Bildungsroman: Liberal Arts Style

The statement made by a select few judgemental people who saw me carrying around a book called The Marriage Plot: "Oh Jen (insert [again] judgemental laughter here), you and getting married!" My only response at the time: "It's a literature thing, that's all."

What I really wanted to say was: "Aren't you married?" "And...?" "Would you like to have an intellectual conversation today?"

But I didn't. I just smiled and kept walking. If I had bothered to stop and entertain their comments, I would have told them that 'the marriage plot' in literature is a plot based exclusively on the courtship rituals between a man and a woman (pre- openly gay world) and the obstacles that faced the potential couple on its way to the nuptial payoff. Jane Austen, anyone? George Eliot, Bronte misses?

Anyway, the steam is now blown and I can tell you ALL ABOUT THIS BOOK! The reason my coworkers saw me carrying it around it because I could not put it down- I read at night until I HAD to go to sleep, I read during breakfast, I read when making large stacks of copies at school. I took it to lunch with me and when conversation became negative or drone, I pulled out my book that never let me down.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Euginedes has basically written a modern-day bildungsroman, or a coming of age novel. It focuses on 3 post-bac students (thought a flashblack does occur for a significant portion of the novel)- Madeleine Hannah- a WASP (shout out English majors!) who is beautiful yet lacks the confidence she needs to go with it, Leonard Bankhead- one of those guys in your classes that is so brilliant that you go mute in his presence, and Mitchell Grammaticus- unrequited lover of Madeleine and religion. Their lives are tangled together, sometimes loosening up for a while and sometimes staying tangled for a while.

What struck me the most was that there were no physical antagonists in the novel; instead, abstractions assumed the roll of the antagonists. Mitchell struggled with religion, Leonard struggled with mental illness, and Madeleine struggled with her relationship.

It's a great book and the end wraps up the novel pretty well- I don't know if as a reader I was supposed to root for one character over another, but I didn't because I loved them all. If you are looking for an intellectual read that will make you find talk to yourself about the issues raised and a book with feminist undertones, this is the one!