Cirrus@Austlit

'Famous couples from literature – from Romeo and Juliet to Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy – have enacted storylines built around rituals of courtship and the obstacles they face on the way to marrying. While the ‘marriage plot’ has never gone out of fashion – kept alive, in good part, by Hollywood’s penchant for the rom-com – changing times have led to the emergence of the ‘divorce plot’. Nora and Torvald from Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House – which enraged audiences when it premièred in 1879 because of its harsh critique of the ‘holy covenant’ of marriage – might be seen as the ur-couple of this growing genre.' (Introduction)