Last week I blogged about tear-jerkers and bittersweet endings. This week I want to talk about Happily Ever After. I love HEA myself—if I didn’t I’d be writing in the wrong genre! I find it interesting that people criticize romance endings as unrealistic.
I know some people who bash romance endings haven’t read the books and seem to think they’re all a romp in a flowery meadow or something. They don’t realize that in a good romance the hero and heroine deal with the “bitter” in the course of the story. They earn the “sweet” at the end.
It’s also a bit like what Paul Gardner said about painting: “A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.” Romance novels end at a happy spot.
I figure the hero and heroine will likely face some more rough patches, though nothing as bad as the author has already put them through. I doubt anyone wants to imagine one of them dying of cancer a year after the story ends. (At least I hope no one wishes that on my characters!) But they still have life to deal with and that means problems. The thing is they’ll face them together. Is that so unrealistic?
Romance readers don’t always agree on what constitutes a happy ending either.
Often the HEA involves a huge brood of children, angelically cute and well-behaved. In a Regency this would certainly be historically accurate as many though not all couples did have large families. (One can also imagine servants handling many of the messier parts of parenting.)
Even contemporary romances frequently include children in the HEA. Jennifer Crusie’s BET ME generated a lot of discussion because the couple in that story chose to have a dog instead. I liked that, as a change, but more because I felt that was what was right for those characters. I also read a lot of reader comments to the effect that it was a more romantic ending because children ruin everything.
OK, they often do! Babies certainly have some sort of sixth sense for detecting when parents are trying to make love, even a few rooms away. Maybe it’s a survival mechanism to ensure there aren’t younger siblings too soon! And all too often “normal” family life is a façade of happiness with a lot of repressed tension. There are certainly bratty kids around, the result of people who didn’t really want them in the first place, maybe.
But functional family life shouldn’t be an unrealistic goal. We aren’t perfect, but my husband and I try to keep it fun and not let things fester. Our kids are pretty fun to be around, at least 80% of the time. I can certainly think of adults with a far worse fun-to-be-around ratio!
Of course real life HEA with children is hard work. Exhaustion battles lust at times. You call a dozen sitters just to set up one night out. Maybe not everyone’s idea of HEA. Sometimes it’s not mine either! Sometimes I yearn for the life Crusie gives the BET ME characters. But that book works for me also because of the realistic characters, the heroine who predicts she’s going to put on weight in middle age, the hero who finds her sexy anyway, the way they nurture his nephew.
Which sorts of HEA do you like? Fairytale? Do you prefer to see her as always slim and him with all his hair, (no matter how much he’s raked his fingers through it, as romance heroes are wont to do)? 🙂 Or more realistic? Are there some HEA elements that you find too perfect to enjoy? Or are there elements of reality that spoil the romance for you?
Do you ever try to imagine characters’ lives after The End?
Elena
www.elenagreene.com
P.S. Image is an illustration by Eleanor Vere Boyle, from Beauty and the Beast: An Old Tale New-Told. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1875.
I confess the ones where there’s a brood of *perfect* children (at the end, or anywhere else) tend to be a bit too much for me. 🙂
I do like happy endings in a romance… I don’t necessarily demand that everything in the book end happily, but I want to believe that the relationship will work, and will not deteriorate in ten or twenty years to the couple hating each other.
And I like HEA in other books, too, though it’s not an invariable requirement. However, I want it, say 99.7 % of the time. 🙂
Cara
I loved Bet Me because I finally saw an HEA that was something I would want! It was so refreshing to see a childfree couple, rather than the usual childless one. I don’t demand that all romances reflect my lifestyle choices, but it’s nice to find one every once in a while that does. LOL!
