marriage plot
Courtship drives narrative
A marriage plot is a narrative structure, common in 19th-century novels, where the central action revolves around courtship and culminates in marriage.
Jane Austen's works are archetypal examples.
The term often carries mild dismissiveness when used by literary critics, implying conventional romantic concerns rather than weightier themes: Critics praised the novel for transcending the marriage plot.
- Jane AustenRegency-era English novelist
- patriarchyMale-dominated social order
- romanceLove and its excitement
- desireIntense wanting
- love matchMarriage for passion, not practicality
forbidden love · courtship · gender roles · inheritance · social commentary · class distinctions · social climbing · dowry · Victorian era · country estate · landed gentry · eligible bachelor · suitor · resolution · happily ever after · emotional growth · reputation · Regency period
- Jane AustenEmma, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Mr Darcy
- regency romancecourtship, proposal, suitor, suitors, betrothal
- story bondsfriendship, love story, love triangle, enemies to lovers, forbidden love
- bourgeois fictionbourgeoisie, bourgeois values, social realism, class distinctions, middle class
- Classic RomancePride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Emma, Romeo and Juliet
- Stage RomanceRomeo and Juliet, balcony scene, love duet, romantic lead, leading lady
marriage plotbildungsroman
Fiction of psychological maturation
escape plot · picaresque · revenge plot · war story · survival narrative
marriage, plot, marry, married, marrying, unmarried, marriageable, marriages, plots