 The marriage plot became a popular source of entertainment in the 18th and 19th centuries with the rise of the middle class novel.The foremost practitioners of the form include some of the more illustrious names in English letters, among them Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Brontë sisters.Post-1980 deconstructionist criticism has highlighted how the plot was a profitable publishing and ideological production that served to ensure the ascendancy of the middle class.