Summary

In this, the second part of "A Penny in a Purse," the author describes how the marriage between her parents, which her mother had started to question before it actually took place, got pushed forward when Jeannie found out she was pregnant at seventeen, much like Betty who found out she was pregnant at sixteen. The author comments in the narration that “a family cycle so old and deep tends to go unexamined and unquestioned but is always felt” (25). She also comments that the presence of “August” in her life was a defining factor when she, the author, was a teenager herself. She also describes herself when Jeannie was pregnant as being “in a poor girl’s lining like a penny in a purse – not worth much, according to the economy, but kept in production” (26). She then describes how, as Jeannie and Nick...