For those of you who are actually reading these posts on my ‘Happily Ever After’ exploration, I thank you for coming along for the ride and I do hope I’m not boring you to tears. One of my sneaky reasons for posting these blog posts is in the hope that I can encourage some of you modern erotic writers to consider taking your passion and your interest in the genre into the academy – because there’s basically fuck all there. And because, I believe, it deserves to be there. Our genre deserves to be examined and explored and written about.
One of the struggles I’m having with doing this kind of work is that I have a lot of opinions, a lot of questions, a lot of strategies for exploring the function of the ‘happily ever after’ ending, but very little experience in academic writing. So I’m learning as I go along.
There are really four elements to my research process. Four questions I need to answer.
- What methods do I propose to use to dig into this subject?
- What methodology – why is this method the right one for the questions I’m asking?
- That theoretical perspective will I take to approach the subject and my examination of it?
- What epistemology – what are the origins, the nature, the limits of the knowledge – that affect the theoretical perspective I’m going to adopt?
It’s incredibly hard for a person who is used to simply sitting down and writing to take such a massive step back and attempting to view what I will be writing from such a distance, but it’s important and ultimately enriching to attempt to understand why and how we write the things we write and how and why readers read them.
The truth is, I find it more helpful to flip that list around because then it allows me to use the list as a bit of a funnel.
Epistemologically, Objectivism won’t work for me. The experience of reading fiction is an incredibly complicated and deeply subjective act. There is no possibility of writing or reading anything without bringing our life experience, our cultural conditioning, our gender, our age, etc. into the experience. Whatever meaning we make out of this act is going to be coloured radically by what we bring to it. Even the way we structure stories – our expectation of them – is culturally determined, since all cultures, all genders, all ages, don’t tell stories in the same way. Just as an example, take a look at the two versions of the film The Ring – the Japanese and US versions have very different structures. Western storytelling demands far more closure than Asian stories do. So, in the American version, we are given an explanation for why the little girl in the well is such an angry and destructive ghost. In the Japanese version, it is only hinted at in the vaguest of ways.
So ultimately, I’m never going to get at an incontrovertible truth about what the ‘Happily Ever After’ trope is, or how it functions for the writer or the reader in a story. The best I can hope for is to try and persuade my readers to agree with me that its ubiquity in romances and in erotic romance is an interesting phenomenon that deserves more than just to be written off as a ‘given’.
Then theoretical perspectives that may be used to approach this phenomenon become a little clearer. I could be terribly dry about it and say that almost 100% of all modern romance and erotic romance novels have ‘happily ever after’ endings. This positivist approach looks great. Wow – 99.98%! Cool! But those numbers tell me very little other than that an HEA ending is a very strict and enduring convention within this literary genre. We already know this, so it’s not interesting. Because what I want to know is WHY this convention is so ubiquitous and so enduring.
I could take a formalist approach, like Vladimir Propp did with fairy tales and survey 1000 modern romance novels. I could deconstruct them and look at the frequency of various recurring tropes. Kind of pedantic for my taste. I still only really get numbers – frequency – and it still won’t answer my question of why the HEA ending is so popular and so frequent.
In order to get to the WHY question, I’m going to need a theoretical perspective that is, indeed, harder to use and renders messier, less obvious results. I need something that allows me to question very basic assumptions and ‘givens’. What has surprised me so much about a lot of the existing writing on modern romance novels is to what very little extent this almost universal phenomenon of the Happily Ever After ending has been explored.
I need to take a critical theory approach – a post-structuralist one that allows me to argue against accepting the ‘Happily Ever After’ ending as nothing other that a type of narrative closure – one of many. Because for romance, it isn’t one of many; it’s the only closure. And, what’s more, foreknowledge of the inevitably happily ever after ending on the part of both the writers and readers of romance MUST be playing a part in the metanarrative of reading romance. This is a sub-culture that almost innately understands this construction of the fictional world – one in which the hero and the heroine will come together and live happily ever after.
This leads me to my choice of methodology. I want to explore what the HEA is actually doing for writers and readers. Not just inside the story, but outside it. When a reader chooses to buy and read a romance, before the first page is even opened, she knows the ending. What does this knowledge allow for? How does it colour her approach to the reading experience? Similarly, a writer who sits down to write a romance or erotic romance already knows how her plot must end. So how does that affect her approach to storytelling? Character creation? Plot structure? HEA is not a decision she makes – it is a given as fundamental as that the manuscript must have a last page, a final sentence.
I see these two activities, with the overarching presence of a specific and definite resolution in the narrative, as a sort of compact between the reader, the writer, and the text. Many romance writers and readers insist that the HEA ending is not ‘a constraint’. But I find this intellectually untenable. It is a constraint but one that is desired by all parties involved. What it clearly isn’t is a negative constraint for them.
And I have to own to having a longstanding prejudice against this constraint. And it’s not only me. The vast majority of literary theorists see a constraint of this magnitude as something that must inevitably constrain the creative act of writing in a negative way.
I don’t think a questionnaire is going to be a good idea. It would be very hard to frame the questions in a way as to preclude any value judgements inherent in the questions. It limits the amount of information my subjects can give me. It leaves no space for an answer I might not be expecting.
I need to listen to and accept the lived experiences of both readers and writers of romance. To get my head around how they view and use the knowledge of the HEA in a deep way. I need to take the very little that has already been touched upon with regard to the effects of the foreknowledge of that ending, and dig deeper into how it’s functioning.
That requires conversation. That requires that my methodology be a phenomenological one, and that my method to obtain this information be either a form conversation analysis, or to invite my readers and writers of romance to enter into a narrative about it.
Er… I think.
…therefore you are! 🙂
“The vast majority of literary theorists see a constraint of this magnitude as something that must inevitably constrain the creative act of writing in a negative way.” – Possibly true (I haven’t surveyed) but I wonder how the actual writers feel about it? (Again, I haven’t surveyed.)
I must admit I see an intriguing possibility in this.
Romance novels sell, therefore publishers want them written, therefore writers are asked to fulfil that need (or the publishers won’t pick up their work).
But is this what might be termed a “local maximum”? Is there a sufficient market for non HEA/HFN works with romantic elements, that’s simply not being noticed?
Received Wisdom (Yeuk!) is that the readers need the sweetness of the ending in order to feel good and if they don’t feel good, they won’t buy the next one. Is that really true?
I have no idea.
Wow, so many questions. This will be lengthy, and I apologize for that, but you did ask for conversation. I don’t think the hea is a forgone conclusion, or even a pre-set requirement, but might be something on a deeper level. I recently wrote a series of three novels, numbers four and maybe nine and ten forthcoming. The original intent was a dark and gritty short story, erotic fiction along the lines of a vampire genre. I knew the basic story I wanted to tell, but my characters, thier consistency, are paramount. They led me in this. Where I had envisioned a climactic bloodbath, that did occur, which should have ended the story along with most everyone’s lives, the main characters survived and salvaged love and hope from this horrific act. Hence the unexpected hea, and the unexpected following novels. This was never my intent. My first reasoning is that I am a crappy writer, unable to tell the tale I want. But I did remain true to my characters, allowing them to act as was proper for them. When all was said and done, my dark exploration short story, was a novel which was a romance. And not just romantic, but a bodice ripper which should have Fabio on the cover. I am almost embarrassed, but still believe the story is good. (there is no ego as strong as a writer’s) As the pen, I am in control, I am god, the story is whatever I choose it to be. And yet, in this one story, my characters defied me, went their own way, and achieved a hea, despite my wanting a tragic ending or a hfn as a minimum. I’m divorced three times and those were wonderful marriages, within a time frame. I am a staunch supporter of hfn, because this is the best I have ever seen in life, and that’s not an apology. Hea is impossible, or so I believed. My fictious characters disagreed with me, and their tale ended lovingly and hopefully, despite my protests. As god, it was interesting to note that I was not all powerful. My submission is this: perhaps it is not the boundaries of litarary definition, not the expectations of the reader, or the writer trying for supplication of either reader or even characters, that defines the romantic notion and provides the hea. Perhaps there is some need for hope, a desire which defies reason and logic and probable outcome, which spurs us to imagine these outcomes which are problematic at best, usually impossible, and which we so readily accept as every day occurance, despite knowing better. It is a lie, we know this, but the tongue is so sweet with this particular deception. I most often prefer to read and write stories which kick me in the balls. This is truer to my own life experiences, and I relate wih realism. Still, the fantasy of what might have been, had I done this or that, tried harder, been better; that one has a unique though unrealistic sweetness which is desirable, even if unattainable and unrealistic and false. I’ve never had a happilly ever after in anything, and maybe that escapism is why I enjoy them so much in movies and literature.
