#the marriage plot

[flowerytale]

Jeffrey Eugenides, from The Marriage Plot

[vega-alphalyrae-hip91262]

I've seen a lot of people enjoy College AUs where mental health and relationships are heavily dealt on, but I never see people fawning over this book. Jeffrey Eugenides is in my opinion one of the great writers of contemporary American fiction (Middlesex is downright a master piece). So anyway this deals with depression and mania, complex relationship dynamics, a really fantastically set College backdrop and the basic structure of Jane Austen (and general regency era inspired Marriage Plot).

So anyway, I thought I'd recommend it. Sometimes we wind up caught in the web of the algorithm and don't find these amazing works of fiction.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Hilda Hechle (British, 1902-1938) - A Moonlight Fantasy. :: (Guillaume Gris)

* * * * *

“If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative. If you grew up with emotionally stunted parents, who were unhappy in their marriage and prone to visit that unhappiness on their children, you didn't know they were doing this. It was just your life. If you had an accident, at the age of four, when you were supposed to be a big boy, and were later served a plate of feces at the dinner table - if you were told to eat it because you liked it, didn't you, you must like it or you wouldn't have so many accidents - you didn't know that this wasn't happening in the other houses in your neighborhood. If your father left your family, and disappeared, never to return, and your mother seemed to resent you, as you grew older, for being the same sex as your father, you had no one to turn to. In all these cases, the damage was done before you knew you were damaged. The worst part was that, as the years passed, these memories became, in the way you kept them in a secret box in your head, taking them out every so often to turn them over and over, something like dear possessions. They were the key to your unhappiness. The were the evidence that life wasn't fair. If you weren't a lucky child, you didn't know you weren't lucky until you got older. And then it was all you ever thought about.” ― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

[the-final-sentence]

The real shame of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, of the absurd theater of romantic comedies, of the sweeping passion of romance novels, is that they know where we are most tender, and they aim right for that place.

Roxane Gay, from “The Marriage Plot”

[litandlifequotes]

The worst part was that, as the years passed, these memories became, in the way you kept them in a secret box in your head, taking them out every so often to turn them over and over, something like dear possessions. They were the key to your unhappiness. They were the evidence that life wasn’t fair. If you weren’t a lucky child, you didn’t know you weren’t lucky until you got older. And then it was all you ever thought about.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

[ub-sessed]

OMG!! I found the boob quote! It's real!

I'm reading The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, because I read about it in The New Yorker and it sounded interesting. I'm about a fifth of the way in, and it's not really my bag: the author is condescending towards his protagonists, which is never a good look. But I thought it was worth seeing where he was going with the story. Until he describes the main character with this:

Her breasts, of which she was normally proud, had withdrawn into themselves, as if depressed.

😂😂😂!!!!!

Somebody else posted this on Tumblr a few years ago as an example of absurd things that men write about female characters, but I cannot believe I just came across it.

Here's a tip, Jeffrey: boobs are not like testicles. They don't withdraw into themselves. My baby daddy says, "Written by someone who's never had a boob. Not a single boob."

[macrolit]

Small scene on a shelf, part 755 from ml.books

[uselessatheart]

In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot