Marriage

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Many books and stories end with a marriage.  It's an appropriate and satisfying ending to a certain kind of story.  But this tradition may have contributed to the romanticized view many young people have of marriage -- as a solution, rather than a whole new set of problems.  When I got married, a friend said to me, "Being married is the hardest thing I've ever done, except having kids."  That was something I really needed to hear.  Marriage can be a wonderful thing, but it's not neat and simple and easy.  It involves remaking decisions and commitments every day.
So...why am I delivering this little sermon?  Because King of Attolia begins with a marriage.  It portrays a loving relationship in which many problems remain, in which the balance of power is always an issue -- in which there is always the possibility that love may not be enough.  There are not a lot of YA books that have dared to go down this road.  Off the top of my head I can think of...none.  You?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem is that it's not a YA subject. Aside from the fact that many kids (boys especially) around the ages of 11-14, say, will put a book right back down that says it's about the early days of a marriage, how truthfully can a writer deal with the issues?

I've noticed over years of reading that sequels that deal with heroes and heroines after marriage tend to fade them way into the background, or deal with issues obliquely. (Or they write adult novels, where they aren't constrained by quite so many expectations.)

It could be that, as older YA expectations evolve, this question might be explored more--I know of one writer who has stories on specifically this topic, but has not known where to market them, and thus hasn't.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

ooops. by "they" in the second graph I meant the authors.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

I've sometimes felt that authors who let their married heroes and heroines fade into the background do so because they don't want to destroy the "happily ever after" myth by introducing marital conflict -- and without conflict, who wants to read about them?

[(Anonymous)]

I think Leo Tolstoy said something about every happy family was happy in the same way, but every unhappy family was unique. And those were the interesting stories he wanted to explore. I also think I remember that Tolstoy was happily married to one woman for most of his life. But apparently he didn't think it would make a good "story".

I agree that marriage isn't what the YA demographic wants to read about. That might be true of the larger reading public too. Romance is thrilling to live through and to read. Stories about daily life tend to be dull, stories about the unhappiness and disappointments of life may be interesting studies for very talented authors, but they tend to be dark, hard reads.

-ELM-

[fabricalchemist.livejournal.com]

You bring up an excellent point! Castle in the Air counts =) But I agree with sartorias; it's not really what the target demographic is looking for. *I* certainly don't want to read a book about married life.

And I had always thought that the marriage was at the end of stories because all the plot conflict was out of the way, allowing the hero and heroine to focus on their relationship; to have the "luxury" of everyday concerns.

However, I hate when the hero and heroine hook up in the story for no real good reason. Like "we're the main characters! Let's stop bickering and totally get married!" *eyeroll*

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Another reason YA books don't deal much with marriage is because of the age of the characters. Most children and teens like to read books about characters who are their age and deal with similar coming-of-age issues. The crossover books, like LotR, might contain characters of various ages. But you seldom read a book that is YA with an adult main character. In fact, I can't think of any.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

It depends on how you define adult. Quite a lot of YA novels, of the fantasy or historical variety, have main characters who are teenagers by age, but fulfil adult roles in the society that they live in. If the main character is 17, but lives in a world where a 17 year old is seen as fully adult, are they an adult character?

There are quite a few contemporary YA novels with main characters aged 18 - 21-ish - i.e. technically an adult (if you take 18 as the age of majority, which it is here in the UK, at least), even if they haven't yet got "grown-up" things like mortgages, marriages, and debts and things. It's the aspirational thing: 8 year olds often like to read about 10 year olds, 12 year olds often like to read about 14 year olds etc. 15 year olds often like to read about independent 18 year olds living a glamorous life free from the confines of home.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Oh, believe me, I know all about the "rules" for YA fiction. That's exactly my point. It's yet another instance of MWT very happily, brilliantly, and wonderfully breaking the rules.

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

I have found bookstores to have each of the three books in a different area of the children's section (Barnes & Noble comes to mind, but I've seen it in others as well) - Thief for the younger readers, Queen for young teens. KoA ... I'm not sure, because I rarely see it in a bookstore. Borders lumps them all together in what I think of as the Middle School section.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

There will be mild spoilers in this comment for several series.

There are certainly YA stories in which the hero and heroine get married at the end of an earlier book, and appear as a married couple in the background of a later book, when the main focus has shifted to a new generation. e.g. Abhorsen by Garth Nix. Then there's The Harsh Cry of the Heron by Lian Hearn - set 16 years after the original Tales of the Otori series, and including the new generation, but still with the main focus on the now-married young lovers from the first books. And there's Castle in the Air, as someone else mentioned.