Michael, if you set out to write a novel that ended in a blood bath, then you weren’t sitting down to write a romance novel. Because by definition, romances MUST have HEA. And just because a novel ends with an HEA doesn’t make it a romance novel – because romances have other conventions as well. But there are no modern romance novels that end without it.
hi, RG.
i have been following your HEA posts with a great deal of interest. being someone who absolutely loves an HEA (as long as it doesn’t seem *too* contrived and cheesy – the writing, after all, is still desperately important to my enjoyment), and has a hard time dealing with anything else, it has led me to question just why that is. oddly, this questioning has actually relieved some of the guilt (yes, guilt) of pretty much needing to have an HEA in… well… almost any book that i read. in fact, i think the only (modern) book (in any genre) i ever read that didn’t have HEA/HFN or something approaching that was “We Need To Talk About Kevin”. man, that book just tore out my entrails. it was horrible, just horrible. the thing is, you see, and just speaking for myself, here, i need the reassurance of a HEA/HFN to allow me to get through the book. if i KNOW there’s going to be one, i can cope with just about any horror that the story will throw at me. i HAVE to have hope to be able to cope with the darkness. call me a coward, if you like. i’ll freely admit it. but as someone who copes badly with conflict IRL, i generaly don’t want it in my fantasy life without the assurance of resolution, if i can possibly avoid it. y’know – i get enough of that IRL already.
and i think the key word there is fantasy. i’m a big fan of fantasy – always have been. same with romance. and i think the two are connected in lots of ways – at least in my head. i am well aware that neither are a reflection of what is true IRL, but that’s not why i read them. it is escapism. and whether the goal of the narrative is to slay the dragon or get the two people together who “should” be together (sometimes both at once), i need to know that will eventually happen in order to fully invest, otherwise i’m likely to run away and hide from the big nasty tragic ending.
(as an aside: Romeo and Juliet is one of my least favourite stories ever. and Wuthering Heights left me quite angry to have wasted all that time reading it. what a fucking miserable, doom-laden dirge it is. i don’t think Heathcliffe is sexy – i think he’s a turd. and yet these are still considered “romances”, or is it romantic tragedy? but youre not looking at these, are you? i’ve just remembered you said “modern romance” er…sorry for the ramble)
oh, look – i’ll stop now. hope i’ve made a little sense here. if you *do* need volunteers, and want to ask me anything as a no-longer ashamed HEA/HFN lover, DM me, and i’ll do my best to be coherent.
*hugs*
Squeaky
I think you’ve made a LOT of sense, Squeaky. And thank you for being a willing volunteer. I will take you up on it.
You’ve said very interesting things that are really intriguing: “i need the reassurance of a HEA/HFN to allow me to get through the book. if i KNOW there’s going to be one, i can cope with just about any horror that the story will throw at me.”
So perhaps, for you, the HEA isn’t just a story ending, but a kind of permission for the text to go to very emotionally stressful places, while still allowing you to be completely invested in the story?
That’s pretty much it. I have to know, before I go into the pit, that I will be able to climb or claw my way back out. it’s an emotional safety net.
In which case, there is a very good argument that the HEA actually empowers writers to really take their fiction to very extreme places, because the boundary that the HEA is offering allows for that sense of safety to the reader! Far from being a constraint, in this case, it could be seen as exactly the opposite!
I think a conversation is the only way to go. Perhaps after a dozen or so, a pattern will emerge that will lend itself to examination by other methods, such as a questionnaire, but it has to start with conversation and open ended questions.
The challenge, I think, is making your conclusions more than anecdotally based.
Hi Ed,
As I said, I don’t think there is a right answer to this question, there are only possibilities for insights into what HEA does for readers in relation to the text – other than simply end the story.
My approach to this would be quite different from yours, though it might not pass muster with a supervisor.
I’d reframe the question: an erotic romance must have an HEA, an HEA is both “necessary and sufficient”.
I’d start with fairy stories, trying to show how the concept of a HEA is culturally embedded in us at an early and receptive age (though this means I’m western-centric).
I’d postulate that the story/plot of an erotic romance could be seen and understood as the phases of a classical human sexual response (excitement, plateau, orgasm, resolution) but with conflict added somewhere. On this basis, orgasm is “happy” and resolution is “ending”, so an HEA is inevitable. The reader may not consciously recognise this; the writer might. This does seem to be so obvious and simplistic that I’m sure it’s not original.
Just a couple of thoughts.
Hey there! Lovely to see you again.
Actually there is already a fantastic book that has collected scholarly essays on exactly this subject already (so I can’t go there – it’s been done). Also there is a text called ‘Romantic Conventions’ that has a fairly extensive essay on the subject: http://books.google.com/books?id=Ja_Ia-oZo4wC&lpg=PA51&dq=fairy%20tales%20romance%20convention%20genre&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q=fairy%20tales%20romance%20convention%20genre&f=false
I love your idea about the phases of a human sexual response! I think that’s where the slang for a ‘happy ending’ in massage came from.
