Was There an Eighteenth-Century Marriage Plot?

This article critically examines the use of the term "marriage plot" in eighteenth-century literary criticism, arguing that it oversimplifies and obscures the complex, often skeptical portrayals of marriage, courtship, and heterosexuality in the period's fiction. Rather than depicting marriage as a stable or ideal resolution, many novels reveal it as a site of violence, coercion, and inequality, particularly disadvantaging women, and frequently resist or problematize its social and legal functions. The article challenges the retrospective imposition of Victorian ideals of companionate marriage onto eighteenth-century narratives and calls for a more nuanced critical vocabulary that acknowledges the diverse and often ambivalent attitudes toward marriage expressed in these works. It suggests that eighteenth-century novels anticipate the limitations or demise of marriage as a framework for equitable gender relations, inviting reconsideration of how these narratives engage with the institution beyond the conventional "marriage plot."