Just before Valentine’s Day, a few of our readers sent me a link to a news story about a new anthology of love stories, My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. Eugenides’ opinion about love stories and happy endings is, I think, emblematic about how most literary types approach the topic:
In the introduction to this remarkable collection, Jeffrey Eugenides warns readers that good love stories aren’t fluffy, happy-go-lucky affairs. Instead, they “depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart.”
“Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name,” writes Eugenides, the best-selling author of “Middlesex” and “The Virgin Suicides.”
I looked up the introduction on Amazon.com (lor’ bless the Search Inside feature), and here are the quotes in context:
When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims—these are lucky eventualities but they aren’t love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.
This started me thinking about happy endings, and their bad reputation. It’s not so much that badly-written happy endings are shit on; it’s that happy endings in and of themselves are viewed as a literary faux pas—the equivalent of belching loudly at a cocktail party.
Near as I can tell, here are the most popular arguments for why happy endings, particularly in love stories, are inherently bad:
1. They’re unrealistic
2. They’re cheesy
3. They’re simplistic
4. They present an easy out for the author
5. They are inauthentic to the story
6. They’re formulaic
While these are all valid descriptions of all that’s wrong with a raging case of Terminus Sappynus (symptoms you may experience when confronted with this blight include mild nausea and an urge to read dystopian fiction just to cleanse your palate), these aren’t indictments of happy endings per se. These are symptoms of bad writing, and I can name a number of books with unhappy or bittersweet endings that have exactly these same problems.
Here’s a theory I have: people who view all happy endings with a jaundiced eye aren’t just reacting to the form in and of itself, they’re also reacting to their assumptions about the readers who enjoy and seek out stories with happy endings. After all, if these stories are mindless escapist pap, what does it say about the reader’s intellect if she genuinely loves them or, God forbid, defends them? Lingering in the back of the mind of people who consistently denigrate the romantic happy ending is the specter of the vacuous housewife in the puffypaint sweatshirt snarfing down bon-bons while clutching a be-Fabioed book. All sorts of class and gender issues are tangled up in our conception of love stories with happy endings.
Keep in mind I’m not defending happy endings across the board, either. I’ve read more than my fair share of schmaltzy, gag-inducing HEAs in my life, in which the previously-barren heroine is suddenly popping out babies because of the hero’s Super Sperm, or the deeply traumatized hero is magically fixed by the heroine’s sweetness and light (and Magic Hoo-Hoo), or everyone who’s not villainous gets to resolve their problems and it’s cake and ponies and superlative orgasms for everyone all the time (though not with the ponies, please), yay.
What I want when I read a book is a good ending. I want an ending that’s right for the book. I want a resolution that feels both logical and emotionally satisfying. If a romance novel hero has a fairly severe case of PTSD, I don’t expect him to be fixed by the end of 400 pages, though I want him to find an avenue for future healing and happiness—which is why the ending for Seize the Fire by Laura Kinsale, while unconventional for a romance novel, is deeply touching and worked so well for me. If the protagonists have Issues but are, by and large, sane people, then an ending depicting them leading fulfilled, happy lives works well for me, too. This is why the “Where Are They Now?” summary in Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie is very satisfying for me. And if a book deals with madness, the Atlantic slave trade in the late eighteenth century and the atrocities people are willing to commit in the name of pride and commerce, like Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth, then I pretty much expect an ending to be gut-wrenching and tragic. I’m even OK with books in which the author seems to be punishing the protagonist just so we can go along for the ride, like Jude the Obscure or Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
This also doesn’t mean that I’m advocating for unhappy endings in romance novels. I’ll be honest here: I’m irrationally attached to my happy endings. When I finish a romance novel, I want the protagonists to be together, and I want an assurance that they’ll be reasonably happy together. It’s part of the pleasure and assurance of reading genre fiction. When I pick up a mystery novel, I want the mystery to be solved by the end. When I read a high fantasy novel, I want the world to be saved and the protagonists to complete their coming-of-age process. These very basic frameworks provide plenty of room to play with my expectations, to delight me with the unexpected, and to thoroughly fuck my emotions over. The trick is to bring everything together so that the denouement feels authentic instead of forced.
That’s not too much to ask, is it?
