The Marriage Plot and Post-postmodernism, the Damage Control Literary School

By Lechi Eke

Post-postmodernism (PPM) is about theories of a wide-ranging set of developments in philosophy architecture, art, literature, and culture. These critical theories attempt to fix what postmodernism (PM) has broken down, such things as: questioning authorities, sacrificing the element of human connection, rejection of absolutes like truth or sincerity, etc. Therefore, Post-postmodernism (PPM) is a reaction against postmodernism. Metamodernism is one of a few other names for PPM.

A denial of the existence of any ultimate principle is what “post” in postmodernism (PM) signifies. PM lacks the optimism of the existence of scientific, philosophical, or religious truth, which will explain everything for everybody – typical of the so-called “modern” mind.

In Postmodernism, time, including other elements like hope or faith, has broken down. Therefore, Post-postmodernism (PPM) recognises that the reader exists and has needs (something he/she is looking forward to see in a story), and that fiction is not about fiction, or books about books, but that fiction is about human relationship, about real life.

Therefore, PPM emerged to rediscover the human connection, to re-establish the relationship between the reader and the story, to meet the reader’s needs.

PPM recognises popular culture, the superhero, comic books, and sci-fi power of imaginations, as all works of art because these things (entertainment) meet the needs of the audience or the reader. Also, it recognises everyday life as being important and portrays narratives with heart. Therefore, PPM acts as Damage Control to PM.

In the last edition, we took a sample PPM novel titled Infinite Jester, a 1996 novel by David Foster Wallace that shows PPM’s support for populism, irony and so forth. In this edition, we look at another PPM novel portraying other qualities in support of human relationship and other elements of humanity such as sexual equality, personal choices, trust, faith, and so forth, which PM had tried to annihilate.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides written in 2011 is a campus novel portraying human challenges and flaws. It is hybrid in nature: both scholarly and banal with themes of romance, religious quest, a tale of mental instability, coming of age storyline, and of tourism. It shows us how books shape lives, for example, reading Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, Madeleine, the heroine, decides on a lover. The novel itself is like a marriage between two literary movements – Realism and Postmodernism.

It is the story of three university students and their real life challenges, including friendship with a dose of romance (that uncannily resembles 19^th century romantic fiction), worries about grades, dealing with mental illness, and application to postgraduate school. It limns a love triangle between a young woman and two young men, all of them students of Brown University (in the US) where the story opens in their final year and continues to several months after their graduation.

Eugenides’ novel is fresh because it has been a very long time since novels were written with weddings tying up loose ends. The Novel form, especially in the 19^th century (when it actually evolved), often used weddings to resolve knotty issues. Eugenides shows us in The Marriage Plot how today’s marriages (in the novel) may still be purveyors of romance, love and affection, nevertheless they have to grapple with present day realities such as feminism, sexual equality (sexism), political values, and other present day challenges. Fiction patterned after real life shows that marriage is not an end to all problems. It doesn’t present solution to all challenges. It is not the end to uncertainty or the possessor of stability. Yet this novel is not about marriage but about a hybrid of social conventions.

So Madeleine in her thesis writes about the demise of the marriage plot (this is from the premise of the 19^th century novels – Jane Austen, George Eliot, etc.) noting that a new kind of novel seems to be emerging from the ashes of the dead 19^th century marriage plot. This novel which Madeleine is part of is, incidentally, one of those phoenixes rising from the ashes of the 19^th century marriage plot. The contemporary novel with a marriage plot, must of necessity, deal with 20^th century theories or narratives or social conventions.

In this novel, Eugenides takes a gamble to suggest that despite the modern day sexual revolution and feminism, which brings chaos to the marriage institution, marriage still means a lot for the novel. A character in Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot opines that “Sexual equality, good for women, had been bad for the novel.”(Personally, I believe that romance brings softness, weakness, to the marriage act. One party must be stronger than the other. But when the two parties are strong dealing with prenups, sexual equality, legalities such as properties and money, it takes the sweetness out of romance. Nevertheless, in our time, these are necessary evils). Nevertheless, as Eugenides weaves his tale mixing tales of 19^th century fiction with 20^th century realities or social conventions, the reader finds out that although marriage is still all about love, romance, sex, (courting has definitely changed though), there’s however a paradigm shift in social conventions. This has influenced the marriage institution over the years; for instance, women are more aware now and can use their voice. In the 19^th century marriage plot no character would consider cohabiting (living in sin) or just being partners outside wedlock as people do nowadays, like Goldie Hawn and partner, Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick, and a host of others, known and unknown. Jane in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre doesn’t think co-habiting is an option! But, Madeleine doesn’t think it’s a taboo in Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. This is how times have changed.  

