I’ve been giving a lot of thought to approaching the subject of happily ever after endings. I have a deep prejudice against any form of literature which prescribes plotlines. As a writer, I’ve been deeply influenced by theoreticians like Eco who view formula driven fiction as a lesser form of literature.
As a creative – a writer – I don’t think I’m ever going be comfortable with the strictures of having to make sure my characters fall in love, and having to contrive plot devices that will pair them forever – or even for now. As a reader, the attraction of knowing how a story will end before it begins still baffles me. To be honest, I look at a piece of erotic romance as a chore to read. It’s like reading a text book. I know how it is going to end, so why read it?
In her essay “Happily Ever After: The End as Beginning”, Guntrum addresses this question head on:
So why read a novel when we already know how it is going to end? Because it is the process, not the conclusion, that we are reading for. Indeed, it is safe for us to enjoy the process because we are already guaranteed of the ending. (The same can be said for the mystery novel. We know the crime/puzzle will be solved by the last page. Therefore, we can sit back and enjoy the ride.) What is so satisfying about the process in a romance novel?
I’d quibble with Guntrum about her analogy: mysteries do not require that the puzzle be solved in a specific way anymore, nor is it required that justice be done. There may be a thousand different solutions to a puzzle, but there is only one way to have a HEA ending – the couple must fall in love, acknowledge that love, and decide to ‘be together’. However, her point that it is the process of getting to that HEA that readers enjoy is a very valuable one. What she doesn’t address – what no one seems to want to address – is that if it is the journey that really matters, then why is the fixed ending so important. And couldn’t that be a different fixed ending? The couple parts amicably?
If you’re a romance fan, you’re shaking your head vehemently right about now. And THAT is what I’m interested in. That reaction. Yes, the journey IS important, but romance readers want THIS and only THIS ending.
So this is really about how readers experience the journey on the way to happily ever after and how the HEA works as a mechanism to allow the enjoyment of the journey.
There have been many approaches to the study of women’s fiction. May of them have been heavily feminist – exploring the experience of romance as either a submission to or a rejection of an all encompassing masculinist hegemony. They have looked at the reinforcement of cultural values. They have suggested that, hidden within the text of romance novels, lurks the opposite: that the very fact that women recognize romance as escapist fantasy proves that those conservative models of being aren’t realistic or valid in the real world.
The majority of modern literary theorists come with an undertone of their Marxist origins. Barthes, Derrida, Kristeva, and the post-colonialists… they are all casting their eye over literature to see the lines of power, the preferencing of normativity, the inherent perpetuation of class structures, the commodification of sex, the body, emotion…
It’s not really surprising that there is very little written on erotic fiction or erotic romance. Because these forms of fiction very often reject normative paradigms and embrace them at the same time. In a queer erotic romance novel like ‘Uneven’ by Anah Crow, the class structure is turned on its head – the submissive bottom is a captain of industry and the sadistic, dominant top is a failed lawyer and a stock-boy come gardener. Nonetheless, the class structure haunts the book by presenting us with its mirror opposite, in a way very similar to Lady Chatterly’s Lover. And ultimately, the couple do overcome their various emotional obstacles to reach a ‘happily ever after ending. And I can’t but feel that this inevitable conclusion reinforces the idea that it’s only okay to be kinky as long as you’re really in love. The protagonist’s early, loveless forays into the world of BDSM have engendered intense self-loathing. It’s only in the arms of the man he ‘really loves’ that he can find a way to love himself as a masochistic submissive. I honestly cannot help but feel that the message is clear: sex without love is evil and self-destructive.
It’s fair to say that modern literary theorists have probably ruined my ability to really enjoy romance – erotic or otherwise.
So I feel I have to reach into the past. I have to look at the earlier theorists – the phenomenologists – to find an approach to this question that forces me to leave my judgement behind. Iser, Poulet, Sartre, etc.
Phenomenology looks at consciousness from the first person point of view. It focuses on the individual’s lived experience as a way to understand what is going on. To take a phenomenological approach to my question, I can leave whatever theories may have dominated our understanding of engagement with fiction behind. I can accept that issues of semiotics, linguistics, class struggle, and a male-dominated society may very well be at play in the experience of a reader who embarks upon the enjoyment of a story with a happily ever after ending, but all I need to be concerned with is…
What is the experience doing for them? How does the knowledge that the ending will be a happy one play into their reading of the story? What is their personal relationship with this semi-structured text?
