The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides

I’ve been puzzling for a couple of days about what to write about this book. For the most part, I really enjoyed it, particularly the descriptions of Madeleine and Mitchell’s forays into semiotics. Admittedly, I was an English Literature student, although a decade later than the characters of The Marriage Plot, at a Welsh university, but it did remind me about some of the literary theory I did. The characters are unselfconsciously pretentious, as are the lists of books that they read, but it appealed to that part of me. 

 

Despite all this, and the novel’s central premise that ‘the marriage plot’, a literary device used mainly in Victorian novels, has been rendered defunct, the book is very readable. Eugenides’s description of Leonard’s manic depression seemed authentic and the characters were realistic. I did find Madeleine Hanna a little irritating at times, but I think that this was perhaps deliberate. She functions both as a representation of the heroine of the marriage plot and as a contrast of the idea itself.  Yet, she never really matures as a person, by the end she has just rejected semiotics in favour of becoming a Victorian feminist critic. Leonard has given her a way out of the marriage she has been unable to cope with by running off into the sunset never to be seen again and Mitchell has decided that she is better off without him as well. 

This ending is the part of the book I had the most trouble with, it felt rushed and I suppose I wanted Madeline to make her own choices about her life, not for the two ‘heroes’ of the novel to decide for her. Her feminist credentials are about the papers she writes, not about the choices that she makes. Her experiences with Leonard’s manic depression and with their short-lived marriage seemingly haven’t affected her in any long lasting way. Madeleine reacts in a passive way to most of her life decision aside from skipping her graduation to spend time with Leonard.

Her relationship with Leonard hardly makes her a paragon of feminism either. The worse he treats her the more she seems attracted to him at first, then she seems to be attracted to him because of his neediness and acts in almost a motherly way towards him. With Mitchell, on the other hand, there is a sense that she looks down on him. I suppose that this may be the point that Eugenides is making, that modern ideas about marriage, relationships and the concept of equality make it more difficult for both women and men to find a suitable partner. Ideas about the role of women have been superseded.

As have ideas about religion, which affects Mitchell who travels to India searches for a form of spirituality or religion that he can believe in. Yet his search proves ultimately fruitless, just when he seems to find something in the hospice he flees in horror when confronted with the worst of the jobs. He ends up realising that he is not meant to be a monk or even a theologian, as well as not marrying Madeleine. 

At the end of the novel it is only Madeleine who has some sort of idea of what she is going to do. The book subverts the traditional coming-of-age story in that there are no real ‘answers’ at the end, presumably Madeleine will be successful as a Victorian feminist critic and her marriage to Leonard will be annulled, but there is no indication she will start a relationship with anyone or what will happen to Leonard and Mitchell. It would be interesting to re-visit the characters in the 1990s and beyond to find out what they have become. 

Anyway I gave it three stars at the end, but I am still considering giving it four despite the ending. Perhaps more of a 3.5 star book.