The Marriage Plot

by Jeffrey Eugenides

all the clamorous Xeroxes whose subtext conveyed the message that the wholesome, patriotic values of her parents’ generation were now on the ash heap of history, replaced by a nihilistic, post-punk sensibility that Madeleine herself didn’t understand but was perfectly happy to scandalize her parents by pretending that she did—before the elevator stopped in the lobby and she slid open the gate and stepped out to meet them.

I see why people call this book pretentious.

she asked herself why everyone was being so mean to her.

I hate this girl

“English 450A: Hawthorne and James” filled Madeleine with an expectation of sinful hours in bed not unlike what Olivia got from wearing a Lycra skirt and leather blazer to Danceteria.

Get out of here LOL

Because they weren’t left-brained enough for science, because history was too dry, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and math too mathematical—because they weren’t musical, artistic, financially motivated, or really all that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they’d done in first grade: reading stories.

Underneath this pleasure, like the coals that fed it, was a fierce need to enfold Dabney and siphon off his strength and beauty. It was all very primitive and evolutionary and felt fantastic. The problem was that she hadn’t been able to allow herself to enjoy Dabney or even to exploit him a little, but had had to go and be a total girl about it and convince herself that she was in love with him. Madeleine required emotion, apparently. She disapproved of the idea of meaningless, extremely satisfying sex.

“No,” Leonard said. “I don’t even know why I do it. It’s just something I picked up from my rodeo days.” At the next trash can they came to, he tossed the Coke and spat out his wad of tobacco.

“I didn’t say I liked it. I’m just mourning its passage.”

Theyre meant for eachother. Both insufferable.

They didn’t do anything. She came to his apartment and they lay down on the mattress and Leonard asked her how she was doing, really wanting to know. What did they do? She talked; he listened; then he talked and she listened. She’d never met anyone, and certainly not a guy, who was so receptive, who took everything in.

He started finishing Madeleine’s sentences. As if her mind was too slow.

The more Leonard pulled away, the more anxious Madeleine became. The more desperate she became, the more Leonard pulled away.

Leonard was kissing her. When she could bear no more, Madeleine grabbed him savagely by his ears. She pulled Leonard’s head away and held it still to show him the evidence of how she felt (she was crying now). In a hoarse voice edged with something else, a sense of peril, Madeleine said, “I love you.”

It was never much fun to be called a jerk. It was worse to be called a jerk by a girl you particularly liked, and it was especially painful when the girl happened to be the person you secretly wanted to marry.

Mitchell’s relationship with Madeleine Hanna—his long, aspirational, sporadically promising yet frustrating relationship

Later on, after their relationship became the intimate, unsatisfying thing it became, Madeleine always disputed Mitchell’s memory of that night.

When Mitchell glanced at Madeleine, she was smiling at him. And that was when it had happened. Madeleine was wearing a bathrobe. She had her glasses on. She was looking both homey and sexy, completely out of his league and, at the same time, within reach, by virtue of how well he seemed to fit into her family already, and what a perfect son-in-law he would make. For all of these reasons Mitchell suddenly thought, “I’m going to marry this girl!” The knowledge went through him like electricity, a feeling of destiny.

that the lover is intolerable (by his heaviness) to the beloved.

This thought was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell, and by the realization that it was graduation day and her parents were downstairs.

It was impossible to be friends with guys. Every guy she’d ever been friends with had ended up wanting something else, or had wanted something else from the beginning, and had been friends only under false pretenses.

What could you do, when the retardant was also the accelerant?

now they were here, failing as cabdrivers in desperate Detroit.

Would it really be Eugenides without descriptions of Detroit

Would a vagina-shaped Apollo 11 have made it to the moon? Evolution had created the penis. It was a useful structure for getting certain things done. And if it worked for the pistils of flowers as well as the inseminatory organs of Homo sapiens, whose fault was that but Biology’s? But no—anything large or grand in design, any long novel, big sculpture, or towering building, became, in the opinion of the “women” Mitchell knew at college, manifestations of male insecurity about the size of their penises. Girls were always going on about “male bonding,” too. Anytime two or more guys were having a good time, some girl had to make it sound pathological. What was so great about feminine friendships, Mitchell wanted to know?

