Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot is set in 1982 and follows three co‑eds as they graduate from Brown and embark on their first year post‑college. Madeleine Hanna is the gal at the center of this love triangle, an English major in love with the great Victorian romance novels, rather than the hip semiotics novels that her peers love. On the other two points are Mitchell Grammaticus, who is into Christian mysticism, and Leonard Bankhead, a manic‑depressive scientist. Eugenides’s writing is beautiful, but not for the […]
This book really should be called “The Anti-Marriage Plot.”
I read The Marriage Plot a year and a half ago when I was still sorting out my dissertation topic and trying to figure out which texts I was using. After reading this book, I decided that it was necessary for my topic. So, this re-read is in preparation for the writing of my current chapter–and I promise, an unread book review is coming up soon! Madeleine Hanna is rather traditional in her book tastes–she prefers Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Balzac to more contemporary […]