Book Review: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

A Transparently Metamodern Novel

The Marriage Plot is very self-consciously about bringing back the marriage plot after the postmodern, feminist, post-structuralist critiques of the marriage plot while also taking those critiques into serious consideration in the structure of that plot.

Let’s be honest, none of that sounds very exciting, when in fact the story is quite compelling. However, the author lets you know in no uncertain terms that he’s bringing back the marriage plot in this novel. The main character—Madeleine—is an undergrad student at Brown University majoring in literature. Her interest is in 19th century fiction written by women, meaning she is necessarily studying the marriage plot, as it was a dominant plot during that period, and especially among women writers. It is the early 1980s, so there is increasing interest in postmodern, post-structuralist, feminist readings of literature. Madeleine in fact takes a class on post-structuralism, which is where she meets Leonard, a biology major who likes to take classes that challenge the status quo.

Madeleine and Leonard eventually start dating, but post-structuralism in the form of Roland Barthes leads to their breaking up—when she tells Leonard she loves him, he responds with irony and directing her to a page in Barthes that reflects that irony. She throws the book at him, gets dressed (they had just had sex), tells him it’s over, and leaves.

It turns out that Leonard is bipolar, so after the breakup, he has a breakdown—eventually ending up checking himself into a mental hospital for a while. When Madeleine learns he’s in a mental hospital, she skips her graduation (to which her parents came from New Jersey) and runs to him. Naturally, she ends up renewing the relationship and moves with him to a research facility where he’ll be working over the next year. The medication he’s on—lithium—is at such a high dose that it dulls his mind. He just goes through the motions at work, no longer the brilliant young man he was in college with a lesser dose of lithium. He eventually starts experimenting with his dosage, and he thinks he finds the right one, but he starts acting more and more manic—more likely to go out, more likely to drink and party, more brilliant, and much more interested in sex. He and Madeleine have so much sex, she starts to overlook the problems coming with his mania, and so when he asks her to marry him—in the middle of sex—she says yes.

Everything goes well up through the wedding, and into the first half of the honeymoon in France. But when they go to Monaco, Leonard’s mania takes over, he disappears for a while—so long, Madeleine’s mother flies to Monaco to help—and they end up admitting him to a hospital there.

All of this seems to make for a very straightforward plot, though it’s not really a “marriage plot” in the traditional sense as I’ve described it so far. In most marriage plots, there is a second man vying for the woman’s hand, and we are left wondering (but not really) if the second man will win hear heart over the main protagonist, who keeps messing things up. No fear. There is in fact a second man, Mitchell, a theology student, who had met Madeleine their Freshman year and, though he was in love with her and determined he would marry her, ended up in the friend zone. Now, everyone knows that if you end up in the friend zone, even if you manage to have sex with the woman (once, if you’re lucky), you never end up getting out of it.

Thus, there is nothing remotely surprising about Mitchell. He pines for Madeleine, but we all know he’s never getting her. While Madeleine is living with Leonard, having marathon sex, Mitchell goes backpacking through Europe and India. While in India, he works with Mother Theresa for a while, but soon goes on a quick grand tour of India before heading back to the States. He returns in time for the complete collapse of Madeleine’s and Leonard’s marriage, ends up moving into her parents’ house with her—but in separate bedrooms—and only ends up having sex with her once, which helps him realize they will never have a romantic relationship together.

Mitchell is the most disappointingly underdeveloped character. He’s a theology student whose final paper in one of his senior theology classes is apparently so brilliant that the professor offers to try to get him into grad school in other Ivy League schools. However, I saw no evidence of this brilliance. Mitchell is vaguely spiritual, half-heartedly tries out a few religious practices, but without any real conviction that they’ll work, and he doesn’t demonstrate any evidence that he has a strong intellect. In the end, I see no evidence of Mitchell’s brilliance. He seems to be mediocre at best. It’s no wonder he ended up in the friend zone. It’s also not surprising Madeleine angrily broke off their friendship. Most people probably would after a while.

In the end, the novel uses the marriage plot while undermining the marriage plot and expanding the marriage plot (which is stated by Madeleine and Mitchell in a very self-conscious way, parroting the author’s ideas). It is both ironic and serious, funny and weighty (especially through all the stuff about Leonard’s depression), and a post-postmodernist take on a 19th century trope. The postmodern critiques of the marriage plot are considered to be absolutely right (the marriage plot is somewhat undermined) and also wrong (the marriage plot is clearly being used, and even expanded). No 19th century novel would dare have a character who is bipolar as the man who wins the woman’s heart, even if they would definitely have someone like Mitchell as the foil the woman ends up rejecting. And, of course, none end in the breakdown of the marriage (they end with the marriage and don’t dare go much beyond that).

For those familiar with what I have written about metamodern art, you know that metamodern authors utilize the kinds of paradoxical tensions Eugenides uses in The Marriage Plot. Like many postmodern authors, Eugenides’s book is extremely self-conscious. Especially at the beginning and the end. But it’s not playfully so. It’s seriously so. He has a point to make. Unfortunately, this can be a bit of a turnoff. But maybe we should expect such things from early metamodern novels such as this. After all, we have to sort of feel ourselves out of postmodernism and into metamodernism.

If I am to be honest, I liked this novel much more before I wrote this review. At the same time, I do encourage you to read this novel. There is a good story here, even if a bit depressing (but if you like Modernist fiction, you should be more than prepared for depressing stories). I think it does provided a good foundation for future metamodernist works. In many ways, it’s an ideal book insofar as it’s sufficiently flawed as to make you want to write something else to fix those flaws. And it’s well-written and with a good enough story that you are so inspired as opposed to not even caring to finish the work. For influencing future art, it’s ideal. And thus, I do in the end have to recommend this flawed, thoroughly metamodern novel.