Hi RG!
Thanks for the link; I tried hard to understand what the authors were on about, and failed. But then I don’t have a background in literary criticism. I did think that some of the stuff was a bit OTT — but I’m inclined to the ”Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome” with things I don’t understand. I did see that all the authors are women.
Young children’s brains are very receptive, undergoing physical change in response to stimuli, and kids hear fairy stories from an early age. I guess they realise that they are being taken into a world of make-believe when they hear “Once upon a time…” and after a few stories they know that the ending is usually “and they all lived happily ever after”. So, even if the stories are very dark and dangerous, the child knows that it’s all make-believe, and that all will be well in the end; if the journey is scary, the child knows that all will be resolved, and that there is really nothing to fear. Once accepted and physically imprinted as the norm for a story, our expectation for a “normal”, comfortable story will follow this pattern — which might be why if a story doesn’t end happily we feel cheated, we feel uncomfortable, “something is wrong”.
There’s another major physical rewiring of the brain in adolescence, which is why teenagers are, well, teenagers; but after this we can’t really change our expectations or outlook that much.
Didn’t St Francis say something along the lines of “give me a boy before he is seven and he’s mine for life” — recognising the importance of early imprinting.
Although this might explain why an HEA is necessary, it isn’t proper literary criticism, and so might not be all that helpful. Sorry!
As far as I’m concerned, any careful consideration of a body of lit or the way it works upon us counts as literary criticism. You don’t need big words to do it.
Yes, all the writers of that particular antho are women, because the truth is, the vast majority of romance writers are women. And very sadly, it has been widely considered an area of literature that doesn’t bear much serious consideration. This is intensely patronizing. Romance sells more than any other genre of literature bar none. And double as much as the next genre. So, clearly it’s important to a lot of people and dismissing it is a foolish arrogance. That being said, literary criticism is not the most readable of genres within academia.
I think your point about patterning and modeling of how we react to stories and what are expectations of them is well taken. It would be interesting to do a study on this. I am pretty sure you are right. We are taught how to experience stories, and for most of us, this remains the most comfortable way to engage with them for life.
I’ve actually quit reading certain authors whose books started out with less predictable romance and later in the series turned to more predictable romance. I said that as if it’s rare, but it happens every time I read fiction with a romantic element.
I’ll go to forums where fans are discussing certain authors, and almost everyone there is upset if it’s not romantic enough or predictable enough. I’m absolutely convinced that authors who would like to write books that are less predictable are forced by demand to write formula romance even if that’s not what they really want to write or are even particularly good at writing.
Not only do most readers appear to require the happily ever after ending, but they also require that the book be absolutely focused on the primary couple and nothing else. Even if the author tries to weave in other plot ideas to make the book more complex and interesting, like J.R. Ward, for example, they are chided by their fans for not spending enough time on the romance of the primary couple.
I’ve even seen books that specifically did NOT say romance on the cover, but were part of a series with romantic elements, forced into becoming more predictably romantic by demand of the fans. Sometimes I wonder if even Stephen King gets an endless stream of mail from fans demanding that he give them a happily ever after for whatever pairing the fan decides should get it.
This is why I write my own sexy semi-romantic fiction to entertain myself. Because thanks to the formula romance fans who won’t allow any other kind of story to exist, the only way I get what I want is to do it myself.
t1klish,
Well, perhaps this is reflective of a consumer culture that sees all cultural product as commodity and is demanding that the commodity they buy be exactly what they want? I’m pretty sure that King does get a shitload of those letters and, I’m pretty sure he ignores them.
So, I’m going to step away from my researcher role here and step into my writerly one and say… you have a right to write anything you want but you don’t have a right to demand that a lot of people like it. And I say this as a writer of erotic fiction who writes a lot of pieces that MOST erotica readers don’t like.
Ultimately, as a writer, I feel I have to write what I aspire to. And that is individual to me. I know there is a small group of readers who do like the sort of work I produce and I am happy with that. I can always be comfortable that our interests (that of my readers and I) coincide enough that we can share a good and enriching experience.