EDITED TO ADD: So the central question that I’m pondering, and what I’m still trying to figure out is: Why is the happy ending viewed as something inferior in and of itself compared to a tragic ending, or a bittersweet ending? Why is a happy ending popularly viewed as a cop-out? It sometimes is, no question about that, but sometimes it isn’t, and it irritates me that people indiscriminately lump them all together. I haven’t quite figured this out yet, and I’d like your perspectives.
I just started reading romance novels thanks to stumbling across this website. No joke. I’m 33 years old, a hungry reader, and I’d never even met anyone who reads romances, much less come across a stray romance novel (Anne of Green Gables doesn’t count). Nor had I noticed any romance novels in bookstores up until now. So now I’ve read more than 150 in a couple of months. [WTF?!?! is happening to me?!? No, really. stop me.] I’m supposed to be writing my Eng lit dissertation instead of taking the Grand Tour through Romance-land. It’s been dizzying. I’ve got my bearings now that I’ve realigned my [horizon of] expectations to match what’s normal in this world; I’m finally understanding what matters and what’s background noise or a conventional device. I was completely startled when I came across a second hero who also tended to growl “Mine”—I was so young then, sigh. Anyway, SOOO MANY of the genre’s conventions seemed WEIRD AS SHIT. I’m going to save that conversation for later. But. Compared to the rest, happy endings seem like the very least prominent—perhaps even least SALIENT—generic feature. Who even notices the endings when your brain already exploded while tracking the awesomely ostentatious ways the course of true love is made to run amok? I see plenty of happy endings in ‘my’ area, Early Modern, and HEAs are more common than not in the contemp lit fic titles I’ve read over the last 15 yrs, so I’m not feeling the supposed general anti-HEA bias.
If all I needed from romance novels was a HEA, I wouldn’t be freshly, fully addicted to a new genre. For reals—it has so much more that’s interesting and weird to offer the world. I was already getting plenty of happy endings from my normal reading sources. Um, off the top of my head: do any of you all remember the incredible happy ending to Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire (2003)? She somehow persuaded me to want that ending desperately and then to feel stupid-gratified and mooney about happiness in general when the resolution culminated in “love!” I think it won the National Book Award and it sure wasn’t in spite of the ending. Or the stunning happy end of What is the What (2006)? I could go on—I’ll try not to.
A more interesting point is that I have a short list of all-time greatest-ever happy endings that I like to reread sometimes as stand-alone pieces when I want to skip to the good stuff. Adam and Eve holding hands and looking to the future at the end of Paradise Lost, and Eve’s speech? awwwesome. The end of the Odyssey where Penelope finally lets herself believe that Odysseus is really home and Homer says she breaks down with happiness as if SHE were the sailor finally touching the home shore after decades trying to return? Ohhh jeez—it’s so tender and sweet it almost hurts.
I cannot imagine rereading just the happy ending to any of the romance novels I’ve read so far. It’s a tiny bit weird, isn’t it? The HEA isn’t ever a high point for the writing in the books I’ve read so far.
Did I mention I am LOVING romance novels? They are insane. I wanted to make that clear before I continue.
I have felt a little let-down by most of the endings of the romances I’ve read, and not because they were happy endings, but because the endings aren’t as stimulating or fun as the phantasmagorias of romantic misadventure that come before. The ‘epilogues’ usually seem to be more about reassuring me that the fixes are permanent so the couple will last forever than about telling me what it’s like to be happy. I’m only rarely surprised or delighted by anything in that last chapter. It often feels like the author is fleeing or has already left the party. I don’t get that feeling from happy endings I’ve encountered outside the romance genre. I do, however, get that feeling from nearly all of the detective novels I’ve picked up and, yes, from many of the contemp lit novels that have some kind of zany-ness to finally wrap up and put away.
I’d never heard of any discrimination suffered by the HEA until I started prowling the romance novel websites and saw how often writers and readers seem feel moved to defend The Romance by defending The HEA. Today’s tragic/bittersweet/don’t-call-it-emo pop music hasn’t gained any more cultural prestige that I’ve noticed because it eschews the HEA. They’re both easy to make fun of mainly for reasons other than the associated emotions. Don’t make me say it out loud.
So, the happy ending is part of the cluster of features that define the romantic genre, and we should probably blame Aristotle for putting tragedy on top of the pile and depriving happy endings of street cred, but who remembers any of that once they’re confronted by romance novels’ special kind of hushed, humorless reverence for the HEA—even in the midst of an otherwise funny book! I’m getting used to it, but the Romance novel HEA is still super-weird in ways that have little to do with ‘happiness’ or even ‘generic convention.’