The Cup of the World, by John Dickinson - a book hardly anyone else seems to have read - has the heroine get married early on. Then it gets... interesting.

Plus there are books originally written for adults, which now seem to be pushed for younger readers. I read The Scarlet Pimpernel (adult main characters, and married) at 11, since it was housed in the children's section.)

Fantasy and historical novel offers more scope for it, since it fits far more easily into those worlds to have a main character, aged 16 or so, getting married, but still being a teenager. However, I'm sure I've read contemporary novels (probably of the teenage pregnancy/issue book type) in which teenagers get married and try to make a go of it, but I can't remember the titles. I've also read contemporary YA novels in which the problems of an older siblings' marriage feature in the plot.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Curses! And I meant to mention The Grand Tour and The Mislaid Magician, by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer - both sequels to Sorcery and Cecelia. The Grand Tour is very much about the early few months of marriage - the immediate sequel to a "and they got married and lived happily ever after." In the second book (which I've not read yet) the heroines have children, but all the books are still marketed a YA, and published by a children's publisher.

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

Mr and Mrs BoJo Jones, Mrs. Mike, These Happy, Golden Years and The First Four Years ... these are all from quite a while ago though.

I loved Mrs. Mike.

I have Cup of the World, and its sequel, but haven't read them yet.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

I think I compared Gen to the Scarlet Pimpernel here once. Thanks, that's a good comparison of a marriage where there are still a lot of secrets.
I think of "Abhorsen" and "castle in the Air" as going into that category where the married couple are featured in a supporting role, as "happily married," without their marriage dynamics being much of an issue.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

I was also thinking of The Cup of the World - which I agree hardly anyone seems to have read! I felt at the time that the YA publishing was a bit odd, as its rather bleak take on going on living after life has got 'interesting' seemed rather older than teen mindset. (Fantastic book though!)

Ditto on the contemporary (non-fantasy) books - as well as a few mentioned below, there were (showing my age here!) the Beany Malone books, which went on into a few characters' marriages. They were definitely not seen as merely 'happily ever after'. I devoured those as a teen, even as I was vaguely horrified at the huge problems my favourite characters had. Oh, and this side of the pond: The Flambards trilogy (second and third have Christina married and then widowed) and its highly controversial sequel, Flambards Divided. I think Peyton followed married characters in other books as well, though I haven't read them.

Castle in the Air, of course! I read my daughter Dark Lord when she was younger, but the marriage-in-trouble strand of that bothered her a lot more than many more disturbing ones did.

[keestone.livejournal.com]

Patricia Wrede is one YA writer who has definitely gone down that road. The Enchanted Forest series bucks fairy tale convention wonderfully. The heroine refuses the typical fairy tale plot but does end up marrying in the second book and basically goes on a quest while pregnant during the third book. The fourth book is from her son's point of view, but she's still very present as a character.

There's also Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia, which is an interesting case. It was originally published as a regular adult Fantasy book. It went out of print for several years. When it finally got reprinted it was marketed as YA. The authors then published two sequels (also YA), following the characters' adventures after their marriages.

Like MWT, Wrede and Stevermer don't treat marriage as the be all and end all of the story, but as part of the lives of interesting characters. They make it very clear that characters who have a romanticized idea that catching a prince or making a good marriage is the one thing they should try for are silly or witless. The main characters are sensible and self-sufficient and they fall in love while having adventures or solving things. After they're married, they continue to have adventures and solve things, though some of the problems needing solving change. Threats to the marriages mostly come from the outside. The happy families aren't all the same, because they're doing things.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to read Wrede but haven't yet. I'll move that up on the list!

[tiloo.livejournal.com]

Has anyone read Pirates? I have forgoten the authors name I never finished it, but it is about a girl who ends up being sold to a man who owns a sugar plantation I think (I read it a long time ago) but she loved someone else and so I guess that is another thing about the difficulties because back then it was rare (espcially if you were a woman) that you would make your own desisions, and so there would be the dificulty that they had in marriage. But I am sort of confused so I will shut my mouth

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

I started it but put it down, because the author kept dropping all these hints about how dark the story was going to be. Was it by Celia Rees?

[kilerkki.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about YA books--but I fell in love with the Vorkosigan series, by Lois McMaster Bujold, when I was 15 or so. The first book I read of the series actually involved two married characters, one of whom is pregnant for a good part of the book and vitally concerned with the welfare of her family for the entire thing. Bujold mentioned that the trials of parenthood were the themes that she really wanted to focus on for Shards of Honor and Barrayar, and even as a teenager I thought she did a brilliant job.

