Me. Me. Me. Ememememem.
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ain't none of my business what you do after hours....
The sansa stark experience
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When Arthur meets Mary for the first time in a while, he takes off his hat. I think it's very significant because he's still outdoors and doesn't need to do that. He could just tip his hat in greeting. From what I've seen of Southern hat etiquette, it's common to take off the hat only when you're inside a house. But he takes it off when in front of her. And when they're still outdoors.
Maybe I'm thinking too deeply into it but I think it really shows how much love and respect he has for Mary despite it all. This thought might be mismatched but I remember seeing a video about hat etiquette which explained this: your hat is a representation of your work and when you take it off in front of a woman, your work is not important in that moment, but she is (paraphrase).
Now I'm not American and neither do I have in-depth knowledge of Southern manners and etiquette so forgive me if this is wrong!!
One thing I've always thought about with Mary's first letter is how she wrote that Arthur knows it's from her because of her bad handwriting. It just always stuck with me because it makes you think that they must have sent letters so often over the years that they eventually memorised eachother's handwriting.
That maybe when they were younger, Arthur, in his early twenties, giddy and full of nerves as he rode to the post office to deliver his letter for the woman he loved? Cursing to himself as he fretted about what he'd written, worried about sounding like a fool?
Then Mary, at the same time, full of butterflies as she slipped out every day to check for a new letter from Arthur, and then writing her own letters before scrunching them up and rewriting them again and again, cursing to herself because of her bad handwriting? Wanting to make it as nice as Arthur's?
Do you think about how something as simple as sending letters was probably the steadiest thing keeping them together in their own chaotic lives, how it probably made them both feel so much less lonely through everything? Do you think about it. Do you. Do.