Book Review: The Marriage Plot
The second book we read for our book club is The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, which we read during November and December of 2013. The illustration is by Ward Sutton, and was drawn for the 12 Days of Drawn to Read. Please note that this review does contain plot details and spoilers.
When the book club selected The Marriage Plot, we were hoping to discuss something with a strong central female character. We were disappointed.
The book centers around three Brown students during the eighties, and follows them through their college and postgraduate years. The first, Madeleine Hanna, is a beautiful and privileged English major who has an unfashionable fascination with the classic marriage stories of British literature during a period when her peers are more interested in semiotics and literary theory. Her classmate Mitchell Grammaticus is a theology student with an obsessive crush on Madeline, and spends the book trying to reconcile his religious beliefs with his human failings. Finally, Leonard Bankhead, who dates, and eventually marries, Madeline, is an enigmatic, brilliant, and initially charismatic biologist with self-destructive and manic-depressive tendencies.
The novel opens on the protagonists' graduation day, as viewed from the perspective of both Madeline and Mitchell, before going back in time to depict the characters' college years. Leonard's perspective is not shown until later in the book, keeping his thoughts, motivations, and struggles at a distance from the reader.
The early chapters describe Mitchell's crush and sometimes-strained friendship with Madeline, as well as his growth as a theology student and the star pupil of the department. Later, the book delves into Madeline's experiences in the English department, where she finds herself out-of-step with the trends of the day. At the same time, she becomes fascinated with one of the assigned texts, a deconstruction of the love story and "marriage plot" found in classic literature. She also becomes fascinated with Leonard, who is one of the top students in their Semiotics 101 class despite being a science major.
After watching Leonard from a distance, Madeline eventually finds herself in a relationship with him; it is initially energized, but becomes troubled as the inconstant Leonard is able to maintain an upper hand over Madeline. To his surprise, Madeline becomes fed up, and leaves, sending Leonard into a tailspin and, ultimately, landing him in the hospital during his final days at Brown. Madeline only finds out on graduation day, and abandons her family to comfort Leonard. The two reunite, but the dynamic reverses, with Leonard becoming dependent on Madeline.
The next part of the book focuses on the challenges faced by Mitchell, Leonard, and Madeline in the ensuing years. Mitchell travels with a classmate through Paris and Greece, and ultimately journeys to Calcutta to volunteer with Mother Teresa's sanctuary for ill and dying individuals. Mitchell, who took great pride in his moral rectitude, finds his goodness and his ego challenged, and ultimately defeated, by the unpleasant reality of caring for sick people with inadequate resources.
Meanwhile, Leonard is given a fellowship at a remote research institute, and Madeline follows him, taking on the identity of an academic's girlfriend. It is at this point that we begin to gain insight into Leonard's serious troubles and point-of view. The relationship between him and Madeline is strained; Leonard, who was given lithium in the wake of his institutionalization, suffers from side effects of the medication, becoming sluggish, heavier, and a laughingstock at the institute. Naturally, he is met with disapproval by Madeline's preppy family. Madeline is unwilling to face her disappointment and abandon the relationship, but starts becoming distant and invested in her own interests, attending conferences dedicated to romantic literature, renewing her efforts to attend graduate school, and briefly entertaining a flirtation with Mitchell.
Leonard, unhappy with his situation, begins to secretly reduce his medication, becoming more manic and ultimately proposing to Madeline. Leonard's mania becomes impossible to deny, leading to disaster at their honeymoon. Even though Leonard becomes a burden to Madeline and her family, and Madeline is forced to limit herself because of her duties to care for Leonard, she is unwilling to consider divorce. Ultimately, Leonard, after a discussion with Mitchell, decides that it would be selfish to remain married and disappears.
Mitchell provides comfort to Madeline in the wake of Leonard's disappearance, and, while it appears that the two might enter into a relationship, Mitchell comes to the realization that the vision of Madeline he has held in his mind is an idealization, and the Madeline would benefit more from time on her own. He suggests that Madeline enter her graduate program as a single woman and discover herself, and she agrees. As such, The Marriage Plot does not end, as traditionally expected, with a marriage, but by the female protagonist's abandonment of both suitors.
While I enjoyed certain passages in the book, such as the parts dealing with Leonard's time in the hospital or Mitchell's discussion of his struggles in India, I found the characters, particularly Madeline, to be frustrating. I can enjoy and appreciate an "unlikeable" character, but even a character who acts or perceives the world in a distasteful way, or who is frustratingly passive, should be fleshed out, with a perspective that is compelling to read about. Madeline is identified early on as someone who is pretty and privileged, and she rarely exhibits the self-awareness or agency that would allow her to carry the story. Perhaps, on some level, that is intentional; to the extent that The Marriage Plot is a meta-commentary, Madeline's lack of agency could be read as a critique of a genre that reduces the choices made by its female leads to the single choice of choosing a suitor. However, for the most part, even Madeline's romantic choices are not made by her, which makes it more difficult to invest in her story and her fate.
The two main male characters are more successfully realized. Mitchell, whose life experiences are similar to the author's, sometimes acts as a stand-in for Jeffrey Eugenides, and, while the character's attitudes can be annoyingly sexist and retrograde, the character does engage in self-examination and growth. Leonard's troubled background and ultimately unsuccessful struggles with bipolar disorder make him into a tragic and somewhat sympathetic character, in spite of the problems he created for Madeline and others.
Ultimately, while there were things to appreciate in the novel, and I'm glad I read it, I found The Marriage Plot to be a frustrating read overall.