Middle-Class Values
In "Happy Endings," the so-called "happy" couples—whether it’s John and Mary, John and Madge, or Madge and Fred—embody middle-class ideals and reflect this social group. These couples are professionals with high incomes, making prudent investments that allow them to enjoy luxuries like enjoyable vacations and a secure retirement. Even when the stories take a problematic turn, the couples continue to display their middle-class values. For example, in version C, John's marital problems stem from his feeling that his life is too predictable and dull, leading him to seek excitement through an affair with a younger woman.
Although middle-class values are a recurring theme throughout the narrative, Atwood explicitly addresses them only in version F. She challenges readers by stating, “If you think this is all too bourgeois, make John a revolutionary and Mary a counterespionage spy and see how far that gets you.” She then adds, “Remember, this is Canada. You’ll still end up with A.” Through this, Atwood highlights the absurdity of romantic fiction.
Marriage and Romance
The narrative explores the idea of finding fulfillment through marriage. John and Mary are depicted as having a successful marriage characterized by financial success and a comfortable lifestyle. Interestingly, the term "happy" is absent from the description of this so-called "happy ending."
In alternate story versions, Atwood presents scenarios that do not immediately lead to marriage but eventually circle back to it. However, the union in version A is portrayed as uninspiring and dull; Atwood describes it as "unimaginative" and "vague." She emphasizes this mediocrity by repeatedly using words like "worthwhile," "challenging," and "stimulating." The marriages in other versions face more complex issues, ranging from mundane problems like infidelity to more dramatic events such as suicide and murder. Despite these challenges, each version ultimately leads at least one person in the troubled relationship to a stereotypical "happy ending" marriage.
Romance is another central theme in "Happy Endings." The various versions mimic the typical trajectory of clichéd romance novels, which often end with the hero and heroine living happily ever after. While version A diverges from romantic novels by not presenting the couple with obstacles to overcome, the other versions do. To emphasize this unstated connection, Atwood parodies well-known romantic novel plots that include elements of murder, suicide, infidelity, and illness.
Writing Conventions
The experimental nature of "Happy Endings" categorizes it as a work of postmodern literature. Atwood's story is self-aware, as she explicitly references past events and delves into the mechanics and elements of storytelling. This theme is a central focus of the narrative. Atwood explores how a writer constructs a story, both explicitly and implicitly. Every tale begins with an introduction. In "Happy Endings," this introduction is the encounter between John and Mary. The core of the narrative—the different scenarios presented—explores various possibilities for what could happen next. This is the plot, which Atwood describes as "a what and a what and a what." By doing this, she distills storytelling to its essence: a beginning followed by a sequence of events crafted by the author. However, Atwood doesn't suggest writing is simple, as she ends with a challenge: "Now try How and Why."
Atwood's narrative also encourages writers to create authentic stories. Although each version she offers ends with version A, Atwood implies that the real conclusion of any couple's story isn't the achievement of a stable, happy relationship, but rather their eventual demise. She asserts, "The only authentic ending is the one provided here," adding: "John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die."
The American Dream as Comedy and Tragedy
Aristotle's traditional definitions of comedy and tragedy suggest that the American...
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Dream is a comedy; it begins in disorder and ends in peace. In "Happy Endings," one of Atwood's aims is to underscore the unpredictability and possible tragedy that can undermine that ideal peaceful ending. The imagined, yet esteemed, rigidity of this framework often leads to its collapse. The American Dream remains merely a dream because, in truth, there is no clear-cut route to happiness. As Atwood has stated in various interviews, she perceives every story as a distinct situation, which is true in life as it should be in literature.
Happiness and Perception
In one of Margaret Atwood's highly acclaimed poetry collections, You Are Happy (1974), the closing section is titled "There Is Only One of Everything." The poem that shares the collection's name, "You Are Happy," may offer Atwood's perspective on the nature of happiness. In the poem, the narrator walks with a companion through the icy Canadian woods, where the cold is so intense that it dominates her awareness:
the images hitting into your eyes like needles, crystals, you are happy.
For Atwood, happiness appears to be a transient sensation linked to perception and sensory experience. It is not a permanent or rigid state.
Dynamics Between Women and Men
"Happy Endings" delves into various themes, such as the relationships between men and women, the contrast between youth and old age, the balance of wealth and happiness, the emptiness of vanity, and the severity of elitism. In the section titled "B," the story focuses on Mary, a middle-class working woman overwhelmed by jealousy. This leads her to overdose on sleeping pills and aspirin, which she washes down with half a bottle of sherry. Atwood illustrates this with the line, "You can see what kind of a woman she is by the fact that it's not even whiskey," using irony and satire to both appeal to and critique the smugness of some readers.
Escapism and Alternative Narratives
Although these themes have consistently been important to Atwood, in "Happy Endings," they are overshadowed by themes more directly related: the escapist nature of much popular fiction and the joy and potential found in alternatives like existentialism and experimentalism, which focus on life's processes rather than its conclusions. Atwood expresses,
the endings are the same. . . . Don't be fooled by any other endings; they're all fake, either deliberately fake, intended to deceive, or driven by excessive optimism if not outright sentimentality.
In essence, some escapist fiction is designed to mislead the public into accepting its overly optimistic portrayal of the world; other escapist fiction is simply misguided. As Wallace Stevens notes in his "Adagia" (included in Opus Posthumous, 1957), "Sentimentality is a failure of feeling."
The Journey and Existentialism
In the section called "Circe / Mud Poems" from You Are Happy, Circe tells Ulysses, "It's the story that counts . . . you leave in the story and the story is ruthless." This phrase encapsulates the timeless tragedy. Yet, there is another narrative focused on an unpredictable future. Circe remains unaware of this narrative "because it has never happened." It symbolizes a beginning rather than an end, anchored in potential events instead of predetermined ones; it represents a journey more than a completed tale. In "Happy Endings," Atwood observes, "Beginnings are always more fun." She adds, "True connoisseurs, however, are known to favour the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with." On this topic of the "stretch," Leonard Woolf once commented, "The journey not the arrival matters." He used this idea, capturing an existential viewpoint, as the title for his last autobiography, published in 1969.
Ethical Dimension of Aesthetics
In "Happy Endings," Atwood primarily explores the ethical aspects of aesthetics, focusing on how escapism can negatively affect readers' minds. When people accept and idolize a certain image or narrative, they become dominated and give up the power that comes with freedom. Thus, Atwood's tale subtly warns against uncritically accepting, or at the very least, encourages awareness of, the restrictive nature of most fiction. Rather than getting lost in predictable endings, readers should be mindful of the structures imposed throughout the narrative—the plots, which Atwood refers to as "just one thing after another: a what and a what and a what." She encourages readers to "try How and Why."
