The Marriage Plot – Whitney Reed

Jeffrey Eugenides. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011. 406 pp.

Acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner, Jeffrey Eugenides has created a new spin on the coming of age novel in The Marriage Plot. The lengthy novel is set in the early 1980s and follows the lives of two main characters, Madeleine and Mitchell, who graduate from university and spend the next year trying to establish their lives as adults in the world. Madeleine is an undisputed romantic attempting to forge her way through an English major’s education at Brown University. Her idealistic, romantic beliefs are constantly opposed by her education as well as her boyfriend, Leonard, who has been diagnosed manic-depressive. The novel is also split in storyline, attributing equal time to Madeleine’s college friend Mitchell, who aspires to find the answers to his religious questionings. The novel does not have chapters, but breaks between the two stories of Madeleine and Mitchell as they attempt to come of age in a world that lures and tempts them away from what they truly want to become. Those who enjoy reading will be thrilled with this novel and its connection to the reader. Madeleine is an English major who spends a good portion of the first half of the novel delving into the complexities of being a reader and making reading a professional occupation. It is impossible for a fellow reader to fail to relate to the common questions and hesitations that follow literary interpretation. Madeleine’s focus on new forms of literary criticism (such as deconstructionism) introduces an examination of the shift in literary criticism during the 1980s. Her entire understanding of literary criticism is shifted when she takes a Semiotics course in her Senior year. This class serves the purpose of developing the defensive character to whom the reader is initially introduced. While Madeleine is attracted to the idea that the writer is the point of authority in a work’s message, she is faced with a more difficult theory that it is the reader’s job to form the message from the work. She points out in frustration at one point in the novel, the theorists, “wanted to demote the author . . . They wanted the reader to be the main thing. Because they were readers” (42). This introductory conflict of Madeleine’s eventually turns into a larger conflict that hints at Madeleine’s inability to accept the different views in the world. Her sexual relationships and professional development after college are damaged in her attempts to deny the greater problems in her life by romanticizing and refusing to further analyze the potential depths. Madeleine’s relationship with Leonard is also a major theme of the novel, exploring the problems associated with a woman, who is not faced with the taboo of mental illness, but who makes the choice to immerse herself in a world that is previously unknown to people of Madeleine’s upper class and status. Mitchell’s choice to go backpacking across Europe and to volunteer his services in India after college in an attempt to discover his own

religious identity is also a taboo decision that is challenged and questioned by his family and friends. Both characters attempt to make taboo life choices after they graduate, which leads to rough situations and difficult decisions as they attempt to carve out their own futures. This is not a novel that advocates the “hippie” life of the ’60s and ’70s, nor does it romanticize the “proper” lifestyles of the popular accepted culture of the times. Instead, the novel forces the reader to work through the cynicism of Mitchell’s exploration of Europe and religion and Madeleine’s romanticism of her corrupt relationship with Leonard, in order to reach a realistic picture of the turmoil of finding one’s way when searching for an identity— that is, for a future direction. In an interesting mirror, the reader is placed in the same situation as Madeleine, being offered the choice to either take the work at face value and trust in the author’s craftsmanship, or to take the Semiotics approach and attempt to detect the underlying investigations in the taboo choices made and the consequences of those choices that are forced onto the characters. The plot mainly follows Madeleine and Mitchell, shifting viewpoints between them as they each go their separate ways in the year that follows their college graduation. Without chapters, the novel does provide sections, but they are lengthy and far spaced, ultimately making it a difficultly-paced novel. Despite the long, slow pacing, the novel is extremely rewarding from beginning to finish. There are flashbacks and the story is not entirely chronological, but all of the memories are easily identified an only serve to heighten the book’s twisting tale and do not detract from it. The novel itself is accessible to nearly any reader, though young readers entering or leaving the college sphere would particularly be able to appreciate this in-depth exploration of finding a path and the various ways that the choices made at this precipice in a person’s life can lead to growth and discovery as well as loss and despair. Older generation readers will also find this novel intriguing as it brings forth the cultural elements of the 1980s. Readers who enjoyed The Virgin Suicides will encounter a vaguely similar tone, but the story is extremely different and tackles a separate set of issues and situations. The Marriage Plot is not a copycat of The Virgin Suicides, nor does it pick up a similar story thread. Instead, this entertaining novel is a completely new story tackling a fresh topic and new storyline in an innovative tale about two friends’ coming of age, who lose their direction as they attempt to find themselves.