Wanting Happy Endings
This month my reading has led me to think about happy endings. After a friend lost her husband, it was years before she could read anything that did not conclude with a straight up happily ever after. At the time I thought she was being a little extreme, but now I find myself fatigued by deep, dark tales that end in the same gloomy place they begin. I want the generosity of a happy ending. That means books for young readers, romance, and some of the classics.
I blame the ancient Greeks, who divided their drama primarily into comedy and tragedy. Aristotle preferred tragedy, which he believed purified us through providing catharsis. Shakespeare expanded the categories, but most of his plays were either comedies (which give us lots of marriages) or tragedies (which give us lots of deaths). Centuries later we still tend to discount stories with conclusions that bring a smile to our face — fairy tales, fit for the simple-minded or emotionally needy.
But Jane Eyre ends well, as does David Copperfield. Jane Austen does give us weddings, but not necessarily happily-ever-after couples. Charlotte’s Web does not end when Charlotte dies — it reaches forward into a happy autumn, with both Wilbur and Fern making new friends.
I have spent the last couple of months reading Megan Whalen Turner’s The Queen’s Thief, a series for young readers that happens to have no children in it. One review of the last book was titled Trusting in Return of the Thief and The Audacity of a Happy Ending, and I had my doubts such an ending could work. The hero, Eugenides, is no monster, but he can be extremely tiresome. I was not sure there were enough earrings in the world to the placate the gods and men and women of that world. But Turner pulled it off, ending with pure joy. When I finished the final page, I felt cathar-ted, no matter what Aristotle says.
I also felt that way when my husband and I finished reading the 1818 version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with a 
reading guide by Karen Swallow Prior. The story begins with high hopes — “You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.” — but it does not end there. Things get worse and worse and more foreboding and more evil. At least, that’s how I have always read the ending.
Prior’s final question for Volume III caused me to reconsider:
32. What is the significance of the last words and last scene of the novel belonging to the creature?
My husband, who was reading the book for the first time, thought the significance is that, as far as pop culture is concerned, we only remember the monster. We even conflate his name with that of his creator, Victor Frankenstein. I do think there is something happy about the story ending with the creature riding his ice-raft, “lost in darkness and distance.” With his last words, the monster says he is going to harm himself, yet we do not see that promise actually come to pass. Victor, the drama-mama, is forgotten by everyone but English majors, but the creature lives on … in Abbott and Costello, in Saturday Night Live, and in too many parodies to mention. I’d love to know what Mary Shelley would think of her monster putting on the Ritz.
I do love dark tales. I love conflict between characters and plots like messy balls of knotted yarn. But as I get older and find reality to be less and less encouraging, I am embracing the hope of a happy ending wherever I can find it. Even if I have to stretch.
As I have returned to Shelly’s blood-chilling masterpiece, so I am already returning to spend more time with Turner’s Odysseus-like hero. In an interview with Vox, she said, “I much prefer that we just have our horrible thing, and the whole rest of the book is recovery. And so although [book 2] starts in a very dark place, the whole rest of the book, things get better and better and better. That’s the kind of story arc I like.”
For me, at least for now, that arc is the best kind of catharsis.
June’s Pages
Poetry
Habitation of Wonder, by Abigail Carroll
The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom, by Margarita Engle (middle grade poetry)
Song of the Water Boatman & Other Pond Poems, by Joyce Sidman, illus. Beckie Prange
Red Sings from Treetops: a year in color, by Joyce Sidman, illus. Pamela Zagarenski (children’s poetry)
Picture Books and Early Readers
Into the Forest, by Anthony Browne
The Artist Who Loved Cats: The Inspiring Tale of Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen, by Susan S. Bernardo, illus. Courtnay Fletcher
Frog and Toad Are Friends; Frog and Toad Together; Frog and Toad All Year; Days with Frog and Toad, by Arnold Lobel (Join us for a series-themed Children’s Book Club next Friday, July 9!)
Middle Grade and YA
Ash, by Malinda Lo (a retelling of Cinderella)
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, by Laura Amy Schlitz, illus. Robert Byrd
Return of the Thief (book 6), by Megan Whalen Turner
Grownups
Nightfall, by Issac Asimov (short story)
Hiroshima, by John Hersey (31,000-word essay in The New Yorker, August 23, 1946)
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, introduction and reading guide by Karen Swallow Prior
Grammar for a Full Life, by Lawrence Weinstein (TSP book club!)
