The marriage paradox: modernist novels and the cultural imperative to marry

Introduction : marriage and modernism

1. Imperative choices : Henry James's The Portrait of a lady

2. Indissoluble differences : marriage and divorce in Ford Madox Ford's The Good soldier and Parade's end

3. Sex, marriage, and civilization in D.H. Lawrence's Women in love

4. Love and the politics of marriage in Nella Larsen's Quicksand and Passing and Zora Neale Hurston's Their eyes were watching God

5. Enacting the "natural" : the culture of marriage in Virginia Woolf's Between the acts

Conclusion : marriage secrets