I do sometimes wonder if a happy ending might be a more difficult target for a writer, if that thing that Eudora Welty (?) said about happy families being similar unhappy families being uniquely unhappy might be extended to the endings of books, where happy conclusions do all resemble one another and unhappy endings might present the opportunity for a million different ways the characters’ lives might unravel. Earning that same happy ending and making it feel both fresh and earned can’t be easy. Too bad! I’ve gotten spoiled by too many good writers and I demand nothing less. Okay, I’ll accept plenty less. Must…keep…reading…anything printed…. But I still prefer, you know, coherence whenever I can get it.
(Reading romance gives me a pleasant mash-up of kaleidoscopic unhappy book topped off with ending from happy book)
About “what it says abt the reader’s intellect if she genuinely loves [‘mindless escapist pap’]”—no worries! It says nothing! We’re long since free of the 18th c tyranny of ‘Taste’! The High Moderns say: what makes you an Aesthete is the critical work you perform on whatever it is you see, no matter what it is you’re seeing, because you’re clever like that.
I like HEAs because I want to live a happy life. Happiness, contentment, satisfaction, peace, all of these are things I aspire to. Life is full of pain and problems, but don’t most of us try to do things to make the pain stop, to resolve the problems, so that we can move on to a better place? How many poverty stricken orphans sit back in their orphanages feeling morally superior to rich happy kids, rather than wishing they had loving parents, birthday cake, and a pony, too?
Do the people who insist that tragic endings are somehow morally superior to happy ones aspire to live lives of misery? If not, if they seek joy and happiness in their real lives, why do they put down joy & happiness in fiction?
With fiction, you write the story that’s inside you to write, and you write the ending that is right for the story. Romeo & Juliet was a tragedy. A Midsummer Nights Dream was a romantic comedy with an appropriate HEA. Both are powerful works, both are celebrated, and both have stood the test of some 400 years time to remain classic favorites of the English-speaking world.
As far as I’m concerned, if the ending is the right one for the story, then it’s a good ending, whether it’s happy or sad. I generally prefer the happy ones, but I appreciate a sad ending done well that is consistent with the story.
And I refuse to let someone else try to make me feel somehow inferior because my taste and preferences are different than their’s.
With books that have a guaranteed HEA part of the mystery of how the story is going to turn out is gone. There are lots of ways to arrive at the HEA, sure, but the fact that it’s a done deal before you even open the book is, I think, what makes HEA books so criticized.
Another thing is that some romances have abusive characters in an abusive relationship that end up with an HEA. It’s not believable, and there’s something just WRONG about slapping an HEA ending on an abusive relationship.
Some of the best romances have bittersweet endings. It’s not all roses and sunshine for the rest of their days, but they have each other to lean of for the rest of their days. That’s the best type of HEA.
I don’t remember which gloomy Russian author wrote that all happy families were similar and unhappy families were different, but I think that this idea is a) very wrong, like, 180degrees wrong, and b) contributes a lot to the prejudice against the HEA. Or even to upbeat stories in general that don’t feature a happily ever after.
I think happiness is much more idiosyncratic and individual than unhappiness. Being happy involves really asking yourself hard questions about what you want and then doing what is necessary to get those things. It involves balancing long term desires (for work, learning, spiritual/artistic growth) versus short term desires for food, fun, and partying. You need to have a reciprocal relationship with people you feel close to, but still have to edit yourself so you don’t blow it by oversharing – a huge set of complex balancing acts.
Reading novels all day makes one person happy, another is happy while cooking, a third while volunteering – and a good novel has to sell us that the person is actually happy in what they’re doing, even when those choices are different from the ones that would make us happy.
Whereas being cold, hungry, betrayed, physically threatened, bored – those experiences make pretty much all of us unhappy. It’s easier to identify because it’s a common experience.
I think there’s also a moral element that is hard to grapple with, and that is tied in to modern/post modern worries – someone somewhere is always unhappy, so how can you justify your happiness? People who are suffering major trauma get a pass in literature from having to do a lot to alleviate the trauma of others, which makes for simpler plotting and moral resolutions. Essentially I think modern books are very ambivalent about people who act to get what they want, rather than reacting against the constraints imposed by others.
Watched Stranger than Fiction yesterday, pretty good
Happy Endings are in films only!