SOURCE: Eppich, Linda Nielson. “Isaac Bashevis Singer's ‘Short Friday’: Semantic Parallels of Happily-Ever-Aftering.” Studies in Short Fiction 27, no. 3 (summer 1990): 357-63.

In the following essay, Eppich discusses the elements of the fairy tale form in Singer's short story “The Short Friday.”

“Lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.”

We are far too skeptical a readership to consider the fairy tale of a prince and princess who live happily-ever-after in this world. Yet Isaac Bashevis Singer expects us to accept not only this fanciful tale but one even more extravagant. The modern prose of “Short Friday” uses the poetic parallelisms of the ancient Hebrew prophets to convince us that a less-than-perfect tailor and dough-kneader miraculously appear happily-ever-aftering in Paradise. Singer does not ask if we believe in Paradise. He assumes that we do so and spends his time examining a marital relationship that...