The Happily Ever After Alternative

Time to refurbish the fantasy

By Maria Amir

“The wolf said, “You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone.” Red Riding Hood said, “I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop your own, entirely valid, worldview.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be on my way.”
~ James Finn Garner, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

Once upon a time in a land where people still read books and did not possess ready access to the internet, children were naïve and innocent. The children of this land grew up listening to bed-time stories about princesses, evil stepmothers, goblins and faraway kingdoms where good always triumphed over evil and princes always rode their women — only somewhat sexistly — off into the sunset.

Women were almost always rescued from the dastardly fates that only they were forced to endure, with a single, all-powerful true love’s kiss. Many of these children grew up to search for similar princes in their lives. But as time passed and grand kingdoms gave way to much more boring democracies, many found that princes were becoming a bit of a rarity, so they settled for doctors, lawyers and investment bankers.

Most of these children grew up to be little girls and some of them even grew further up to become women. Alas, most of the ones who grew up to be women, were severely disappointed by what their fairy tales had turned into. You see, ‘Handsome and Charming’ was somehow never handsome enough or charming enough and nobody warned these ‘women’ that HEA, was really just an acronym for Hyper Enchantment Aftermath. Some of these women took to admiring the wicked stepsisters and evil queens in the tales far more than the sweepresses of cinders and the beauties that slept. They grew up a little disappointed and a lot angry. This meant that the very few little boys who ever loved fairy tales and grew up into big boys and the even fewer ones who grew into men had to pay. And pay they did.

Once Upon a Time, the world was slightly less jaded and filled with atrocities that permeate childhood early, and fairy tales anchored children to innocence and positivity for much longer than they manage to today. The same stories also stunted little girls in ways that continue to spark feminist rage all over the world. One can easily agree that most notions of romance stem from fairy tales and that this is what makes them endure.

Today’s children tend to be slightly more skeptical of one dimensional narratives but this has not diminished the importance of fairy tales, if anything, the need for them seems to be increasing. The present narrative and the resurgence of a ‘Happily Ever after’ has re-emerged in a big way where the only twist seems to be that female protagonists in these narratives tend to be presented quite differently than they were previously. Characters like Rapunzel in Disney’s Tangled (2010)  are frequently depicted comfortably battling bandits and Tiana in Disney’s Princess and the Frog (2009) has the dubious, dual privilege of being the first black animated princess as well as an independent career woman struggling for her place in the world. The fact that both characters are victims of circumstance and eventually require a man to help them escape their problems is downplayed in these modern depictions, as opposed to Snow White and Cinderella (produced by the same studio) who were portrayed as one-dimensional as they are in writing. The interesting part is that fairy tales are not only being picked up by Disney, where the subject matter tends to be somewhat of an occupational hazard, but also by Hollywood. Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Huntsman and the ABC TV series Once Upon a Time are now attempting to refurbish the trend for adult audiences. One reason for branching out may involve society’s growing disillusionment with the status quo and that single women everywhere are ever hungrier for an happily-ever-after. However in order for these narratives to be palatable to adult audiences the protagonists need to be ‘feminized’ and so far the results in this department aren’t too promising.

Now this may be because it is nearly impossible to “feminize” characters that are trapped in inherently patriarchal narratives. In other words, it is hard to make Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or the Little Mermaid appear feminist, when the entire tale culminates with each needing to be rescued … and always by men. Mae West put this rather well — “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”

In her book Cinderella ate my daughter: Dispatches from the front lines of the new Girlie-Girl Culture, (Harper Collins, 2011), Peggy Orenstein describes in great detail how ‘princess culture’ has debilitated  previous generations and how far the trend has progressed today. The book depicts how legions of young girls are proving to be the perfect market subjects for an ‘Ever After’ ideology, all too conveniently packaged entirely in pink taffeta. The book, one that grew out of Orenstein’s 2006 article in The New York Times titled “What’s Wrong with Cinderella?”, goes on to explore how Disney’s princess franchise has been a key factor in the meteoric rise of little girl pageants across America and addresses questions of early sexualization and self-esteem of the tween generation.

Over the years, the very words ‘fairy tale’ have somehow become synonymous with romance, perfection and happy endings, completely side lining the much darker stories of the Ugly Duckling or the Snow Queen penned by Hans Christen Anderson. Fairy tales today mean princesses, they mean ball gowns and they mean tiaras… all eventually followed by a ring and a wedding. Note, that I use the term “wedding” and not “marriage” because these stories never traverse beyond happily-ever-afters and what actually happened later. They don’t need to. This trajectory forms the premise of nearly all Hollywood romantic comedies and today one doesn’t need to be a princess to find a fairy tale ending. The ‘fairy tale’ can be framed for single women, having “sex in the city”, working and paying their bills and battling street crime. All independent women in every aspect, save their overwhelming reliance on that ‘happily ever after’ crutch.

