ENG 329, 330 - Nineteenth Century British Fiction: The Marriage Plot

1 course unit

This course will examine how novels in Britain represent and are constructed around the so-called marriage plot: the progression from courtship, through obstacles, to arrive at the altar- or not! This plot has always been popular for providing a scaffold for novels - witness the proliferation of shoddy romance novels on the shelves of supermarkets today. In this course, we will concentrate on how the marriage plot is figured during the nineteenth century in Britain, commonly thought of as the great age of the novel. We will be assuming that marriage is an institution that not only legitimizes and controls heterosexual desire but also guarantees the smooth transference of property and wealth from one generation to the next, the very cornerstone of patriarchal continuity. Texts may include Austen, Pride & Prejudice; Bronte, Villette; Dickens, Great Expectations; Eliot, Mill on the Floss; Hardy, Jude the Obscure; and a range of secondary readings by Mary Poovey, Nancy Armstrong, David Lodge, Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, and others.
Meets departmental Genealogies approach.
Meets general academic requirement W when offered as 330.