Literature explores grad life
We’ve finally reached that point. Now that classes are winding down, USC students are scheduling study sessions and negotiating internships and research plans, all in the hopes of acing their finals and relaxing into an enjoyable but productive summer.
But the nagging question remains: What happens after senior year?
Though it’s easy to imagine landing a dream job or gaining admittance to a top graduate program, scary thoughts of failure and post-collegiate disappointment linger on the peripheries of our minds, particularly in the wake of recent economic recessions and statistics touting the diminishing worth of the bachelor’s degree.
Suddenly, Dr. Seuss’ claim, “Oh, the places you’ll go!” seems inapplicable to our lives.
Still, literature provides one of the best avenues for exploring life after college. Whether characters in their 20s are experiencing the nuances of early marriage in Erich Segal’s Love Story or developing their self-images in Meg Cabot’s Size 12 Is Not Fat, they are inevitably handling the deep-rooted issues fueled by undergraduate life. And despite the varying genres and styles of these novels, they give readers a taste of “the real world” — on printed pages, at least.
What’s interesting about this, however, is how much that view of “the real world” has changed. Even within the last 50 years, our marital and career expectations have shifted significantly, which ultimately affects the way we want to spend our 20s. Now, it’s less common to rush down the aisle with our college sweethearts or give up on our dream careers in favor of starting a family. And with new options afforded by delays in getting married and greater career opportunities, the years we spend in our 20s are left in a state of limbo.
Just take a look at how much literature has changed since Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813. In one of the most popular pieces of classic literature, Austen weaves a tale of romance and societal expectations,, ultimately building an emotionally-driven narrative. When the headstrong Elizabeth Bennet denies Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal because of her less-than-admiring first impression of him, she must confront her own desires about class and romance before she can arrive at what’s best for her own future. Despite the tension-ridden love story between Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, the reader never questions whether or not they’ll get married by the novel’s end. Though Elizabeth certainly demonstrates her wit and intelligence throughout the novel, her path, though perhaps not straight and narrow, is more clearly laid out for her than for characters in later works.
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, which was published in 1963, serves as another marker. Unlike Pride and Prejudice, in which Elizabeth’s expectations of romance are laid bare, protagonist Esther Greenwood struggles with her disappointing prospects as a writer and her conflicted attitudes toward gender roles and marriage. Though the society around her expects her to remain a virgin until marriage, Esther would much rather use her 20s as a time of sexual liberation and uninhibited self-exploration. Her inability to do so fully, however, leads to the melancholia and depression that has stylistically defined the novel. Here, Esther’s life goals are not as clearly laid out as Elizabeth’s.
Now, readers have the likes of Jeffrey Eugenides’ 2011 novel The Marriage Plot, which directly handles changing attitudes toward marriage, careers and 20-something goals in contemporary society. Additionally, it also handles the way these changed attitudes have impacted literature.
“In Saunders’s opinion, the novel had reached its apogee with the marriage plot and had never recovered from its disappearance,” writes Eugenides. “In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and marriage had depended on money, novelists had had a subject to write about. The great epics sang of war, the novel of marriage. Sexual equality, good for women, had been bad for the novel. And divorce had undone it completely.”
The Marriage Plot, true to the concerns it expresses, has almost no plot at all. Instead, it handles the emotional development of its characters and forges a new narrative out of the contemporary ambiguities of 20-something life. The novel follows Eugenides’ three protagonists — Madeleine (the graduate school hopeful), Leonard (the scientific career man) and Mitch (the self-explorer) — in the difficult year following their graduation. And, needless to say, almost nothing goes according to their undergraduate plans.
But it’s important to remember, cliched as it might sound, that there is so much possibility after college. Our 20-something years will inevitably be full of heartbreak, self-discovery and, yes, even the memories we’ll later share with our kids, and Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot illustrates this. Even though the novel tries to reconcile old expectations with newer ones, it ultimately harbors hope for its characters:
“Though at this moment she felt abused, abandoned, and ashamed of herself, Madeleine knew that she was still young, that she had her whole life ahead of her — a life in which, if she persevered, she might do something special — and that part of persevering meant getting past moments just like this one, when people made you feel small, unlovable, and took away your confidence.”
Though Madeleine’s expectations for her own life change and are undefined, she’s excited for what’s coming her way. As we think about what our 20s hold for us and the places we’ll go, we should be similarly optimistic.
Sure, we might find that our romantic relationships haven’t gone the way we wanted or that our career plans have gone awry. But the beauty in being young is the ability to make mistakes on the way to finding ourselves.
So as you prepare to head off to commencement, or just keep refining your post-collegiate plans, remember that it’s OK not to know what’s coming next. What is most important, as Eugenides says, is that “education [has] finally led [us] out into life.”
Carrie Ruth Moore is a sophomore majoring in English. Her column “Cover to Cover” ran Thursdays.