The Marriage Plot: A Novel
It's the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.
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Community Reviews
This book mainly focuses on three people: Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell, as they're graduating from Brown in 1982. Madeleine is the WASP from NJ who is in love with manic-depressive Leonard, who comes from an abusive/neglectful home in the Pacific Northwest. Mitchell is a religious studies scholar and is in love with Madeleine.
I loved this book, but my main complaint is that we don't really get as full a picture of Madeleine as we do of Leonard and Mitchell, other than as the object of affection for both of them. Hmmmm...
Eugenides starts taking her down a path of becoming a "feminist scholar of the Victorian novel," and then that kind of goes nowhere as she is caught up in Leonard's mania and decides she's going to marry him. What??? OK, I got married in 1982, but I was an uneducated high school grad who was six months pregnant, with very Catholic parents. What else was there to do??? Why would this BROWN GRADUATE think marrying someone, anyone, would be a good idea???
But there's lots of interesting stuff along the way as they all try to come to terms with themselves and their futures after college graduation.
I loved this book, but my main complaint is that we don't really get as full a picture of Madeleine as we do of Leonard and Mitchell, other than as the object of affection for both of them. Hmmmm...
Eugenides starts taking her down a path of becoming a "feminist scholar of the Victorian novel," and then that kind of goes nowhere as she is caught up in Leonard's mania and decides she's going to marry him. What??? OK, I got married in 1982, but I was an uneducated high school grad who was six months pregnant, with very Catholic parents. What else was there to do??? Why would this BROWN GRADUATE think marrying someone, anyone, would be a good idea???
But there's lots of interesting stuff along the way as they all try to come to terms with themselves and their futures after college graduation.
This dual story of Madeleine and Mitchell, set in the worlds of mental illness and 80's academia is wound inextricably with the Victorian motif of the marriage plot. M & M are well developed characters, along with Leonard. The odd triangle played out among these three is strangely satisfying to observe. At once a coming of age and a coping with mental illness tale, 'The Marriage Plot' allows us insight into Madeleine and Mitchell, individually, in alternating sections of the book. Eugenides is a master of human nature, able to believably describe the inner workings of men and women in a variety of circumstances. His prose is transcendent.
Why did I like this so much more than all my friends? It's hard to say but despite the book's robust length I was sad to see it end! It's definitely a book about books so that's a big plus for me, but I think ultimately I fell in love with all the characters.
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