One might ask what is so bad about happy endings, considering nearly every person on the planet secretly or not-so-secretly longs for one? It’s the build-up and hype that are both troubling and misleading, such narratives presuppose that life ends in that ellipsis after “and they lived happily ever after…” and it doesn’t. If anything, reality begins after, which is why this account is so damning. It has damned generations and little girls who believe in princesses and fairy tales ought to be cautioned. Not for believing or hoping but for placing faith in the allegories of princesses and magic wands, because this prevents many from recognizing their very own fairy tales when they happen to arrive in a pair of jeans and a pick up truck. Fairy tales tend to set a premise of what one expects of men and of romance in one’s own life and people are almost always disappointed in the grandiosity of that expectation.

As for feminism, it is an absurd twist in tale-telling — that a damsel in distress be painted as a dominatrix (sic) simply because calling a spade a spade seems too itchy a subject. Fairy tales by their very construction sell make-believe and romance. Sadly, there really is no politically correct, feminist version of “old school” romance. Attempting a feminist fairy tale would either mean modernizing it and thereby losing the romance or gender neutralizing the content… and somehow a fairy tale about a business mogul who finds a suitable partner after having eliminated several candidates and deciding to move in together to test their compatibility as a couple before rushing into the business of commitment, just doesn’t have the same ring to it as a kiss complete with back lighting and an Elton John score. Fairy tale princesses  need to be rescued either from centuries of sleep or poisoned apples or trapped towers. The recreation of such narratives for modern generations is problematic because the lowest common denominator in such romances remains a ‘boy saves girl from–‘ equation. The check-list never changes: must find prince; must get kissed; must live in palace; must be ridden (sidesaddle, of course) off on preferably white horse; must have giant, floral fiasco of a wedding; must fade into the sunset, with the ‘And they lived Happily Ever After’ in italicized script as the picture fades to black.

Over the years it might have been prudent to at least include other fairy tale narratives such as The Ugly Duckling which tackles issues such as self-esteem, appearances and acceptance, and what many have assumed is a narrative regarding homosexuality, given that Hans Christen Anderson was by most accounts bisexual. Another one to take up instead of riding the princess train, would have been Snow Queen - which is about frozen emotion and cold, hard intellect without any harmonious link to the universe and everything in it. Or even The Little Mermaid, in its original narrative, where the mermaid dies. She dies for a man, so this certainly doesn’t make it any more feminist but she dies, so it isn’t by any stretch a happy ending and this might have kept all the “Once Upon a Times” and those who lived through them in check a little. Hans Christen Anderson didn’t really do happy endings in the same way as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. There aren’t really many Disney attempts at  Anderson’s tales and the one that remains, The Little Mermaid, only worked with a Brothers’ Grimm-esque ending.

There is a reason why Grimm versions sell, they sell because they perpetuate a potent brand of delusion and hope. Hope is great when it’s attainable but not so much when it either presumes or presupposes a distinct lack of individuality.  Eugene O’ Neil said “Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace”. And that is what fairy tales essentially do — they emphasize one story, one kind of happily ever after and they plant the seed that everyone should shoot for that pumpkin-turned carriage rather than defer to their own stories and make their own narratives.

And so,

Once Upon A Time, there lived a little girl in a big, empty, lonely, cruel house. All this girl had to escape shadows and monsters, were stories and she held them to her chest every night when she fell asleep. She played with the Lost Boys in Neverland and she sprinkled pixie dust in all the dark corners of her mind. She lived for a happy ending and a magic kiss. When she grew up, she was taken to a Kingdom far, far away where she met a Handsome, Charming prince who fell in love with her and gave her, her first toe-popping kiss in front of the sea, with her hero The Little Mermaid looking on. The prince bowed down and asked her to marry him and she said yes and her fairy tale wedding was a quiet room with happy people in every corner. She lived happily, until Ever After came, and she realized that the ‘after’ really meant putting aside the magic and living for each day. It meant marriage and marriage meant loving a person not a prince. She discovered that the magic and myths would be the downfall of Love, if they were allowed to take over and swallow the every days, the grocery lists and the long walks. She learned that holding hands was more passionate than kissing in the rain and bear hugs were more powerful than diamond rings. She realized that Happily Ever Afters never came with soft lighting and Elton John soundtracks. And that that was okay.

CS Lewis once said that ‘someday we would be old enough to believe in fairy tales again’ and I now know what he meant. For the present, I am content being just ‘Happy’, ‘Ever Afters’ are just way too much pressure.

This piece first appeared in our seventh issue, published in October 2012. The author is Features Editor for the magazine.