Death Do Us follows a young woman called Bea, who starts to notice strange things happening to her body after she gets engaged. Her hair starts falling out, her teeth become strangely loose, and her engagement ring grows tighter and tighter.
I started writing Death Do Us a few weeks after my now husband proposed to me. While I was delighted to be getting married, I was also shocked by the sudden deluge of expectations that came with a ‘wedding day’ and what it meant to be a ‘bride’. As I began planning, my phone algorithm adjusted to my new status, sending me countless videos of wedding trends and inspiration. Attending wedding showcases highlighted the sheer scale of the wedding industry. I found myself growing anxious over a day that was supposed to be ‘for me’ – even panic ordering fabric swatches in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. My nervous energy and emotional processing needed to go somewhere, and so the idea for Death Do Us was formed.
Thankfully, I never found myself decomposing through the wedding planning process, though I did suffer a bout of severe blepharitis the day I was supposed to have my hair and makeup trial, which nearly sealed my eye shut. I had placed so much pressure on myself to appear my very best for my wedding, and while there was a rational part of my brain telling me that it didn’t matter how I looked, I couldn’t listen to it. The pressure to be ‘perfect’ for my wedding felt, at times, overwhelming. This inspired the catalogue of symptoms Bea experiences throughout the book.
Writing Death Do Us was both a cathartic exercise, and an examination of what marriage means to young women today. Bea’s interest in archaeology allowed me to explore how marriage has changed over time. An institution that was once effectively a transaction – an acquisition of property – has become a conscious choice, still seen by many a rite of passage, and a precursor to adulthood. Gradually, Bea loses her identity, letting herself become entirely absorbed by the traditions around her, and what society expects of her. I hope that readers are able to reflect on these more philosophical aspects of the book – personhood, identity, liminality, and the power that tradition still holds over many of us.
Death Do Us is my debut novel, and one I am very proud of. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
-Ruthy Mason