A lot is happening in the novel. Madeleine is writing her thesis. She chooses the theme of marriage with setting from the 19^th century Novel. Desirous to do something fresh, sheattends a semiotics class, because that’s the cool thing to do in the campus at the time. She meets the seductive, arrogant Darwin-kind of guy, Leonard Bankhead. He majors in Biology with interest in Philosophy but suffers Bi-polar disease, which influences most of his behaviours. Just at the same time, her long time friend, Mitchell Grammaticus, a Christian Religious major who’s sardonic and agnostic and pines for her, returns into her life with a declaration that they are destined to end together. He’s toured India and Europe, volunteers for Mother Teresa, and returns to test his feelings for Madeleine.Madeleine doesn’t love him. She wishes he’s a neuter kind of friend, “who’s not a girlfriend, who’s not a boyfriend.” 

These entanglements and disentanglements and individual perplexity over faith, reason and doubt, the author employs to weave a great story that transcends two centuries and two literary schools: realism and postmodernism, in fact the two schools collide in this novel. 

Soin her personal life, Madeleine is in a love triangle between two men: Leonardo and Mitchell. Thus running concurrently with the topic of her thesis are the issues of her personal life. She’s in that period of life when marriage is expected, but she’s also living in the 20^th century where she can choose not to marry, but cohabit. Eventually, Madeleine and Leonard move to Cape Cod where Leonard finds work in a biology lab.

What makes the book post-postmodernism?

1. It re-establishes the elements of human connection which PM sacrificed. Eugenides paints the picture of 19^th century literary realism themes of choice of mates, vocation or occupation, and lost illusions laying them side by side with the struggles with faith, doubt and reasons in the novel. He explores the outcome of a collision between 19^th century Literature and 20^th century theories. Sexual equality wasn’t an issue in the 19^th century. Therefore, The Marriage Plot is about signs of the times, about change, the old and the new. Men and women have come of age; reached a point where marriage is no longer the end of the story – where “novels can wrap up loose ends with a wedding,” as Prof. of English and Comparative Literature, Sharon Marcus, observes. Some couples even choose not to tie the knots nowadays. What was termed “living in sin” in the 19^th century hardly raises an eyebrow from the late 20^th century till now.

• It re-establishes the relationship between the reader and the book by meeting the needs of the reader/the readers’ expectations.
• It re-establishes the narrative form which PM shuns. The Novel makes marriage more alluring with its romance-soaked plot structure. Yes, there’s more to marriage than romance et al, like money, security, race, ethnicity, nationality, personal preferences, property, profession, freedom within limitations, etc. Eugenides has a narrative going on there.
• It recognises the pop culture which PM disdains, by narrating how Madeline signs up for a semiotics class which is a cool thing to do at the time in her campus thus making a statement that new ‘cool’ things are not non-literary or unscholarly. Scholarship can be fun and enjoyable.
• PM draws readers’ attention to the fact that fiction is about fiction, and not real life, however, the novel makes us understand that books are about life; books can influence life, the heroine is influenced by a book to take a decision about her love life.
• Yet like PM, Eugenides uses multiple viewpoints to narrate same events portraying varying perspectives from his three major characters. This is reminiscent of PM’s multiple narrators.
• Yet, Eugenides adopting PM’s chaotic techniques of fragmentation, multiple narrators (perspectives) points to the fact that sometimes life is not as smooth-running as realism makes it (where for example, loose ends can be tidied up with marriage at the end), but can be chaotic, unstable, unpredictable even after marriage unions happen. He puts to good use the fragmentation of PM, its open-endedness, etc., to show the unpredictability of real life.
• Still, The Marriage Plot is about life (ordinary people, so realism), the unpredictability of the humans that make up life: Mitchell is agnostic, yet fascinated with religion, and lusts after a girl, but his disciplined nature helps him respect Madeleine’s wishes. Leonard appears cool, cute and is brainy, but suffers a mental disorder that influences his actions. Madeleine is on the other hand, smart, dutiful and sensible, but very insecure and impressionable. So, don’t judge a book by its cover.
• That The Marriage Plot embraces hybrid subjects makes it so postmodern, but because it embraces other things to fix obtrusive PM techniques, it becomes Post-postmodern.
• In all, I believe, the author is passing a message which is, “Don’t throw away the baby with the bath water!” – There are some things good about Postmodernism, or not everything is bad about PM.

