Marlena and August's Dysfunctional Relationship

In Water for Elephants, one relationship I didn’t much care for was Marlena and August’s marriage. August was a paranoid schizophrenic who drank too much and pushed Marlena around one too many times. He was an extremely masochistic man. For example, when Marlena’s prize horse, Silver Star, had to be put down, August feeds his remains to the lions in the circus. The importance that that horse served in Marlena’s life should have conquered the poor, inconsiderate choice that August made. August also gets violent with Jacob Jankowski, who Marlena eventually ends up with anyways. She should have been with Jacob from the beginning and the moment she met him and saw the kind of person he was. Nearly seventy-five percent of the novel is about Marlena continuing her abusive relationship with August while Jacob just waits around for her. I think the novel overall would have been better if it shared more of Jacob and Marlena’s happy life together rather than her and August’s dysfunctional one. However, as a reader, I understand that it makes for good reading for the audience to watch the “damsel in distress” persona that Marlena portrays, but I also feel like so many books I have read have the kind of character. It would have been nice for a book for once to just have a solid relationship from the get go, and for the audience to read of different troubles and struggles other than an abusive husband that a woman just can’t seem to get away from. My intent is not to dismiss abusive relationships as ones that have little or no importance, but a nice change of pace in this novel would have made it a little more interesting.