I haven’t finished my novella Beautiful Losers. And I get a lot of letters from people saying, when you finish it, you HAVE to end it well. You have to give them a happy ending. I guess, if I wanted to start a career in threesome romance, I would do what they ask, but I know the story cannot end well. The characters can’t be MADE to end well. It won’t. Period. But then, I never sold the story as a romance. I never portrayed myself as a romance writers. With me, you get what you get. That means that the number of people who are willing to read me are always going to be tiny. Hey, that’s fine.
when i read this comment, my heart sank a little. my initial reaction was that i absolutely adored BL when i read it, the characters captured my heart, and I wanted them to have a happy ending. and then i thought a little further on it. it occurred to me that HEA *to me* does not necessarily have to mean the protagonists waltzing off into the sunset. it can also be a little tragic, but that as long as there is growth/lesson(s) learned, and hope for the future (recovery from tragedy?) for the characters i have invested in, then i can be content, and recover from any horrors that may have happened. depending what mood i am in might depend which i prefer. sometimes, i have a hard time coping with the second, though. so the first is usually preferable.
as Keziah so rightly said:
“The HEA genre is not a homogeneous one. There are HEAs for god fearing, monogamous insisting, conservative upholders of right wing values as there are exactly the opposite. Does a HEA mean something different to a Tea Party supporter than to a 99 Percenter?”
even, it seems, to the same person. it’s a fact that there are certain purebred HEA romance titles that are like comfort food to me. they sort of wrap me in a warm cozy blanket, and i will read them if i’m feeling particularly stressed, or emotionally unstable, and they will calm and soothe me to a surprising extent, even though, again, i am fully aware that they are still fantasy.
This is why I feel a one-on one conversation approach to understanding how HEA works for readers and for writers is a better idea than doing group surveys. Because no matter what a person’s affiliations, they are individuals and it may very well be that having the surety of an HEA ending functions in exactly the same way for people with extremely different life experiences. On the other hand, two 99 Percenters may also be seeing the HEA ending in different ways, serving different purposes. They key is to focus on what part the presence of this specific and reliable ending is playing in the way individual readers approach, consume and experience the stories. No judgement. Because, whatever it may be, it is definitely working for them!
Talking to writers is also going to be very interesting, because for them it is part of their practice as writers. So how they view it – as a goal, a framework, a boundary, a space in which to play… that is also going to be exciting to discover.
RG- I don’t envy your task because, from my perspective, you’re not tackling a writing convention, you’re tackling an ingrained philosophical conditioning that dates back to the origins of this country. Your statements about Japanese films allowing for more ambiguous endings vs. Americans is very cogent. I believe that American storytelling requires an “absolute” understanding because it is the justification of the means to achieve the end. America was founded by religious fanatics at its essence. The most influential to our culture was the Puritans. They took an absolute interpretation of the Bible and used it to justify their hypocrisy. The HEA ending, and again this is just my $.02, justifies every transgression that went in between. They fucked randomly, they fucked deviantly, they fucked in every irresponsible way they could imagine, but they got together and are going to stay that way so all sins are now washed away by the ending.
Bottom line, our religious dogma says sex outside of marriage is a sin and your going to hell for it. While practically people have begun to reject that, the cannon still says that is so. The HEA ending alleviates the sin and provides redemption.
There is a modern day example of this in the woman being forced to marry her rapist. The end is being applauded to explain away and justify the crimes committed in the journey. Never mind that she is being raped all over again … but that’s a different conversation.
I wish you the best in your research. I think your taking on a huge undertaking.
Regards,
Gillian
Hi Gillian,
Well, I’m pretty sure that most writing conventions are representational of or formed by ingrained philosophical/moral/cultural conditioning. How many spy thrillers have you read that didn’t end with the good guy triumphing over evil (yes there are some, but few and they aren’t the popular ones). However, I do agree that it isn’t just a ‘story ending’.
I think for some readers it is exactly what you say here – HEA works as an absolution for some readers. But I simply know too many very liberated, very emancipated women who love erotic romance. So I have to say, as Keziah hinted at above, the trope has different meanings for different groups of readers. I’m going to be interested to see how many of them can be identified.
“I see these two activities, with the overarching presence of a specific and definite resolution in the narrative, as a sort of compact between the reader, the writer, and the text. Many romance writers and readers insist that the HEA ending is not ‘a constraint’. But I find this intellectually untenable. It is a constraint but one that is desired by all parties involved. What it clearly isn’t is a negative constraint for them.
And I have to own to having a longstanding prejudice against this constraint. And it’s not only me. The vast majority of literary theorists see a constraint of this magnitude as something that must inevitably constrain the creative act of writing in a negative way.”
Some questions:
Is there a limitation with the literary theorists that they define the compact between the reader, the writer and the text as constraint?
Is there something about the gendered nature of most romance writing that has something to do with HEA? That is, women as a sex want to control their experience of love and sex which historically has often been the source of a lot of oppression?
What are the constraints of literary fiction? What are the constraints of erotica?
