The 10 unhappiest marriages in fiction

Emma & Charles Bovary in Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, 1856

Arguably, nothing would have saved Flaubert's tragic heroine: not even living in Paris. But it is the contrast between
Emma and her husband's ideas of what life and love have to offer ("What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss
about something so simple as love") that heightens Madame B's loneliness and leads her into the arms of some terrible
suitors.
Above: Jean-Francois Balmer and Isabelle Huppert in Claude Chabrol's 1991 adaptation

Dorothea & Casaubon in Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1874

At the outset of the novel Dorothea, a young heroine with the purity of a saint, marries the dour elderly scholar
Casaubon. The marriage is dry as dust and, as Dorothea's relations with Casaubon's cousin Will Ladislaw warm up, the
domestic atmosphere gets even worse. It is Dorothea's unrelenting goodness and loyalty that makes the marriage almost
unbearable to witness.
Above: Juliet Aubrey in the 1994 TV adaptation

Tess & Angel in Tess of the dUrbevilles by Thomas Hardy, 1891

The crowing of a cock on a wedding day is a sign that the marriage is doomed before it has even begun. The tragedy of
this tale is that the marriage could have been happy were it not for the social mores of the day. Tess's determination to
prove her dedication to her unforgiving husband after her assault by Alec dUrbevilles is the cause of the ultimate tragedy
Above: Gemma Arterton in the BBC's 2008 adaptation

Maggie & Prince Amerigo, and Mr Verver and Charlotte in The Golden Bowl by Henry James, 1904

An ambiguous story about two marriages that happen almost in unison. A rich naive American collector Adam Verver
marries Charlotte, who was once the mistress of Prince Amerigo, who is marrying Verver's daugher Maggie. Now locked
together the Prince and Charlotte snatch passionate afternoons and share glances over family meals. The novel shows
marriage as a dangerous contract, a pitifully unromantic bind between lovers.
Henry James was also responsible for the unhappy match between Isabel Archer and the devious Gilbert Osmond in
The Portrait of a Lady.
Above: Jeremy Northam and Uma Thurman in James Ivory's 2000 adaptation

Undine Spragg & Ralph, Raymond and Elmer in The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, 1913

Edith Wharton was described by a contemporary critic as a "masculine" Henry James. Each of her three finest novels
(The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence complete the trilogy) revolve around a beautiful but deplorable anti-heroine
and the trials of marriage.
Undine Spragg is a monster, but somehow the reader still roots for her as she works her way through three unhappy
marriages, destroying everything as she goes, caring for nothing, including her own child, and is still unhappy at the end.
This is the book said to have inspired Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes.
Above: Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning film adaptation of Wharton's The Age of Innocence. No film director to date has been brave
enough to commit The Custom of the Country to screen

Nicole & Dick Diver in Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald, 1934
A wealthy, handsome, party-loving young couple at the centre of a glamorous American ex-pat scene in the south of
France, Nicole and Dick Diver struggle to keep the strangeness of their past a secret. Dick, once a promising psychoanalyst,
had been Nicole's doctor and, it's implied, his marriage to her saved her from an all-out breakdown. The couple's
resentment gradually overwhelms their initial passion. The decline of their marriage does not follow a clear trajectory: the
ups and downs are what make it so frustrating and tantalising.
Above: Jennifer Jones and Jason Robards in Henry King's 1962 adaptation

Port Moresby & Kit in The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, 1949

The unhappy couple leave behind the petty grievances of New York life, hoping that the mysteries and hardships of
travel in the North African desert might save their marriage. Far from it. Not even the presence of their silly friend Tunner,
brought along to buffer the intensity of their relationship, can dispel the loneliness of the journey for either of them. There
are no happy endings in a world in which people are only hoping (and failing) to find comfort in one another, and where the
only shelter is the desert sky.
Above: the film adaptation by Bernardo Bertolucci, 1990, starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich

Humbert Humbert & Charlotte in Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov, 1955

A marriage of convenience whose perverted purpose only Humbert Humbert and the reader know. "The wedding was a
quiet affair, and when called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover did I experience only bitterness and distaste?
No."
Above: James Mason and Shelley Winters in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 adaptation

Frank and April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, 1961

"If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies
their tragedy," said Yates. Needless to say, his portrait of a once-happy young married couple in Fifties suburbia does not
have a happy ending.
Above: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Sam Mendes' 2008 film adaptation

Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn & Henry VIII in Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, 2009
Mantel's Booker-winning novel is a fictionalised account of how Thomas Cromwell used Britain's queens as pawns in
politics, and how he took advantage of the monarch's fickle heart.
Above: Portrait of Anne Boleyn, Queen of England 1533-6