Hands

In the second stanza of the poem the speaker instructs the applicant to open his hand. Finding it empty he offers to fill it. This invokes the “asking for the hand of the bride” in the traditionalist marriage proposal. The inversion of the asking with the offering suggests the pro-forma nature of bourgeois courtship, which resembles the trading of commodities more than authentic expression of love and devotion. The hand, as a symbol, also invokes utility and function.

Suits

In the fourth and fifth stanzas of the poem the speaker likens the proposed marriage to fitting the applicant for a suit. Unmarried, the applicant is as good as naked in the world. The suit is described as “Black and stiff, but not a bad fit” (21), suggesting that the speaker acknowledges the claustrophobia of wedlock and the confines of a domestic life but weighs this against the...