After Ever After: The Marriage Plot's Farewell to Its Reader

This article asks how the narrative strategies employed at the end of nineteenth-century marriage plots helped readers disengage from the affective attachments they have formed with both text and characters, easing their transition from fictional intimacy to lived experience. Two common strategies are identified. First, the gossipy epilogue softens the pain of parting by turning down the dials of suspense and gratification slowly. Second, a terminal shift from major to minor characters helps to distract and detach the reader from the central romance while offering alternative, non-normative orientations toward the heteronormative bond formed by the protagonists.