1. Wedlock as deadlock and beyond: an introduction -- pt. 1. Tradition: marital ideology and novelistic form: 2. The evolution of a literary ideal of romantic marriage: a historical perspective -- 3. Narrative structure in the marriage tradition: paradigmatic plots of courtship, seduction, and wedlock -- 4. Uneasy wedlock and the counter-tradition's contribution to open form: beyond the "happy ending" -- 5. Male independence and the American quest romance as counter-traditional genre: hidden sexual politics -- 6. Centered lives and centric structures in the novel of female community: counterplotting new realities.
