth and protection. They pause before taking the final step into maturity. Yet, when they see each other, love pushes them over the threshold. At the end of the scene, Mrs. Soames’ inane chatter drowns out the ceremony. The wedding is condensed into the single vow from George, “I do ”.
Winding up the scene, the Stage Manager comments that he, as a minister, has joined thousands of couples. He notes that millions of marriages have taken place. Wilder causes us to see this wedding as a commonplace event—a single episode in a long series of matings. As he sums up, “The cottage, the go-cart, the Sunday-afternoon drives in the Ford, the first rheumatism, the grandchildren, the second rheumatism, the death-bed, the reading of the will— ” The natural progression seems unstoppable. Wilder’s insistence on the rightness of marriage as a normal, commonplace expectation of life blends with the next act, in which he shows the importance of trivial things against the background of death, the natural conclusion of life. Again, the Stage Manager breaks with the tradition of dramatic illusion by announcing an intermission.
