What I read: I had promised that
The Marriage Plot would
get an entire post, but that was a lie... or, rather, a
misrepresentation. I am too immersed in my current reads to spend a
great deal of time on writing reviews, but more on that later. Here is a
wee-review of
The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides.
I really thought I would hate this book. I enjoyed
The Virgin Suicides and
Middlesex,
but I was hesitant to pick up Eugenides' latest. My fear was that it
would be a novel about spoiled twits having loads of sex while playing
at being intellectuals and name-dropping like the most obnoxious
"pretentious coffee shop boy" you can imagine. Well... it is about
spoiled twits having sexual romps and name dropping theorists, writers,
and philosophers like nobody's business. However, it is also about
much, much more than that. In the hands of less skilled author, this
plot would have been mind numbingly obnoxious. Lucky for me, Eugenides
is a powerful writer; ah yes, the prose is strong with this one.
The novel is set in the late 1970s - early 1980s and concerns three
young people -- Madeline (an English major with a love for Victorian
literature), her friend Mitchell (a Philosophy and Religion major), and
Leonard (a brilliantly well-rounded biology major). The title of
The Marriage Plot comes
from Madeline's theses on marriage in the novels of Austen through
Eliot, but is also a metaphor for Madeline's life as a woman academic in
the late 70s.
Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan
Gubar has recently been published, feminist literary criticism is
growing, and Madeline struggles with balancing her life in academia with
the pressure she feels to be a caring, selfless companion. Yes, shades
of
The Bell Jar all over the place. How does one marry a career
and what's socially expected of women? Madeline is smart, but she
knows she isn't the unfeeling, cerebral academic and feels that her love
of Victorian literature -- based on a love of the characters, plots,
and writing -- doesn't jive with the current academic climate. It is
such a "girl" thing to love
Jane Eyre for the story and not as a
novel to be theoretically ripped to shreds and dissected by every school
of literary criticism. Madeline can sense the pressure to be
dismissive and cynical of everything, but she still keeps up her love of
literature. She also sacrifices a great deal for Leonard because that
is what one does for love, but her desire to be an independent scholar
of literature and caring for a very brilliant, but very ill, biploar man
places her in a position of having to choose between her career and her
relationship. Eugenides excells at capturing the conflict many women
-- even today -- struggle with: the balance between career and home
life.
Mitchell and Leonard are also equally rich characters. Mitchell
goes on a post graduation journey to Europe and eventually to India with
a friend. He is exploring religion -- and very serious about it -- and
all the while pining for Madeline. Mitchell struggles with wanting to
devote himself to some higher power and empower himself to be a better
person, yet he still struggles with the fact that he is a human and has
human impulses and weaknesses. For example, he bails on volunteering at
one mission when he realizes he will have to clean up a grown man's
feces and, of course, Mitchell is disappointed and humiliated with
himself. Mitchell also yearns to be free of sexual lust, but as a young
man he finds it nearly impossible and he is appalled by his inability to
control his thoughts. Leonard lands a post at a famous research
facility, but his bipolar medication is at odds with his intellectual
pursuits. When he is medicated he is slow, sluggish, and lacks his
brilliance. When not medicated the brilliance returns, but at an
emotional cost. Leonard, too, struggles with aligning his dreams of
research science with his medical limitations.
Essentially Madeline, Mitchell, and Leonard are struggling because
they are intellectually precocious, but lack emotional maturity or have
other barriers (such as mental illness) that prevent them from achieving
their dreams as they expected. I think that this is certainly a near
universal truth for most college graduates. I may have this feeling
because I remember being bright in college but an absolute idiot with
emotional choices at 22 (my what a difference 10 years makes) and I work
at a university and constantly encounter students who are very smart,
but hampered by relationships, self-esteem issues, struggles with
parents, and other concerns. Yes, one can read and understand Kristeva,
write a thesis on Dostoevsky, read Flaubert in French, and still weep
over a bad break-up while eating a jar of peanut butter, get drunk and
make out with an jerk, or argue parents over living with a boyfriend.
Eugenides' ability to write such complex characters really made the
story real. I sympathized with the characters and wanted to beat the
youthful egoist out of them. The skill to write such humanly real
characters takes a deft writer with keen observational powers and
Eugenides certainly rises to the occasion.
What I'm reading: I am absolutely gobsmack in love with
The Little Stranger.
I've marked my copy up with all manner of notes and I cannot wait to
finish this book. It is so so so good and I'd say it is Waters best
novel. I don't want to do anything else -- like write blog posts -- I just want to READ!
I'm also steadily working through
Gone with the Wind; I'm
enjoying it -- especially from a feminist perspective. Scarlett is not a
proper Southern Belle and I like her ballsy independence, but I'm most
intrigued by the descriptions of life for Southern women. Subservient,
self-sacrificing, and managing entire plantations, yet most women are
encouraged to eat little, swoon, and act like an air-headed ninny. Also
big on the yuck factor is that fact that Scarlett is 16 and Rhett
Butler around 35 when he first "notices" Scarlett. Ewwww... but then
again, this is common for that time. I also have an issue with the
language. I know it is historically accurate, but my skin crawls every
time I read racial slurs. It makes me uncomfortable, that whole my
ancestors once owned other humans really bothers me.
And, of course, my Harry Potter reading is trucking along. I read a
few pages before bed at night or while the kids are playing. I'm still
reading
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone and loving it as much as the first read.
What's Up Next: I plan on finishing Waters, the first Harry Potter book, and the first section of
Gone with the Wind this
week. Then I will start cracking on the second Harry Potter book,
maybe pick-up a graphic novel or two, and plug away at the second
section of Mitchell's tome.
Happy Reading!
