The problem with The Marriage Plot is that Madeleine Hanna is the. most. boring. character. While Eugenides clearly states his intention to follow the conventions of the marriage plot so I can’t complain about predictability, the book still purports to be about Madeleine and, well, it’s not. I feel like the books he’s imitating still make the women more existent. We know them better. This books is instead about Leonard and Mitchell—I mean David Foster Wallace and college “I’m trying to discover myself” everyman. And Madeleine is an empty shell of a woman a la Bella Swan in Twilight. Like Bella, we don’t even know what she looks like, so women can just imagine themselves as her. Eugenides must want women who went to college to say, “I’ve been there! That’s me! Sigh, so true.” And let me tell you, he does get college right—I bet 90% of Columbia English majors ARE Madeleine Hanna. I’ll give Eugenides that. He’s damn accurate, with the whole suburban NJ overprivileged white girl thing. Still, do I want to read a whole book about 90% of my classmates? No. I already hear enough in seminar, thanks but no thanks dude. Also, I know that despite their apparent similarities to Madeleine, the women in my classes are all better than her. They have personalities, quirks, the things that make them real. Madeleine doesn’t have any of that.
Also, can Madeleine ever exist in this book on her own without a man? No. SPOILER ALERT goes here, so don’t keep reading if you’re really into not knowing what happens in a book that purposefully follows a classic plotline where everyone knows what’s going to happen. The book opens after Madeleine’s break up with Leonard and at a point where she’s not speaking to Mitchell, and girl’s a mess, giving indiscriminate blowjobs and going to graduation totally hungover. How unladylike. Just in time, however, Leonard’s ready to take her back and she can function again. Until, of course, that finally falls apart at the end of the book. So guess who moves in with her family for no reason when they break up? Mitchell. Just in case she can’t function on her own again. Then Mitchell has to set her free from the plot, let her know how it’s supposed to go and tell her it’s OK to be on her own for once. Thanks, Mitchell! With his approval, Madeleine can finally go live in the NYC apartment her parents will pay for and go to grad school her parents will pay for and generally have the easiest life ever. What an ending!
People*, defend The Marriage Plot for me! Was Eugenides’ whole point to be so boring and typical in order to uphold conventional plotlines? Would I have hated Pride and Prejudice just as much if I read it when it first came out because it was about something so common to me? Is he just trying to write about real life, which is really actually kind of predictable and boring?
*Hi, two people who read this! <3 you.