I think variety is great for me. Becuase real life is like that, just as children or no children is true to life. Any works for me, long as its fiting to the character and story line. I’ll enjoy both. Fairytale is realistic at times, there are slender curved women and people with thick hair so its not unreal to me and unheard of. Just an everyday sighting ;)I like happy endings, but what I read doesnt always have to go over board, and act like bad things wont come again. But happy endings to me means love survives in whatever bad will come again..and that the couple stays togather through it all. 🙂
Great post by the way 🙂
Robert
Endings where the H/H end up each other’s best friends are very satisying to me. Very sexy best friends. 🙂
Although there are exceptions, in general I don’t find pregnant heroines or children in the mix appealing. But in historicals it can be difficult to avoid the natural outcome of sex. The stakes were high and unavoidable, which adds tension -and sometimes another wee character- to the story.
In my “real life” having and raising babies has been an incredible experience, but I would never describe it as romantic!
I like HEA endings. It feels complete. Life is full of the other kind of endings. LOL!
I just read a book that was listed as a romance and it did not have a HEA. I was disappointed.
Give me a happy ending. I think whether or not it includes children depends on the story and the characters. As to being realistic, reality can be highly overrated, and sometimes it’s terribly ugly. I’m not reading to get reality; I live reality. I’m reading to escape, to be able to laugh and cry and hope and dream and not have to worry about how my decisions will affect myself or someone else. Bring on the HEA where everything works out all right, unless it’s leading into another story. It’s always so much fun to see secondary characters be given their own tales of HEA.
I like happy endings. Tragedy can be stirring, but I prefer it in limited doses. 🙂
I must say, though, that I find the charge that romance endings are unrealistic a bit bewildering. Sure, most people’s lives aren’t fairy tales, but lots of people end up in good, happy marriages with people they love. There are ups and downs, but hopefully more ups than downs, and definitely more than living without love.
I seem to recall that Jennifer Crusie (she does seem to be coming up a lot recently, doesn’t she?) has talked about how refreshing it was to read romances after studying literature, where it often seemed that any woman guilty of enjoying sex had to be hit by a train. If we’re talking realism, lots of people have sex, but only relatively few are hit by trains. 🙂
Todd-who-has-never-been-hit-by-a-train-even-once
Cara, I realize on rereading that it looked like I meant a bevy of perfect children was historically accurate. Yikes! I only meant the “bevy” part. The Georgians were relatively permissive with their children as opposed to the Victorians who ushered in the whole “seen and not heard” thing. So I suspect Regency children (like now) could have been pleasant or bratty depending on their upbringing.
Kalen, I get the feeling some people want to read stories that reinforce their lifestyle choices. I’ll read either way although my own stories will often reflect my own life–I can’t help that! Though I’m more than happy with my choices I can vicariously revisit the DINK lifestyle through books like BET ME. That couple has more going for them than just that, though. They’re good at their jobs, good to their friends and family. That’s something I want from any romance couple. They don’t have to have kids but I do want their life to be more than hedonism. Of course a touch of hedonism is very nice too. 🙂
Glad you enjoyed the post, Robert! I was a bit rushed writing it (post holiday weekend) and feared it was a tad incoherent.
Jane, I love what you said about h/h becoming best friends as well as lovers. That’s romance. 🙂
Melinda Jane, that’s surprising that you found a book listed as romance without a HEA. Although the word used to mean something else, I pretty much thought that was an industry definition by now. My husband has even caught on. He hates when a movie is called a romance and someone dies. 🙂
Judy, I agree that a bit of escapsim never hurt anyone. I’m also glad you like HEA for secondary characters because they so often ask for their own stories.
Thanks for sharing that Jenny Crusie quote, Todd!
Elena
Cara, I realize on rereading that it looked like I meant a bevy of perfect children was historically accurate.
No, no, I didn’t think you meant that! 🙂 I was just talking about what sort of endings work for me.
I’m not the biggest fan of romances with kids in them anywhere (says I, who, come to think of it, wrote one), but if the kids are there, I want them to be realistic. Not uber sassy, preternaturally witty kids, nor perfect little angels. I think epilogue kids have a scary tendency to be angels…
(BTW, if there are prologues and epilogues, and prefaces, are there any postfaces???) (I bet Todd would know. He’s scary that way.)