Of course, that may be because she never set me up with the idea that things would end happily ever after. MWT didn't, either. That may be why I love them so much. I'm still scared for their characters!

[keestone.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Bujold verbalizes the wrongness of the fact that girls are in many ways taught that life ends with marriage in one of her books . . . I think it might be something Ekaterin says in A Civil Campaign?

Have you read The Sharing Knife: Beguilement yet? I can't wait for the second volume of the book.

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

I believe Amelia Atwater-Rhodes took this on with her sequel to ...eh. The shape-changer stories.

Orson Scott Card's Bean stories go on after marriage, one that wasn't pat, for sure! I was surprised by the match, though it worked. That's always nice, being a bit surprised...
So sometimes sequels in series'. But I think it's just difficult. I read a blog a while ago discussing that when a story's mostly focused on the main characters' tension while defeating the Big Bad...sequels after marriage focusing back on those same tensions can be just not fun.

I'm working on two stories, or three, that have a wedding in the middle. For the sake of the stories, and this very reason, too.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Not the sequels to Hawksong.


I freaking loved Hawksong when I first read it, for many of the same reasons I loved QoA--I read them around the same time, and they're inextricably linked in my mind, and they're both really really good. I was so excited when I heard about the sequels, but they were just so...the first sequel was okay, except it seemed to assume you had a lot of information about the world of the book that I don't recall getting ANYWHERE. And when I picked up the third one and realized it was dealing with their daughter 18 years later, I just couldn't bring myself to read it.


This summer, I want to write a YA book that has, as its off-centered heart, a middle-aged romance story, also involving marriage. From a different point of view. I'm excited. ^_^

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

Looking at my bookshelf, I see the Star Wars novels, which aren't really YA but definitely deal with life after marriage; Han and Leia even separate at one point (though intergalactic warfare is a bit of a stress on a family). Then there's the later L. M. Montgomery books about Anne, which were written for YA (I think) when they were published.

On my shelf is also Orson Scott Card's Enchantment, which starts from the marriage and goes from there (into chickens, explosives, etc.), and not on my shelf is his other Bean quartet, in which two of the principal characters get married very young (16 and 18? and this is sci-fi) and subsequently have to make very mature decisions about their children and their life together.

But you're right, those are really the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Oh, and there was that dreadful Catherine Asaro Misted Cliffs thing. *shudder* I did not know what I was getting into when I picked that up. A LUNA imprint, typical arranged marriage and purple prose.

[idletalking.livejournal.com]

The first thing that came to my mind were the later Anne books (as well as some of Montgomery's other titles) which occur after she & Gilbert marry - but the focus moves to their children, and Anne sort of fades as a character. That always made me a little sad, even as a kid, to see her losing some of her spunk.

There's also Louisa May Alcott's books, but the same thing happens - once the characters marry, the focus moves to their children and the formerly 'wild' characters - like Jo - become more sedate and womanly.

Shannon Hale's series that starts with The Goose Girl has married characters in the later books, but because she shifts POV with each title, the married ones become the supporting characters and the issue of marriage isn't really dealt with.

[rowana.livejournal.com]

Great post Philia. Interesting points. I think everyone else has pretty much covered any YA books I can think of which cover life after marriage. I'm getting a vague idea of a Le Guin story which might touch on this, but can't remember which book it could be.

I do think that most of the books which deal with this tend to lean towards the adult section, rather than YA.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Well, there's Le Guin's terrifyingly adult Tehanu, which shows Tenar years after her marriage. Oh, and Le Guin revisits Earthsea's characters again in the not-terrifying but still less-than-child/teen-centric The Other Wind. That had so much to say about letting go of people, especially children, that it seemed more adult in theme. But I shudder when I see the trilogy plus Tehanu in one volume in the children's section of bookshops.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

Lenora Mattingly Weber's last Beany Malone book, COME BACK, WHEREVER YOU ARE, shows strains in Beany's marriage and also in her sister Mary Fred's. And the earlier books showed husband of the eldest sister, Elizabeth, returning from World War II missing a leg.

LITTLE WOMEN is another example. Meg and John Brooke have problems - her friends are rich, and she is poor; and also the famous disaster of his bringing company unexpectedly!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure if Patricia Wrede's fantasy novel (not sure if it is YA or not) Caught in Crystal could go on this list. The main character is widowed, with two young children, but her dead husband (and the early days of their marriage) figure in the book.