Now their trip could finally begin.

There was no end to her selfishness.

I… am team Mitchell

This, Tolstoy says, is our human predicament: we’re the man clutching the branch. Death awaits us. There is no escape. And so we distract ourselves by licking whatever drops of honey come within our reach.

Instead, he put the letter in his knapsack, way down in the inside pocket, where he wouldn’t have to think about it.

NOOOOOO

I expect to be heartbroken, not having you in my life. But I’m already confused enough about my life and my relationship without you confusing me more. I want to break up with you, as hard as that may be—and as stupid as it may sound. I’ve always been a sane person. Right now, I feel like I’m falling apart.

Every letter was a love letter.

He waited until Larry was gone before allowing himself to cry. It was a combination of things, Madeleine’s letter, first and foremost, but also the aspects of his personality that had made her feel such a letter necessary, his awkwardness, his charm, his aggressiveness, his shyness, everything that made him almost but not quite the guy for her.

This made Mitchell feel very close to his friend, even though he now suspected that this was where their trip together ended. Larry wouldn’t be flying to India with Mitchell tonight. Larry was going to stay awhile longer in Athens with Iannis.

Trip started when he left Claire and ended when he met Iannis

That was a fun parlor game to play: from which side of the family had his mental instability descended.

Relatable

too little and you were a nervous wreck.

It seemed especially cruel, then, three days later, in the hospital, when the doctor came into the room to tell Leonard that he suffered from something that would never go away, something that could only be “managed,” as if managing, for an eighteen-year-old looking out on life, could be any life at all.

That was when Leonard realized something crucial about depression. The smarter you were, the worse it was. The sharper your brain, the more it cut you up.

And then Madeleine appeared in the dayroom, missing graduation, and all Leonard had to do was look at her to know that he wanted to be alive again.

To believe in God wasn’t in Leonard’s power, however.

Interesting difference between Leonard and Mitchell here

You went out with a girl at first because the sheer sight of her made you weak in the knees. You fell in love and were desperate not to let her get away. And yet the more you thought about her, the less you knew who she was. The hope was that love transcended all differences. That was the hope. Leonard wasn’t giving up on it. Not yet.

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.

He was giving Madeleine what Phyllida could never give her, and thereby exercising his advantage.

what is my reaction supposed to be to this

This hadn’t happened to Mitchell. He didn’t expect it to, but by the end of his second week he had become uncomfortably aware that he was performing only the simplest, least demanding tasks at the Home.

“There’s a man here who says he needs dialysis,” he told the doctor. “I’m sure he does,” she said, smiling sadly, and, nodding, walked off.

“But that is the same thing! I know the person you are,” Rüdiger said, examining Mitchell closely and nodding. “You think you are not a vain person. You are maybe not so much into your body. But you are probably more vain about how intelligent you are. Or how good you are. So maybe, in your case, cutting off your hair only made your vanity heavier!”

It was something every child knew how to do, maintain a direct and full connection with the world. Somehow you forgot about it as you grew up, and had to learn it again.

There was no place in Calcutta to be alone. Even a deserted cemetery had its custodian. Asleep in the Lord. Asleep in. Asleep.

“Jesus said you should give to whoever asks you,” Mitchell said. “Yeah, well,” Mike said, “obviously Jesus was never in Calcutta.”

It was like looking into a deep, dry well. “Why don’t you just divorce me?” he said. “Stop.”

MADDY DO IT PLEASE

There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.

It struck Madeleine that Phyllida was speaking from personal experience, that her parents’ marriage was more complicated than she’d ever suspected.

They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad and sometimes they were very sad.

“Two coffees, please,” Madeleine said, smiling. “And my husband would like some apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese on top.” “You want it, you got it,” the waiter said, moving off. Madeleine expected Leonard to be amused. But to her surprise his eyes filled with tears. “What’s wrong?” He shook his head, looking away. “I forgot about that,” he said in a husky voice. “Seems like a long time ago.”

Leonard began in his infuriating doctorly mode.

The comparison between this and Mitchell's eyes and smell.....