The Marriage Plot

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness and substance use.

Madeleine is a young woman who has grown up in a privileged and cultured family—as a student at an Ivy League university, it is expected that she will go on to a prestigious career. Madeleine, however, is uncertain about her future path, having stumbled into an English major because she lacks any other passions. As graduation nears, she applies to various jobs, graduate programs, or teach-abroad programs but does not feel strongly about any single avenue. Madeleine is quite passionate about her studies, but she intentionally seeks to pursue subjects that are outside of the mainstream. When her initial interest in the topic of her senior thesis (the eponymous “marriage plot”) wanes, she becomes obsessed with semiotics—the study of signs and symbols, a post-structuralist theoretical movement associated with the French theorist Roland Barthes and popular in the academic humanities in the 1980s. She is drawn to the esoteric nature of many of the texts, but she is frustrated with the pretention it brings out in other students. She prides herself in being an independent thinker, and though she falls into a few romantic relationships throughout college, she does not regard herself as dependent on a man for meaning.

When she comes across Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse, Madeleine quickly becomes consumed by its cryptic assertions about love. In her personal life—and especially with Leonard—she attempts to put theory into practice. In her quest to carve out a life for herself that is the opposite of her parents’ expectations, Madeleine both rejects the affection of Mitchell Grammaticus (whom she is certain is exactly the kind of boyfriend her parents would relish her marrying) and seeks out men whom she intentionally believes to be unlike those she has dated in the past. Leonard Bankhead’s mysterious and unconventional personality initially draws Madeleine to him. Much of their relationship, however, is fraught with conflict. Their initial breakup hurls Madeleine into a deep depression. She grows certain that they are meant to be together and that their breakup is something she will never recover from. Her feelings for Leonard are so intense that they sometimes cloud her judgment—evident both when she shirks the commencement ceremony to rush to his aid and when she accepts his abrupt marriage proposal less than a year later.

In her desire to live a life that is antithetical to that of her parents, Madeleine is determined to make her relationship with Leonard a success. This leads her to sacrifice her own future by following him to Pilgrim Lake and making his mental health and stability her first priority. Though she is frequently cautioned against the challenges of coupling with someone who has a mental illness, Madeleine is set on proving this notion wrong. The painful growth that she undergoes by the end of the novel comes about as she realizes not only that Leonard’s mental state is detrimental to her but also that she must pursue her own passion (which, she has uncovered, involves not semiotics or theory but Victorian literature—a rather traditional field by comparison). In her independence, Madeleine welcomes a more stable and rewarding future as the novel closes.