However, this brings us to the shocking conclusion that Post-postmodernism is not a new theoretical thought or idea or literary school. The Literary world still awaits the birth of a new literary movement marked by lucid different ideas or thoughts.

Below is excerpt from The Marriage Plot: Page 6

No.”

“Are you two still planning to live together this summer?”

By this time Madeleine had taken a bite of her bagel. And since the answer to her mother’s question was complicated – strictly speaking, Madeleine and Leonard weren’t planning on living together, because they’d broken up three weeks ago; despite this fact, however, Madeleine hadn’t given up hope of a reconciliation, and seeing as she’d spent so much effort getting her parents used to the idea of her living with a guy, and didn’t want to jeopardize that by admitting that the plan was off – she was relieved to be able to point at her full mouth, which prevented her from replying.

“Well, you’re an adult now,” Phyllida said. “You can do what you like. Though, for the record, I have to say that I don’t approve.”

“You’ve already gone on record about that,” Alton broke in.

“Because it’s still a bad idea!” Phyllida cried. “I don’t mean the propriety of it. I’m talking about the practical problems. If you move in with Leonard – or any young man – and he’s the one with the job, then you begin at a disadvantage. What happens if you two don’t get along? Where are you then? You won’t have any place to live. Or anything to do.”

That her mother was correct in her analysis, that the predicament Phyllida warned Madeleine about was exactly the predicament she was already in, didn’t motivate Madeleine to register agreement.

“You quit your job when you met me,” Alton said to Phyllida.

“That’s why I know what I’m talking about.”

“Can we change the subject?” Madeleine said at last, having swallowed her food.

“Of course we can, sweetheart. That’s the last I’ll say about it. If your plans change, you can always come home. Your father and I would love to have you.”

“Not me,” Alton said. “I don’t want her. Moving back home is always a bad idea. Stay away.”

“Don’t worry,” Madeleine said. “I will.”

“The choice is yours,” Phyllida said. “But if you do come home, you could have the loft. That way you can come and go as you like.”

To her surprise, Madeleine found herself contemplating this proposal. Why not tell her parents everything, curl up in the backseat of the car, and let them take her home? She could move into her old bedroom, with the sleigh bed and the Madeline wallpaper. She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

Phyllida brought her out of this reverie.

“Maddy?” she said. “Isn’t that your friend Mitchell?”

Madeleine wheeled in her seat. “Where?”

“I think that’s Mitchell. Across the street.”

In the churchyard, sitting Indian-style in the freshly mown grass, Madeleine’s “friend” Mitchell Grammaticus was indeed there. His lips were moving, as if he was talking to himself.

“Why don’t you invite him to join us?” Phyllida said.

“Now?”

“Why not? I’d love to see Mitchell.”

“He’s probably waiting for his parents,” Madeleine said.

Phyllida waved, despite the fact that Mitchell was too far away to notice.

“What’s he doing sitting on the ground?” Alton asked.

The three Hannas stared across the street at Mitchell in his half-lotus.

“Well, if you’re not going to ask him, I will,” Phyllida finally said.

“O.K.,” Madeleine said. “Fine. I’ll go ask him.”

The day was getting warmer, but not by much. Black clouds were massing in the distance as Madeleine came down the steps of Carr House and crossed the street into the churchyard. Someone inside the church was testing the loudspeakers, fussily repeating, “Sussex, Essex, and Kent. Sussex, Essex, and Kent.” A banner draped over the church entrance read “Class of 1982.” Beneath the banner, in the grass, was Mitchell. His lips were still moving silently, but when he noticed Madeleine approaching they abruptly stopped.

Madeleine remained a few feet away.