Is there something about the constraints about both of these genres that are unsatisfactory to a lot of women?
How does false consciousness and/or bad faith come into all of this? (I bring these up because unless you address them in your research you could run the risk of characterizing the readers of HEA as indulging/suffering from both).
The HEA genre is not a homogeneous one. There are HEAs for god fearing, monogamous insisting, conservative upholders of right wing values as there are exactly the opposite. Does a HEA mean something different to a Tea Party supporter than to a 99 Percenter?
How are you going to deal with your prejudice throughout this research? If you approach romance negatively, knowing romance writers as I do, they are going to be very wary of being depicted as they almost always are, as airheads.
I think it sounds like a great piece of research.
Hey Keziah,
What wonderful and stimulating questions.
1. From my reading, I’d say ‘no’ about the literary theorists. As far as the theorists who have touched on this kind of closure, there are either the formalists, who are really looking at it all as mythology. Or there are the semioticians, like Eco, who just see it as an impoverishment, because they see it as a closed text.
2. Although this is not in my area of inquiry, it has to be acknowledged, because there has been some fine writing framing romance as a whole within the feminist perspective. However, my gut says this love of the predictable resolution is not gendered, because if you look at action/thrillers – the kind of spy-hero stories written by the Vince Flynn types, they also have a consistent version of a HEA. It’s not marriage, but the good guy always inevitably wins, kills the terrorists, uncovers the international plot of evil, etc. My gut says that men want a happy ending just as much as women do.
3. As far as I know, there are constraints on every kind of literature. From Haiku to hardcore BDSM erotica – every form has its constraints. They’re just usually not quite as specific.
4. I don’t think there is any intellectually honest possibility in which one could characterize HEA readers as indulging or suffering from this trope. It is clearly something that to them is essential to their experience and their willingness to engage IN the experience. This is what I find so compelling.
5. Brilliant point – no it’s not homogeneous. And in a way, I’m wondering if the HEA isn’t a bit like a marker that embodies different meanings for different groups of readers. My gut says yes. Look at Squeaky’s response above. For her, HEA allows her to read things that otherwise would be too disturbing to her to be comfortable with. It brackets the reading experience firmly within the area of fictionality and allows her a sort of reading safety-net, so she can engage emotionally fully within it.
And this is kind of what I have heard in my earlier forays. And what I’m kind of prodding at – that in its ubiquity it has gained a very powerful metanarrative semiosis where it stands for different things to different audiences.
6. Best question of all. Hardest for me. The bottom line is… I am simply WRONG. 63 million Americans can’t be wrong. This trope is obviously enabling, empowering, engaging these readers. It has tremendous importance for them. And romance writers are giving them what they want. Sure, not all writers may be terribly analytical about what they do, but I suspect that many, many romance writers know quite instinctively many of the reasons why HEA is so powerful to their readers. Keziah, I think I have to be open and honest and admit that I don’t really understand this dynamic. And my non-understanding of it drives my interest in the subject. I am sure that a lot of romance and erotic romance writers are NOT going to want to talk to me. But there are a lot of them. I’m hoping at least some will, and that the ones that will are the ones who are the same ones who have thought deeply enough about their craft to not feel the need to defend it because they don’t believe it requires defending. I certainly don’t think it requires defending. I see myself as a stranger to this territory – romance writers and readers are the natives here. And if there is one thing I really know how to do well, it’s being a well-behaved guest in a foreign culture. 😛
Hi, there. De-lurking because I’ve been following this, and it’s really fascinating. Phenomenology will be messy but INTERESTING! I wish you luck with it. Like Squeaky, I really enjoy a HEA in romance novels, and yet I don’t expect or necessarily want them with erotic fiction. I love Beautiful Losers, but if it had an HEA, it would not ring true. I’m expecting to be heartbroken about the fate of those characters, but it will be satisfying because it makes sense. Maybe there’s a different contract between writer/reader in erotic fiction vs. romance, or maybe I’m just odd 🙂
Looking forward to hearing about your progress!
Since you mention thrillers, I’ll voice my opinion as a reader. I want a HEA of some sort in my fiction because that’s what it takes for me to feel entertained. Like Squeaky, it gives me some permission to enjoy the ride, knowing that I won’t be bitter at the end.
However, “HEA of some sort” doesn’t have to be rigid for me. I can enjoy a story with a non-conventional HEA.
The trick is, I kinda want to know before I go in. If I’m reading for escapism, I’ll pick up a different book than if I’m aiming for intellectual stimulation. The HEA convention in thrillers aids the relaxation that isn’t present in high literature.
