Rewriting the Marriage Plot: Female Agency, and Postfeminist Desire in Fielding and Eugenides’ Fiction

Abstract

This research paper rewrites the Marriage Plot: Female Agency and Postfeminist Desire in Fielding and Eugenides’ fiction focusing mainly on Bridget Jones’s Diary and The Marriage Plot. Drawing from feminist and psychoanalytic theories, the study interrogates how both novels reflect and critique evolving gender roles, romantic ideals, and internalized patriarchy in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Western society. The analysis traces the protagonists’ psychological struggles with identity, autonomy, and emotional fulfillment, highlighting the cultural and historical shifts in the perception of romantic relationships and female subjectivity. This paper reveals the deconstruction of the traditional marriage plot and the emergence of postfeminist irony as a mode of resistance and self-awareness. It ultimately argues that both novels, though rooted in classical literary conventions, they expose the ongoing complexities of love and gender in the modern era.