Torn asunder: Assessing the reality of failed marriage and divorce and their literary depiction in mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth century fiction literature

"Failed marriage" novels written between 1855 and 1930 reveal the inherent weakness in the societal construct of marriage and expose the fallacy of marriage as a stable institutional foundation for social order. Simultaneously, the novels indict the social order for its destabilizing effects on marriage. The fictional portrayal of failed marriage and divorce demonstrated prescience, moreover, by anticipating future public discourse and examining situations and mental states neither allowed by law nor in keeping with prevailing social custom. Novels were forums for decoding the beneficial/destructive marriage dyad as it affected individuals and the social good and debating the question of who "owns" the domestic domain: society or wedded individuals?;The seventeen novels explored in this thesis, illustrated the destructive effects of culturally systemic forces and competing individual interests that rendered marriage as a problematic social force in stark contrast to the ideal of marriage as a haven. They relentlessly exposed the unintended and disastrous effects on marriage of a capitalistic society that insisted on separating the roles of producers (men) from those of consumers and nurturers (women) and disdaining those individuals who fail in either regard. Finally, they illuminated the ways in which individuals' enactment of ideal gender roles paradoxically undermined marriage, no matter how successfully those roles were enacted. Even when individuals modeled the idealized roles, the roles' inherent incompatibility destabilized marriage.;The "American dream" included financial success but also romantic love and marriage. The novels exposed the charmingly naive infatuation with romantic ideology and the unquenchable desire for lasting romance. While the lure of companionate marriage was powerful, novelists' romantic but ambiguous endings served as reminders that human frailties can sabotage the supposition that marriage should be a stable social foundation. Therefore, the social role of marriage must be understood differently as its tensile strength is weakened by the fickleness of individual emotion and cultural expectations. Society's fabric requires a stronger warp than that of individual marriages. These "social protest" novels demonstrated the need for social and legal change and, consequently, they influenced reform in spite of the decades-long lag time before the effecting of such change.