RG,
A very interesting topic. First I wish to clarify that I am far from an academic, many of the comments & terms used by many of you are clearly over my head.
When I was young HEA was a given. The death star was destroyed, they lived happily ever after. Then a sequel, why did they need to make another movie? Confusing to me. Then I learned there was more to the story, what a delight! I enjoy the journey of a story not knowing it will end neatly or messy, messy rings truth.
HEA to me seems to equate stability & security. Everything will end up ok no matter the pain & suffering ones experience in life. HEA is hopeful fantasy. As humans we need hope, do we not?
Thank you,
-TFP
We do indeed!
Something that came up in the Twitter go-round before you posted this that still nags at me. I don’t know how much of it is related to what you’re trying to delve into and how much it’s a diversion of tack. But, the distinction between HFN and HEA nags at me. Perhaps the relevance here is how do HEA readers and writers _know_ they are in HEA and not HFN? Is there part of the trope, some signal, that implies the permanence of the happy ending? Once we stop watching the story, how is the HEA reader assured of ever after in absence of the fairytale “And they lived…” at the end of the book? Or is it self fulfilling? Do you just “know” HEA vs. HFN? I keep thinking there’s a clue there, but I don’t know, because it seems to me HEA doesn’t really actually exist in absence of that magic invocation.
That’s a really good point, Raz. Well, that is something to ask, isn’t it? In the discussions.
From all the professional ‘advice on how to write romance novels’ that I’ve sampled, and a lot of the articles, there is not much said about the HFN ending. And I wonder, even if it is present, if it stands for something of the same sort? Your metaphor of the magic invocation is interesting and a creative way to consider the phenomenon of reading romance.
I think, traditionally, HEA in romance required marriage, and HFN didn’t include a trip to the altar. Of course, things have changed so that marriage isn’t the end-all for women. So the distinction in modern romance is lost to me.
Certainly in thrillers or heroic fantasy, HFN is the standard ending because you need to leave room for a future adventure. Romance seems to preclude that, as I’ve been told that a “sequel” in romance follows the original heroine’s friend or cousin or somesuch rather than another adventure with the heroine herself.
It is really interesting to engage here with people discussing this from both the readers’ and writers’ perspective. Choosing an ending in order to facilitate a sequel is to look at this very much from the writer’s pov. It is interesting to me that a HEA story in romance, which would seem to totally preclude a sequel can still engender them by jumping to another heroine who is close by. So interesting!
“Romance seems to preclude that, as I’ve been told that a “sequel” in romance follows the original heroine’s friend or cousin or somesuch rather than another adventure with the heroine herself.”
That’s probably true, strictly speaking, but one can still find series which appeal to romance readers and which do follow the original heroine. JD Robb’s In Death books are a good example of that; she writes her romances as Nora Roberts.
I’m a reader and wanted to say that I hate HEAs HFN ok but it not important. I prefer an intelligent read. When I read erotica I like it to be dark and thought provoking. A HEA to me seems like a cop out anyone can write a twee story with a HEA, or an angst filled story with a HEA but it takes courage and good writing to captivate a reader , make them love the characters but not give the easy option of the HEA. I appreciate that a HEA is expected with a romance be it erotic or otherwise, but i like my mind to wonder about the outcome, I hate to read an angsty story knowing ‘it’ll all be good in the end’ part of the joy of reading as in real life is the not knowing.
I think this is something we have to step away from – or I do, anyway. I don’t think a HEA ending makes something an unintelligent read. But I do feel, strongly, that different people go looking for different things when they read. And they read for different purposes. I’m coming to understand that many people simply don’t want to have to revisit the ambiguities of real life in their fiction.
Have you had a look at Lynne Pearce’s recent article in JPRS 2.1? If you haven’t, I think it might be of interest to you because she’s also trying to understand why particular types of ending recur.
There are also a couple of essays by romance authors which I think might useful to you (again, I don’t know if you’ve seen them already):
“Popular Fiction: Why We Read It, Why We Write It” by Elizabeth Lowell.
“ACTS OF FAITH: Writing romances as an act of courage” by Barbara Samuel.
And last (and least), here’s a blog post in which I offered some thoughts about the endings of romance novels.
ooooh, thank you for all this. I had already read the Elizabeth Lowell one before, but the rest are new to me!
I read the Pearce, and it’s interesting. Not exactly my topic, but she does, very quickly, discuss happy endings. I realize that Freud and Lacan are pretty much the only tools she’s got in the arsenal, but you know… I have such a hard time with this psychoanalytical theoretical approach: I find it’s origins so deeply dubious. So essentially dismissing of female mind. How can a whole tradition of psychoanalysis that has evolved using the male psyche as a central model and only adding variations for the female have any legitimacy? I realize this makes me a crank, but so be it. Oooh, this deserves a post!
