Last year, along with crowning Pride and Prejudice one of the most favourite books ever, voters in a World Book Day poll also cited its final chapters as the classic happy ending. As the story closes, you may recall, the poor but witty Elizabeth Bennet falls for the reserved but redeemingly noble Mr Darcy, and the two are united in matrimony.
Pride and Prejudice isn't the only Jane Austen novel to end with a happy marriage. All six do, and readers tend, understandably, to see these endings as celebratory. After all, who doesn't love a romantic match? Yet, while studying Austen's oeuvre again for a book I was writing, something began to trouble me. Austen always gives her protagonists at least one opportunity to say no to marriage before they finally agree — highlighting the seriousness of the decision — and I found it more and more disconcerting that, when the lead character does take the plunge, her story suddenly ends. It dawned on me that this convention sends readers a dark subliminal message — that marriage equals "The End". Which raises the question "Just what, exactly, is it the end of?" Is it simply the end of the book, or could it signify the end of life worth reading or writing about?
It's not just Austen who uses this narrative convention — the idea of marriage as an ending is littered throughout literature. Cinderella, the archetype on which these models are based, is given no sequel: we are simply told that she and her prince live happily ever after, which is a little ominous. (The idea of anything staying the same for ever — even happiness — sounds like the definition of pure boredom.)
This plot device has been around for aeons, of course, and doesn't seem to have deterred Austen's contemporaries from marriage (although it's notable that Austen herself never married). Until the recent past though, most women's only hope of even minimal power or prosperity rested on getting wed, so it was an obvious, and usually a necessary, step. But as I re-read Austen, I noticed how this convention intersects with the view of marriage that my friends and I have acquired.
Traditionally, it is men who have been seen as commitment-shy, but increasingly women are the ones who seem wary of settling down. I've experienced this personally — my last two serious boyfriends made it quite clear early on that they were looking for a wife, which sent me into a panic. My friends and I all entertain loose intentions of marrying one day but the majority of us are afraid of what it will mean for our much-valued and hard-won freedom. Over the past decades, as women have won increasing economic and personal freedom, marriage has fallen sharply. There are a number of different reasons for the declining marriage rates, but the messages that are constantly sent to women in the guise of so-called "romantic fiction" surely aren't helping. When you consider the ubiquity of these messages it is not surprising that many of us have started seeing a wedding as something disturbing, terrifying, as the end of a lifelong quest for adventure, rather than any kind of start.
Of course it is notable that the conventions of the genre have undergone significant revisions. Couples still get together in modern romances but they are far less likely to get married at the end. These days we like to keep our options open; we like to delay "The End" of our adventures as long as possible. After all, from a certain angle, is not a happy ending something of an oxymoron?
The Guardian
