Six of the best portrayals of marriage in literature

Lauren Groff is the acclaimed author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia. Her new novel is Fates and Furies. One of her six favorite portrayals of marriage in literature, as shared at The Week magazine:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

I'd argue that Middlemarch is the single greatest English-language book about marriage (a silly thing to argue, I know, as I haven't read every book in the English language). Eliot needs no introduction from me, but in Middlemarch's Dorothea Brooke we have a beautiful vision of the way a young person comes into a marriage with starry-eyed idealism, and then grows and is changed and returned to herself by the institution.

Read about another entry on the list.

Middlemarch also made John Mullan's lists of ten of the best bankers in literature, ten of the best marital rows, ten of the best examples of unrequited love, ten of the best funerals in literature, and ten of the best deathbed scenes in literature. It is among Emrys Westacott's five top books on philosophy & everyday living, Selma Dabbagh's top 10 stories of reluctant revolutionaries, Philip Pullman's six best books, Rebecca Goldstein's five best of novels of ideas, Tina Brown's five best books on reputation, Elizabeth Kostova favorite books, and Miss Manners' favorite novels. John Banville and Nick Hornby have not read it.

The Page 99 Test: The Monsters of Templeton.

The Page 69 Test: Arcadia.

--Marshal Zeringue