Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides


Characters and Locations
Brown University
Pilgrim Lake Laboratory
Europe
Prettybrook, NJ
Madeleine Hanna
Parents: Alton and Phyllida
Sister: Alwyn

Leonard Bankhead
Parents: Rita and Frank
Sister: Janet

Mitchell Grammaticus

Abby and Olivia – Madeleine’s roommates

Semiotics 211 -
Prof.  Michael Zipperstein
Madeleine and Leonard

Diane MacGregor – Nobel Prize for Physiology

Vikram Jaitly & Carl Beller – other 2 research fellows

Phyllida and Alwyn visit
Mitchell

Larry – traveling companion
Claire – Larry’s girlfriend in Paris

Calcutta:
Home for Dying Destitutes
Salvation Army Guest House

Madeleine and Leonard on honeymoon – Leonard hospitalized in Monaco
Phyllida came to help

Madeleine and Leonard living with her parents

Mitchell

Alton and Phyllida

Semiotics:  The theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language and other forms of communication.
 


Books listed in novel
Semiotics 211
Madeleine
Mitchell
Leonard
Balzac - Sarrasine
Barthes
Jonathan Culler – On Deconstruction
Derrida – Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference
Umberto Eco The Role of the Reader
Peter Handke – A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
Zipperstein – The Making of Signs (fictional book)

Books for research paper:
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility
Dreiser – Sister Carrie
George Eliot – Middlemarch
Henry James – Portrait of a Lady

Private selections:
Barthes – A Lover’s Discourse (book thrown at Leonard)
Powell – A Dance to the Music of Time (read on train going home for Thanksgiving)

Read at home:
Bemelman – Madeline
James Fennimore Cooper
Colette novels
Longfellow – Hiawatha

Madeleine would stop and read for awhile in parents’ library “to make the sad old books feel better.”

Private selections:
Meister Eckhart
Kempis - The Imitation of Christ
Thomas Merton
Ira Progoff – The Cloud of Unknowing

Books taken to Europe:
The Cloud of Unknowing
The Imitation of Christ
The Confessions of St. Augustine
Sister Teresa – Interior Castle
Merton – Dark Night of the Soul
Tolstoy – A Confession and Other Religious Writings
Pynchon – V
God Biology: Toward a Theistic Understanding of Evolution
Hemingway – A Moveable Feast
Mother Teresa – Something Beautiful for God
Charles Colson – Born Again (bought with parent’s credit card)
Read in high school:
Stephen Jay Gould – Ontogeny and Phylogeny

Ever Since Darwin

 For Discussion:

NOTE:  All pages refer to the hardback edition.

1.            When Leonard was first in the hospital during graduation, his friend warns Madeleine not to get involved with Leonard.  He states that he is, “Just someone who knows from personal experience, how attractive is can be to think you can save someone else by loving them.”  (page 123)  Was this good advice?  Why did Madeleine not even think of heeding it?

2.            Leonard’s parents bought the house where the murder had occurred because it was cheap.    Would you live in a house where a murder had occurred?

3.            Did the description of Leonard’s disease (starting on page 233) give you some insights into mental disease?  If so, what?   Do you think Leonard could or should have done anything differently?  What do you think will happen to Leonard in the end?

4.            Discuss Leonard’s family and their influence on Leonard and their reaction to his illness.

5.            Discuss Mitchell’s quest for religious understanding.  Do you think he was or will be successful?

6.            Did you understand Semiotics?  Is it important to the book?

7.            Discuss the relationship between the reader and the writer.  Madeleine felt that the semiotic theorists thought the reader was the more important of the two while she wanted the writer to do more work than the reader.  (page 42)

8.            Consider the various couples in the novel and their relationship:
  • Mitchell and Madeleine
  • Leonard and Madeleine
  • Leonard and Mitchell (meeting at the end of the novel)
  • Mitchell and Larry

9.            What were the redeeming qualities of each character?  Did they have any negative characteristics?

10.          Did you like the ending of the book?

11.          What was the best part of the book?

12.          How does the title, The Marriage Plot, relate to the story? 

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