In The Submerged Plot and the Mothers Pleasure from Jane Austen to Arundhati Roy Kelly A. Marsh examines the familiar overt plot of the motherless daughter growing into maturity and argues that it isampampnbspaccompanied by a covert plot. Marshs insightful analyses of nineteenth and twentiethcentury Anglophone novels reveal that these novels are far richer and more complexly layered than the overt plot alone suggests. According to Marsh as the daughter approaches adulthood and marriage she seeks validation for her pleasure in her mothers story. However because the mothers pleasure is taboo under patriarchy and is therefore unnarratable the daughter must seek her mothers story by repeating it. These repetitions alert us to the ways the two plots are intertwined and alter our perception of the narrative progression. ampampnbsp Combining feminist and rhetorical narratological approaches Marshs study offers fresh readings of Persuasion Jane Eyre Bleak House The Woman in White The House of Mirth The Last September The Color Purple A Thousand Acres Bastard Out of Carolina Talking to the Dead and The God of Small Things. Through these readings The Submerged Plot and the Mothers Pleasure explores how the unnarratable can be communicated in fiction and offers a significant contribution to our understanding of narrative progression. ampampnbsp