Title: “Modern Marriages”.
Author: Clara Pérez
4 characters:
- Amalia: mother who tries to advise her daughter.
- Sofía: Newly married daughter who has her own way of living marriage.
- Fernando: Sofia’s husband.
- Frank: Fernando’s father.
Act I
Setting: Kitchen of Sofia’s mother’s house.
Introduction: Sofia enters the kitchen and gets her mother sweeping, washing dishes, cooking, all at once.
Sofia (coming up to kiss her mother): Hi mommy, how are you? Well I can see you, like an octopus doing everything at once.
Amalia (kissing her daughter, happy to see her): Hi daughter, I’m doing everything I can because this afternoon I’m going to accompany your daddy to the doctor and I want to get everything ready at home.
Sofia (astonished): And where is he?
Amalia (still going about her business): He went down to talk to his friends, since they retired him, he goes every morning to the bodega on the corner and meets them there, he comes back at lunchtime.
Sofía (even more astonished): And he doesn’t help you at all?
Amalia (dropping the broom to move what she is preparing in the kitchen): Household things are for women, daughter, he is not going to clean up, you have to learn that, so your husband won’t complain.
Sofía (laughing ironically): I don’t know what…? oh mom, in my house Fernando has to help, if I cook, he washes the dishes, if we are going to clean we do it together, it costs him nothing to put the clothes in the washing machine.
Amalia (astonished and shaking her head): Daughter, but that is not his job, what you are going to get him to do is to get a woman to take care of him and leave you.
Sofia (laughing heartily): Wake up mother, we are in other times, slavery is over, now we both keep the home, and we both do the housework, or am I going to look for another one because I have to go out to work and Fernando doesn’t support me?
Amalia: Of course not daughter, you work to help your husband support the household.
Sofía (nodding her head): Exactly, and he does some things around the house to help me keep it in order, that’s how marriages are now mommy.
Amalia: What a strange thing, in my times that would have been almost condemned.
Sofia (laughing): Well, now that’s the most normal thing. I’m going to look out to see if I can see my dad and say hello to him.
Sofia leaves the kitchen and Amalia continues with her work.
Act II
Setting: Living room of the house.
Introduction: Fernando talks to Frank, his father, while he reads the newspaper.
Frank (without taking his eyes off the news): And how are you doing son? How is married life?
Fernando (smiling with pleasure): Very well dad, I get along very well with Sofia, we agree on almost everything, we rarely argue when it comes to making decisions.
Frank(taking his eyes off the newspaper and looking at Fernando): Why should you argue? If you’re the man of the house, you make a decision and she has to accept it, there’s no argument about that.
Fernando (laughing heartily): No dad, that’s not the way it is now, if I make a decision without consulting Sofia, she’ll kick me out of the house.
Frank (astonished): So you do what Sofia decides?
Fernando (without wiping the smile off his face): We do what we both decide and we think is best for both of us.
Frank (unhappy with the answer): Ah, look how we lost authority with modernity. And have you already thought about how many jobs you are going to have when Sofia decides to have a child? Because I imagine she will stop working to take care of her baby and you will have to keep the house.
Fernando (already tired of his father’s questions): We will decide to have a child, dad, and I don’t have to look for more jobs, Sofia has a good job, she earns very well, when she gets pregnant, she will be given the necessary leave to take care of the baby the first months and then, we will take him to a nursery and she will continue working.
Frank (Without getting out of his astonishment): Is your son going to be taken care of by a stranger, so that Sofia can continue doing whatever she wants?
Fernando: Oh old man, no matter how much I explain to you you won’t understand, modern marriages are based on equality, machismo is a thing of the past, the woman who couldn’t give her opinion, or work. But I guess that is something very difficult for you to understand, when you have your beliefs ingrained. I’m going to look for Sofía, father, I’ll talk to you later.
Fernando leaves the room and Frank is left thinking out loud.
Frank: Look how things have changed, if we go on like this, soon the men will be left at home taking care of the children and cleaning and the women will go to the bars with their girlfriends while their husbands are at home, what a barbarian!
THE END