Cara
Give me the happy ending! Last thing I want to do is to care about these characters only to find out they die in the end (Hear THAT, Shakespeare??).
I remember reading a literary book years ago where from the beginning to the end of the book the main characters NEVER CHANGED. The heroine just devasted a bunch of lives and wound up exactly the same as she’d been on page one. I’ll bet the author thought that a very telling statement on LIFE but it sent me running back to Romance.
I have no patience with Love Stories (often written by men-Shakespeare et al) where somebody dies in the end!!! I don’t read to be made sad. I don’t read to appreciate the seamier side of life or the desolation of life. I read to escape to another place and another time.
I also love to have my hero and heroine’s love culminating in the birth of a baby. That’s my fantasy of a happily ever after. If I were writing contemporaries I might make a different choice because readers do choose different life styles in today’s world. I’d probably not address the issue of children at all.
But in historicals, I want to believe that the love these people I created extends thoughout TIME into our present day. That means creating babies.
Just don’t make me think of my hero and heroine and their offspring becoming Victorians (shudder!)
Diane
Cara wrote:
BTW, if there are prologues and epilogues, and prefaces, are there any postfaces???) (I bet Todd would know. He’s scary that way.)
I am indeed scary. One of my students emailed me only today to ask to see me because she was scared of the homework. I can scare students even remotely! (True story! 🙂
While it seems that there ought to be postfaces, the closest thing is generally called an “Afterword.” Though technically, that is parallel to the “Foreword,” which is often distinct from the preface; I’ve read many books that had both a foreword and a preface.
Todd-who-is-starting-to-scare-himself
HEAs always work for me and that their lives continue happily after I finish the book. That’s why I am a big fan of the epilogue because it shows they have that baby or are surrounded by friends and family, perhaps for the wedding of those best friends someone mentioned earlier.
The Bet Me ending can only work successfully in a contemporary because it is more plausible that a couple would either choose to be childless or if they remain childless their lives are still complete and whole because they complete each other.
Oh, absoultely, give me that happy ending. 🙂 But sure, I like knowing a tiny bit of what happens after the last chapter — that’s why I like the idea of Julia Quinn’s 2nd epilogues. I just hope they hurry to a print anthology book soon. LOL 🙂
Lois
What I hate is the “9-months to the day of the wedding” their child is born. I don’t care to hear it. I don’t care what side of the blanket the babe is born on with all the premarital stuff that goes on these days. In a Regency, it’s hard to choose to remain childless, so I don’t expect that. I have read at least one modern romance where that is the case however. I like them- I am also childfree by choice.
I had to laugh about the 9 months babies, Georg! I actually am a honeymoon baby. 9 months spot-on. I was conceived on a mountaintop in the Rockies (my parents went camping for their honeymoon). But I do NOT feel that any of this must be replicated in fiction. 🙂
But, Diane, their children DID become Victorians! And in reality, what we think of as “Victorian” attitudes were well underway during the Regency period–Dr. Bowdler was alive and well eviscerating Shakespeare, for instance.
I like the sort of HEA where you have the sense of the h/h standing on the brink of a new part of their lives, and I don’t want it spelled out. I think the success of any fiction is that you have a sense of the ends–or as many ends a necessary–tied up (and possibly with you, the reader, knowing more than the characters do). But at the same time you know those characters are going off into the unknown. Rather like waving goodbye to someone leaving on a long train journey.
Janet
I love that idea of the h&h standing on the brink of the unknown, Janet.
I find myself always wanting to give them careers, kids, and a 401(K), just like I’d like to do for my son (not to speak of finding him a partner). But you’re right: if the author’s done her job, her beloved fictional children ought to be prepared for a new life where she doesn’t get any say in the matter. (Lessons for pushy Jewish mothers being entirely coincidental, of course.)