Made Progress
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (reread for a book club)
For Discussion
1. Do you have a preference for a type of ending? Has your answer ever changed?
2. What is a story that struck you differently after a reread?
3. Share your June pages. Sliced, started, and abandoned are all fair game.
Photo by Andrew E. Larsen, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.
Browse more Reading Generously
- Perspective: The Two, The Only: Calvin and Hobbes - December 16, 2022
- Children’s Book Club: A Very Haunted Christmas - December 9, 2022
- By Heart: ‘The night is darkening round me’ by Emily Brontë - December 2, 2022
L.L. Barkat says
I tend to prefer an ending with hope, even if that ending is sad. (There’s a difference between fatalism and tragedy; I prefer tragedy, which has some kind of hope, albeit sometimes hard to discern.)
Frog and Toad are my all-time favorite kids books. I remember reading “Ice Cream” to my kids and we were laughing so hard we practically fell off our chairs. (The rereading wasn’t as funny, but that first reading… I don’t know. We were in fits! 🙂 )
I love that you and your husband are reading together. Such tender hope in that, too.
Megan Willome says
Yes, there is something to be said for the tragic yet hopeful ending. I think “Kristin Lavransdatter” falls into this category because she atones for the blood on her hands in that last chapter. The final scene, with the sun on the snow, speaks of hope.
I am happy to be belatedly inducted into the Frog and Toad fan club.
Reading together is a new thing (other than audio on road trips). It started with Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep,” which is one of our favorite movies, but I can now say the book is better because it gets the ending right! It’s not happy-happy, but it’s the happiness of the mystery being solved and the first three scenes being mirrored in the last three scenes.
Glynn says
I like happy endings, or at least endings that have satisfying resolutions.
My 12th grade English teacher told our class that we needed to read “Don Quixote” by Cervantes three times in our lives — when we were young, middle-aged, and old. I’ve read it twice – once at 17, and the second time at 40 (since I’m not old yet, the third reading awaits). My understanding of the book and its central character changed through the two readings. At 17, I thought Don Quixote was a romantic idealist. At 40, I thought he was something of an idiot.
The teacher’s advice, of course, was more about how we change than how Don Quixote changes.
June reading:
Mystery
Tamarack County by William Kent Krueger
A Fatal Mistake by Faith Martin
Dead of Night by Stephen Puleston
Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson
Fiction
12 Days Under the Mistletoe by Stacey Weeks
The Pieta in Ordinary Time: Stories by William Cook
The Banished Heart by Bibi Astaire
Poetry
Pale Colors in a Tall Field by Carl Phillips
The Commonwealth by Dan Rattelle
Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay
Shakespeare Project
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Cymbeline
King Lear
Non-fiction
Between Two Millstones, Book 2 by Aleksandr Solhenitsyn
Megan Willome says
Glynn, you will be happy to know I am reading “Don Quixote” right now, but it’s a long-read project, so I haven’t mentioned it on the list. This is my second time–first in high school, in Spanish. Now, at age 50, I do not think he is an idiot. I also see more than the idealism. Still forming my thoughts as I read, but he seems to be in that tradition of writing straight with crooked lines.
Bethany R. says
“But Turner pulled it off, ending with pure joy. When I finished the final page, I felt cathar-ted, no matter what Aristotle says.” Thanks for this, Megan, now I would like to check out the Queen’s Thief series.
After being oversaturated in tragedy some years back, I began gravitating toward comedy. It can open a door in my stale room of ruminations to a passage I didn’t even know was there. Something leading out toward fresh air — a maneuver I consider high art.
Megan Willome says
Bethany, I think you’re onto something. Comedy–in all its forms–is often not given the respect it deserves. It does lead us out into the fresh air.
For example, yesterday, someone texted me a line from the movie “What About Bob?” Instantly, I had permission to take a vacation … “from my problems!” The shared joke did me more good than a fellow ruminator.
I have absolutely loved the Queen’s Thief series. It’s fantasy, but without magic and with brilliant mythology. The poems in “Thick As Thieves” are straight outta Gilgamesh.
Bethany R. says
I have also enjoyed a shared, cathartic laugh with my husband over that line. Comedy is such a gift. Generosity indeed.