This is where I think I have to situate my questions. In a non-judgemental, non-analytical place that simply documents and appreciated their individual reading experience.
I’ve put in my application for ethics clearance with my university’s human research committee. Please cross your fingers for me.
Intriguing . . . I’ve often wondered why the HEA is considered so necessary. Fingers and toes crossed for you, of course.
I loved reading your description of your thought process and look forward to the next installment as you move forward with your project. Toes and fingers crossed for you.
Sadly, in a lot of romances, the journey is almost identical from book to book too. Often the only difference is the names.
As for mysteries, I don’t generally read them, but I don’t need for the crime to be perfectly solved and the criminal to be captured at the end of the book. I’d be happy with the detectives figuring out who did it, but not capturing him until later in the series, if ever.
I’m fine with an open ending in both romance and mystery, and other kinds of fiction as well. If I really enjoy a particular villain, I don’t want him gone at the end of one book in a series. I would want him to be around for several books stirring up trouble.
The same thing if I actually enjoy a romantic pairing, which is rare. But if I do, I don’t want them written out of the series after one book. I want them to stay around, deal with more adversity, have more fun.
I guess what it really comes down to is, why would I want the characters I like to be gone? That’s what happily ever after walking off into the sunset is. GONE.
Interesting that you should bring up the concept of characters living on… because Kay Mussell, in her book “Fantasy and Reconciliation: Contemporary Formulas of Women’s Romance Fiction” makes an interesting point that one of the outcomes of a HEA ending is the eternal deferral of the story of a woman aging, and the couple settling into the doldrums of a marriage without that first bloom of passion.
That’s true. With a happily ever after the reader doesn’t get to see the doldrums and the aging, but doldrums and aging are part of the distant future. I don’t expect characters or couples to go on so long in a fictional series that they are literally growing old together for decades right before my eyes, but I’d like to be able to enjoy them for a few or even several years before they’re written out of existence.
Good luck with the university. As stated by me often, I read romance, like it, and have written some. I am not shaking my head at you. I don’t so much like proscribed dictums, and like to break as many rules as I can, while maintain legibility, making sense. With my poetry, a predetermined rhyme scheme, a strictly structured number of lines, stanzas, all the rest, fuels my creativity. It forces me to find a way to break from my cage, while the option of an open gate is always there. I’ve used the same exercise for some of my fiction. And that, is where I would very much enjoy you expanding sometime. Most discussions focus on the reader’s expectations for a hea, how that affects their enjoyment, or how it detracts. How does it affect the writer? Your knowledge is impressive, and I’m not just blowing smoke up your skirt. You are both intelligent and well educated. However, I can look up past writers, philosophers, and critics, and often have; I am most interested in Rg’s opinions of the contraints, (a few of which you’ve mentioned) or maybe even the benefits of writing where you know the story will take you. For me, the journey is everything. I know my characters, have an idea of what I want to represent, but never know how the story is going to end until I finish writing it. The characters have to stay within character, so they always end up doing things wich I didn’t foresee. That’s why I like writing, it is even better in some ways than reading others. So please, sometime when you’re not so busy with the university and such, I would like for you to expand on why the hea is not something you like to write, more so than something you don’t like to read. Assuming there is more to expand upon. Thank you again, it is always informative coming here.
Hi Michael – love the smoke up my skirt 😛
The truth is that I have never been motivated to write within the kind of structural constraints that romance demands. I can’t imagine why, as a writer, I would embark on a story that would, to a certain extent, have its ending proscribed. That being said, one could say that perhaps I should, since I don’t seem to be able to finish very much in this freer form.
I think your question needs to be address by someone who does submit to the discipline of form that erotic romance, or romance plain and simple demands. I’m simply inexperienced and uninformed about working beneath those sorts of constraints.
Fair enough. I have little access to those persons, and more importantly, (more smoke coming) I respect their writing far less than yours, even though I enjoy their stories. But as someone who has no clue where his own story is going, where it will end up, or how it will get there, I can not ask for a more thorough answer than you gave. I hate to leave this site for even a short time, (damn, where’d all that smoke come from?) But I’ll take your advice and look elsewhere for a little while before coming back.
One way to get to grips with a question is to invert it and see what happens. Instead of a HEA, what about a “sad ever after”? I’m not sure if you’d include Clarissa, Romeo and Juliet, Carmen or Tosca as erotic romances, but none of them has a HEA in the conventional sense. Just a thought.
And fingers are crossed and Daumen gedrückt for you