Happily Never After?
This semester, I plan to teach The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford. I came across this novel because of Audible’s algorithm. It traces through the women descendants of the first Chinese woman in America, Afong Moy. It classifies as historical fiction, but with a twist: specifically, one descendant is living with melancholia and general trauma which she attempts to cure through epigenetic experimentation or, experiencing the lives of her ancestors (with the aid of hallucinogenic medicine) to understand how to heal her trauma. The end wraps up the various stories in a more pleasant way, as close as to happily ever after as I’ve seen a Ford novel get. Quite frankly, a more unadulterated happy ending than most putative serious fiction allows.
When seeking auxiliary materials for my students, I was a little peeved to find that some reviewers called the ending pat or “too easy.” I found myself feeling rather defensive on Ford’s behalf. The reviewers were irritated that Ford had created alternative stories to the traumatic ones, and allowed those to be the possible do-overs of the ancestral traumas. They thought the happy endings were unrealistic.
Unrealistic.
That word always jars me when talking about fiction. The ancient prerogative of fiction is to make shit up. So, why not a happy ending?
Somehow, we have absorbed the idea that the happy ending is the stuff of fairy tales, the immature desire of a reader or viewer who is unseasoned enough believe in happiness or joy as a possible outcome. And, yet, as seasoned a reader as I am, I often find myself wanting an ending that gives some hope, some fraction of beauty. This readerly desire has increased more and more with the dramatic swings of geopolitical, economic, and socio-cultural news stories. I gravitate more toward comedy, romance – the so-called light fare of the literary world.
But, hope isn’t light. Not in a world where it is so costly.
To be fair, the happy ending in some novels is complex. Take a look at Zora Neale Hurston’s work. Janie and Phoeby, from Their Eyes Were Watching God, sit on the porch, laughing well into the night, knowing themselves and each other. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick, in the wake of Gatsby’s death, muses on an impossible hope, symbolized by that green light. Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred ends as it begins, but with more knowledge, more clarity, and assuredness about Dana’s place in the world. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple reunites Celie with her family.
For some writers, these examples are a more expansive definition of a happy ending. Honestly, the last two paragraphs of Fitzgerald’s book are the only reason I even like that novel. Some of these are deep ironies. Some of these difficult truths. Yet, each of them speaks to a hope both within the narrative of the text (for instance, that the events make space for joy in the characters’ worlds) and for the reader (correspondingly that our own life events can make joy for us).
Far from assuming the reader or the writer is out of touch with reality, the happy ending is a kindness. It opens up either the characters or the readers to a possibility that the hard-won joy is still possible. The quiet beauty of a heart at peace. The music of friends laughing together. The light stillness of profound knowing.
If what Emily Dickinson says is true, and hope is the thing with feathers, let it be a boa, draped elegantly, fluttering in the wake of an assertive wind.