I also read your post, and I think you do hit on a very interesting point – that there are really various forms of romance and they are functioning in very different ways. I’m not so interested in what the HEA means WITHIN the story as what it means outside it. Because it is always there, and taken as a given by everyone, is it also having an influence outside the story?
And would you consider being one of my conversation subjects in my project? Huh?
“I think you do hit on a very interesting point – that there are really various forms of romance and they are functioning in very different ways”
Yes, I don’t think it would be possible to come up with one single theory of the HEA which would explain all of them. I suspect there are various explanations, some of which overlap.
One factor, which was partially raised by Gillian Colbert, is national differences. Although the HEA became the standard at the UK’s Mills & Boon long before Woodiwiss et al started writing “romance,” the HEA as a requirement can perhaps currently be considered a particularly US feature of popular romantic fiction. This makes me think that publishers may well have had marketing reasons for promoting the HEA requirement, and those might differ according to the markets they were aiming for i.e. in the UK, having an HEA meant that M&B created a particular niche for itself, whereas in the US, the HEA has become much more widespread.
That’s not to say that all romantic fiction in the US has to end with an HEA, because obviously it doesn’t (the successes of Love Story, The Bridges of Madison County, Brokeback Mountain and various novels by Nicholas Sparks are proof of that) but all the same, there is a marked difference between this statement from the UK’s Romantic Novelists’ Association about what they were writing and the definition provided by the Romance Writers of America.
“would you consider being one of my conversation subjects in my project?”
Yes, if that would be helpful to you. I do have somewhat different perspectives on this, depending on whether I think about the topic as an academic or as a reader.
You bring up the issue of publishers and the marketplace and it is an enormous one. A place I really fear to go because a) business bores the shit out of me, and b) commodification turns my stomach and yet of course, I know, romance is huge business and I suspect the standard of a HEA ending in no small part a commercial decision – especially in the US.
It is very interesting that all the novels you name (except for Nicholas Sparks with whom I’m unfamiliar) are considered rather more ‘literary’ as opposed to romance.
Oooh, thank you so much for this wonderful comparative link. So great. I’ll be popping you an email.
Hi I’m sorry if I intimated that HEAs couldn’t be intelligent, Hah the ambiguities of the e~mail. Just wanted to add at the moment I’m reading ‘The Waiting Room’ and feel strongly connected to both Sophie and Alex which something that hasn’t happened in a long time, for me.
Don’t be sorry. Quite honestly, I’ve done it myself until someone actually made me stop and think about it. This doesn’t mean that stories where I know there will be a HEA before I begin to read it will tempt me, they don’t. I want an author to go wherever they have to go in order to make for a compelling and realistic story. But then I’m looking for something very different in my reading experience. I do actively seek out work that causes me discomfort and leaves me with ambiguous feelings. On a very basic, emotional level, I don’t enjoy escapism because I find it doesn’t turn me on – either sexually or mentally.
Re: The Waiting Room. eeek… well, okay, I’m glad you expressed your dislike for HEAs. Hehe. because it doesn’t have one.
Hi I think you’ve hit the nail on the head for me because I haven’t always felt like this about HEAs. In the past nearly everything I read had a HEA, which begs the question did something happen in my personal life to change that? or was it just the ‘type’ of books I was reading?
Earlier somone suggested a tie-in between HEA and fairy tales; someone else suggested childhood brain development facts – an thesis that melds these arguments (and one that would be relatively easy to link) seems like it would work – unless the person reading it is biased toward putting on airs and/or has rigid psychiatric/intellectual leanings (that is, they’re based on the one or both of those sectors).
As much as I dislike HEAs, I’ll write HEA endings (if that’s what the publisher wants), as writers are entertainers, as well as voices of their time (whether they intend to be or not)- though I prefer my HEAs to be along the lines of the film “Say Anything” (1986, where it’s more subtle/inherent in characters’ actions, like when John Cusack’s character touches his girlfriend’s hand when she’s scared) – for me that bespeaks long-term/real love, romance AND realism.
What is your gut telling you? It sounds like you’ve already found your answer in what DOESN’T work for you – e.g., avoiding the excessive aridity of academic thought, etc. Go with what your head and gut agree on, and don’t overthink it (an easy trap for many of us) – to summarize – KISS (Keep It Simple Silly).
I like the brain development-fairytale idea, but you’d really need to have some robust background in early childhood development to go there.