The portrait of marriage presented in the novel is anything but the fairy-tale, happily-ever-after illusion of romance. Marital bliss is secondary to marital disturbance as the course of true love is permanently obstructed by patriarchal domination and the desire to subjugate the wife which only ever serves to engender feelings of regret and resentment in the wife toward the husband. The inevitable paradox is that both unsuccessful and successful rebellion of the oppressed party engineers a tearing apart of the social fabric that marriage as a contractual endeavor is intended to reinforce.