THISBE'S NOVEL: WRITING ROMANCE IN HELIODORUS’ AETHIOPICA

Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies thoroughly unravels its own ‘marriage plot’. Narrating the romance of the golden Lancelot (‘Lotto’) and the mysterious Mathilde from each protagonist's perspective in turn, Groff's novel exposes countless cracks in the decades-long relationship between a pair of twenty-first-century college sweethearts. The second half of the novel is particularly haunted by a sadomasochistic and dubiously consensual relationship between Mathilde and a wealthy older man upon whom she has become financially dependent, a subplot that includes vivid and erotic descriptions of sexual humiliation and subjugation. Groff is certainly not the only modern author to explicitly and self-consciously interrogate the terms of the romantic novel as such: Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot announces its generic play in its title.