'and they lived happily ever after..' I would like to hear a bit more about this part of the story, don't you?

Question

How comes that all love stories are about 2 people who can't be together and when they finally beat all the odds and end up hitched, we get the final line that sums it all : 'And they lived happily ever after...' but we don't know anything about their so called happiness which is really what we would like to hear about, no? Is it not interesting after all? is happiness a boring subject that noone wants to know the sequal of the story? what happens then? hu? well it happens that yes indeed it is boring and noone has dared writing about it. They end up like any normal couple, the passion in gone, they cheat on each other, they argue, they throw stuff, they stink, they swear, they are normal again and that is what happiness is all about. ... and they lived happily ever after.

Answer 1

What if Snow White ended up as a housebound crazy? Or if Prince Charming had a drinking problem and beat Cinderella? We just don't want to know these things, so "happily ever after" glosses over all those possibilities, and makes everything nice and simple and drama free. It gives a sense of peace..... I kinda pulled this answer out of my butt, but whatever, it works for me. :)

Answer 2

Hello,
Perhaps we might try by analogy to determine why, once the obstacles have been overcome and the protagonists united, the story simply ends with what is now a considered by many to be little more than a pose on the part of the author.

In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy rather presciently stated: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. In a novel, rather breathtakingly long by today's standards, he then commences to tell the tale of extremely complicated passions. That's the point of the quotation I have provided above: an individual's passions, when obstructed, provide the context, the characters, and the plot for telling the story. When the conflicts have played themselves out for better or worse, we arrive at the end of the story.

In the case of "they lived happily ever after" the conflicts have been overcome and we have reached the end of the story. If we were to modify that closing statement in any other way, we would embed within it a continuation of the drama.

Answer 3

If that is web page between the unconventional, i does no longer difficulty too a lot about what Persi calls "assistance promote off". lots of effective writers get the nature accepted on the starting up this way. even if, you may want to not tell each thing suddenly (appears like i'm contradicting myself, eh?) yet depart sufficient for later so the reader can get to understand all about him progressively. You prose has a good voice. in the journey that your variety continues to be arising, through the time you end it should be distinct. if so, you need to objective banging out the completed novel with out nit-figuring out on the modifying alongside the way, and sparkling it up later once you've settled into an proper narrative voice. average, that is truly functional.

Answer 4

You have just given another twist to the ending:- "They lived happily ever after" without any passion, they cheated on each other, they argued, they threw stuff at each other, and they both stunk, and swore a lot!!
Not a very good ending for a story really is it?
How about :- "They lived happily ever after in their little country cottage , they took frequent walks together along the river bank, always holding hands, they were deeply in love ! They watched the Kingfisher hovering along side the river and marvelled at it's beauty! They both lived to a ripe old age and always loved each other dearly, they eventually died within a few days of each other and never regretted a moment af their time on earth together"
Hows that??
I never had the French down to ending a story in your fashion!
If it's complete BS you are after, I have just given it to you!
"Always look on the bright side of life" I think it was Monty Python that said that!

Answer 5

Call me a romantic, but I still hope for a 'happily ever after' in the fairytale sense. Maybe I'll have one, maybe I won't, but the magic of fairytales is that they always end happily - if they were to finish in more realistic ways, I'd feel cheated because I could watch Eastenders or listen to the neighbours having a barney and get all that depressing stuff! It's nice to live on a fluffy cloud sometimes!

Answer 6

It would be an interesting end to a story if you wrote:

"And the Princess married the Prince and the passion was gone, they cheated on each other, they argued, they threw stuff, they stank, they swore, and, in fact, they became normal again."

I wonder how many kids would just shut their eyes and go to sleep, huh? No, you would be besieged with things like "Mummy, why does Daddy drink?" or "Daddy, that nice man who comes while you are at work tells us MUCH nicer stories!"

Answer 7

if you dont like happy endings how about reading horror or perhaps a thriller with a twisted bitter ending that will wake you in the middle of the night with a cold sweat instead of childrens storys writen with a happy ending for the sole perpose of leaving them with a smile when you say goodnight.but your right of course there is no happy ending even if there on happy pills for the rest of there life someone or something will spoil moments of there existance and time catches up with u in the end so at least u can have that at the end of every story as a balance of horror

Answer 8

To keep happily ever after behind the curtains allows us to keep searching for a happily ever-after ending.

Answer 9

After a very hard and tough Life
"they lived happily"

Answer 10

This bugs me too. They should make a 'three years after' part of the story to see how they ended up!