The Job Plot: How Contemporary Literature Examines Work

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides took its name from a plot common in the 18th and 19th centuries, which followed the courtship and eventual marriage of its main character. Think, as Eugenides’ main character Madeleine Hanna did, of Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontë sisters. The marriage plot was borne from the societal idea that characters needed to get married: for female characters in Western narratives, marriage was their only recourse to financial security.
Though times