The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

In Victorian literature, the marriage plot is the one where the heroine has to choose between two suitors for her hand in marriage, as in Pride and Prejudice, for example. The climax of the plot is the moment the choice is made, after which the couple lives happily ever after.

Eugenides has written a more modern version of the marriage plot, his romance taking place in the early 1980s. His three protagonists, all seniors at Brown University when the novel begins, are Madeleine, from an affluent and cultured family, whose intellectual passion is Victorian literature; Mitchell, a serious-minded young man from a loving family who has become obsessed with Christian mysticism and with Madeleine; and Leonard, a charismatic and intellectually brilliant youth from a dysfunctional family, whose brooding charm makes him seemingly irresistible to women. Guess which one Madeleine chooses?

Eugenides rather obviously selected this time period for his novel because he, also, graduated from Brown in the early '80s, and because the character Mitchell is, also rather obviously, patterned after himself and some of his post-college experiences.

The plot of the novel unfolds in a rather hodge-podge manner, jumping backward and forward in time and from character to character in its third-person viewpoint. The first part recounts time in the university and includes much intellectual preening on the part of the characters, which is oh-so-typical of the liberal arts university atmosphere and is surely present even today. The second part tells of life-after-graduation, when the characters are dumped into the real world to figure out who they really are and what they are going to make of their lives.

The Marriage Plot is both engaging and infuriating. The pacing and suspense of the story demands attention, even when the writer seems to be indulging in some intellectual preening himself. The characters are well realized and realistic, even if not totally likeable. The section from the viewpoint of a manic-depressive character is so chilling and authentic-sounding, I have to wonder if Eugenides is not manic-depressive himself. The book trapped me and I read it far into the night.

Now comes the infuriating part. The writing is very uneven, veering from flashes of brilliance to triteness. (The mentions of the beauty of Madeleine rivaled the number of mentions of the handsomeness of Edward in the Twilight books, and when Madeleine tells Leonard, "You are so big," I felt like gagging.) But my main complaint is that the "point" or "message" of the novel seems muddled. On one hand, Eugenides seems to be commenting on the way the sexual revolution and the feminist movement have changed "the marriage plot." On the other hand, he seems to be saying that "the marriage plot" has not changed in its essentials at all. At least in Victorian novels the heroine finally makes the right decision. In this reworking, the heroine is so passive that she actually allows someone else (and a male) to make the final decision for her. So much for women's liberation.

I will have to think about this novel further, and maybe I will come to a more favorable conclusion, or maybe not. Recommended as a most interesting read.