The Marriage Plot

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness and substance use.

Madeleine is a young woman who has grown up in a privileged and cultured family—as a student at an Ivy League university, it is expected that she will go on to a prestigious career. Madeleine, however, is uncertain about her future path, having stumbled into an English major because she lacks any other passions. As graduation nears, she applies to various jobs, graduate programs, or teach-abroad programs but does not feel strongly about any single avenue. Madeleine is quite passionate about her studies, but she intentionally seeks to pursue subjects that are outside of the mainstream. When her initial interest in the topic of her senior thesis (the eponymous “marriage plot”) wanes, she becomes obsessed with semiotics—the study of signs and symbols, a post-structuralist theoretical movement associated with the French theorist Roland Barthes and popular in the academic humanities in the 1980s. She is drawn to the esoteric nature of many of the texts, but she is frustrated with the pretention it brings out in other students. She prides herself in being an independent thinker, and though she falls into a few romantic relationships throughout college, she does not regard herself as dependent on a man for meaning.