The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (Fourth Estate, 2011)
“Heartbreak is funny to everyone but the heartbroken”
Nine years on from the excellent Pulitzer prize winning Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides’ third novel has the look and feel of a substantial work.
In it, his stated aim is to attempt a big contemporary novel on the classic themes of love and marriage of the type found in celebrated novels of authors like Jane Austen and George Eliot.
Needless to say, he is mindful of the radical changes in society since the Victorian Age and the fact that the attitudes and roles of women are very different. Nowadays, prenuptual agreements and quickie divorces mean that marriage is no longer the be all and end all for women. Elevated social status and liberation is not dependent on making the right love match.
As a concept, the novel holds much promise but Eugenides seems weighed down by the burden of these themes. It all boils down three extended character studies – two men and one woman – and how their lives interweave. “Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?” asked Morrissey in The Smiths’ Still Ill and this is one of the question implicitly posed by all three. Continue reading
