Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on literature. In this essay, he discusses how Julavits uses her characters, particularly Louis Krupnik, to satirize the idea of romantic love.

On the evidence of “Marry the One Who Gets There First,” Julavits is a writer with a rich gift for satirizing deeply ingrained cultural beliefs about love and marriage. Against the background of an elaborate, traditional wedding in a splendid western setting, Julavits savagely scythes away at the shallow, one might even say half-baked, ideas that people employ to explain why they chose that particular person to be their spouse and torpedoes the “happy-ever-after” cliché that supposedly describes married life with the person of one's dreams. Louis Krupnik and Violet Sheidegger are not even happy before, so their chances of being happy after seem unlikely, to say the least. Julavits's world as...