Closet

The closet is referred to by the speaker as the location where the advertised bride is being kept: “Come here, sweetie, out of the closet” (28) the speaker requests. This suggests that the thoroughly objectified bride has been stored away. She is produced when her value needs to be demonstrated in the transaction of the marriage arrangement. The closet also suggests that there is a latent homoeroticism being repressed by all parties in the arrangement.

Roof

In the fifth stanza the speaker likens marriage to an insurance policy that one takes out, offering a variety of different securities against unforeseen events. The suit that the applicant is being induced to try on represents marriage in the context of the verse. This suit is protective as the speaker clarifies: “It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof / Against fire and bombs through the roof” (23-24). The roof implicitly invokes the physical premises of...