Can it still be an HEA if...?
The question about HEAs that still haunts me.
A few years ago, I was talking about romance and feminism with a group of local high school students for their after school club (led by XO Interviewee Sari Beth Rosenberg). They were a smart, lively and engaged bunch of students who had so many great questions, including one that totally stumped me: Does the couple have to get together? Can it be an HEA if the girl is happily alone?
I still remember standing there in front of her and the classroom with my brain short circuiting because I “knew” the “rules” of the romance genre: the couple always got together in the end. That was the thing that we all came to the genre for. I felt like an overbearing marriage-minded mama. “Of course they will wed! Or at least will become betrothed! At the very least we will understand that this couple will be together forever and ever amen.”
And yet I couldn’t bring myself to look this young woman in the eye and essentially say that she needed a partner to feel whole and loved and successful.
I might have garbled a reply about YA vs romance vs women’s fiction.
I might have rambled about how a great author can make you feel and believe anything.
It was not a good answer. I am still in search of one.
The happy ever after matters. This feel good feeling of everything being resolved and all the lovers being happy together is what we’re here for. It sends a message to the reader that whatever the couple did on the way to the HEA was worth it—the “rules” they broke, the expectations they dashed, the soul searching, the truth telling, the kissing—all of it was for the best.
But as the genre evolves, we start to talk about how babies are not necessary for an HEA. And in a lot of instances—like contemporary romance, new adult or queer historicals, marriage isn’t a requirement anymore either. What we’re left with is social acceptance, whether is in the form of the haute ton welcoming the couple into the fold, or family acceptance or found family. We need this sense of community and belonging.
But when you really think about it, the rules only say the ending must be emotionally satisfying and optimistic. They do not say anything about love, marriage and a baby carriage. This rule is according to Romance Writers of America, from the time when they spoke for many, many romance authors.
But no one is enforcing “The Rules” except for readers, who will either make your career by recommending books to their friends, leaving rave reviews and buying everything you publish. Readers with dashed expectations, however, can ruin you with one star reviews and bad word of mouth. Publishers are watching readers and keen to meet their expectations. Authors who want advances on their books from publishers write accordingly. All of which conspires to ensure that few stray into uncharted territory.
But maybe we need to explore uncharted territory?
I still don’t have a good answer for this girl. Only that I hope she finds the story she wants even if she has to write it herself and then I hope she finds many, many readers for it.
If you read a romance novel and the couple is happily, mutually, amicably not together at the end, what is your reaction? Is this an HEA?
Okay, I had to take a walk to parse out my thoughts on this, but here's what I ultimately came up with. My gut instinct said, "No, they can't be apart." And the reason I think that holds true is that in a genre romance the expectation is not *only* that the protagonist(s) have a happy ending. That's possible all sorts of ways (solve a crime, beat the bad guy, reconcile with family, make new friends, figure out what to do with your life). But in a romance the expectation is that the central *relationship* will have an HEA. This is why if I read a book and at the end I don't believe the relationship will last it has failed for me as a romance. I would argue that a wholly non-sexual, non-romantic enemies-to-friends story would fit the genre conventions of a romance better than a story of a romantic relationship that ends. Because it's the forming and building of a lasting relationship bond that is key to the story. I would like to see more asexuality and aromanticism entering the genre and pushing the boundaries in that respect. Obviously, I am only one reader, and different people take different things away from their reading. But when I am looking for a romance, I'm expecting the formation of a lasting relationship between the protagonists, and something that didn't meet that expectation would leave me feeling unfulfilled.
All this said, there absolutely can and should be books where romantic partners ending separately is the happy ending. As for how those books should be marketed, well, that opens up a whole boatload of worms about the publishing industry that I think are beyond the scope of this discussion.
I think a book can be romantic without being a romance, but if a book is categorized as a romance, then by nature of that romance being the A plot, the main couple (or throuple or poly grouping) not ending up together romantically isn't satisfying. It might be satisfying as a character arc (for both/the whole romantic unit, even!), it might be satisfying as a narrative, it might be thematically satisfying, but characters who spend a book falling in love not staying in love means that the romance plot wasn't satisfied. There's a lot of semantics here, obviously (what is "satisfying" and what are the parameters?) but I would say if you're writing a mystery book and you don't solve the mystery at the end, it's not really a mystery, it's whatever else the book was about with a mystery as an aspect of the narrative. Likely, the unsolved nature of the mystery is a metaphor for something- that doesn't make it a mystery novel, though. If you're writing a romance book where the romance isn't solidified by the end, it's not really a romance, it's whatever else the book was about with a romantic narrative device.
I can be intellectually happy that a couple/etc is happy if apart at the end of a book with a strong romantic subplot, but not narratively satisfied if my expectation of the book as a romance ends without the romance.
I wonder if finding happiness with other partners romantically would satisfy me, though, if we want to tease out the hypothetical. Like La La Land ish, where we spend most of the narrative watching two people fall in and out of love, and in the end they learn a lot from that love but those lessons are best applied to other partners, no bad blood. Would we consider THAT an HEA? I think most readers wouldn't, just from an expectation standpoint, but on a technicality I might say yes. As a thought experiment, yes. But in reality, I doubt it would fly.