Also Haveli, by Suzanne Fisher Staples (sequel to Shabanu). The main character is married to a much older man and has a young daughter, and marriage certainly has not solved all her problems.

Oh, oh! Also Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers...

~Feir Dearig

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

What an interesting question, Philia. I'll be thinking of examples when I should be working today :)

The only additional book I can think of is another 19th century one, the last "Katy" book by Coolidge, In the high valley. In this book the main character witnesses Clover's marriage. Although it's presented in a fairly sentimental "isn't marriage wonderful because men get to have a home rather than a house" way, it's still an ongoing relationship after the happy ending of the previous book. Although, like other people have said about other books, I question if the Katy books are actually YA after the first two...

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

These last two remind me of the Elsie books, and then successive Jo stories. Jo doesn't fade too much, and I think the think (as mentioned) the Meg story is pretty priceless.

I really want to write a story with a young heroic couple for whom their new marriage is NOT a plot point. First of all, sustaining interest for young girls without a romance subplot? Wicked, wicked thought.

I'll save that for after I'm married, and a little wiser.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I really want to write a story with a young heroic couple for whom their new marriage is NOT a plot point.

As in, they're already married? Or they're just not going to get married at all?

First of all, sustaining interest for young girls without a romance subplot?

are you kidding? If you're dealing with newlyweds, you've got plenty of romance, and angst! They fight over stupid things, and then have wild smex to make up for it. But then agian, if you're trying to keep it from being a plot point...hm...

Not YA, but..

[(Anonymous)]

I could only think of one YA.

I haven't read all of Tamora Pierce's books, but her Trickster series is a sequel to the Alanna quadrilogy and gives insight into Alanna's marriage, I think, although most of it is about the daughter. (I've only read the first Trickster book).


These are not YA, but they do involve life after marriage.

JD Robb's Death series has continued many books after the two main characters have married. I haven't read many beyond the marriage (can't keep up!) but I hear they're good.

Joanne Bertin's sequel to The Last Dragonlord discusses problems after the marriage. First book was much better than the second IMO. She had a child in 2004 so the third book in the series is languishing.

Patricia Briggs (one of my FAVORITE authors!!)- Raven's Shadow, where the hero & heroine meet, marry, and then fight evil after they've had 3 kids. You see snippets of the difficulties in their marriage, which is refreshing. The sequel, Raven's Strike, has two romances, a continuation of the one between the married couple and one an unusual one between their son and a mystery woman.

Theresa Edgerton - Queen's Necklace. I didn't find this at all satisfactory from a romantic POV. The husband is a philanderer because he and his wife misunderstand each other. Supposedly by the end of the book, after a lot of swashes are buckled, they find out they truly lurve each other. I wasn't convinced.

Steve Miller & Sharon Lee's Liad books follows numerous couples post-marriage. From what I remember they're all HEA and there weren't a whole lot of "typical marriage" problems. The couples are too busy fighting the bad guys.

Re: Not YA, but..

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

hello, anonymouse! In the future, could you come up with some sort of name, or signature, so that we might identify you in the future? We just want to be able to give credit where credit is due.

*makes a note of all the books listed*

Marriage continued

[hershey-fan.livejournal.com]

Up until now I haven't wanted to read novels with married heros/heroines. It seemed as if the main event had already occurred and everything else was just icing - like an epilogue. It's due to MWT's writing that I find this topic at all interesting...compelling actually.
I started by reading KoA and it drew me in so convincingly that I had to read the other books afterwards. I enjoy the complexity of the characters and following character development as it occurs throughout the books. KoA seems to hinge on Gen and Attolia's relationship as other characters speculate and struggle to understand them and their marriage and how it in turn affects the kingdom. Here, the events after marriage are not icing, but the real adventure. Seeing the very real portrayal of how marriage changes people and brings out things in them one has never before seen, completely sold me on KoA. I look forward to the next installment.
I continue to be unconvinced about other author's writings on this subject, but intend to look up a number of the authors mentioned in the posts. Perhaps I'll be convinced yet. For now, cheers to Megan.

Re: Marriage continued

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Do you think part of the difference here, and thus your interest in these married heros, is that Gen and Attolia's marriage is more like a courtship? They've hardly had time to get to know one another and we were completely in the dark at the beginning of KoA as to the innerworkings of their relationship. Other than believing, at the end of QoA, that they loved one another, we had no idea what would happen, or how they would ever become comfortable as a couple.

It's also a more complicated relationship than most, I think, and the romance is very different from what's in other YA fantasy books.