The Storyrain Blog

In much of story, it’s generally depicted as sad when a female-identifying character does not find love, isn’t it? The narrative of romance with coupling up as the happy, proper, or otherwise desired ending is so ubiquitous and deeply entrenched in our psyches, so inevitably necessary to happiness and fulfillment in story, from novel to film to television series, that it’s a bit of work to see it otherwise.

Yet in the real world, I know a fair number of women, including myself, who live on their own, with community, friends, family, loved ones, but no romantic or even intimately platonic partner. We are what was once called spinsters—many of us by some combination of choices that were more or less conscious. It can be hard at times, as such a woman, not to see myself as sad or pathetic or failed—my culture and all the others around me tell me so through story over and over again. I am not that, however, and neither are many of the single, older women I know. We are beings living in the world, who find fulfillment and depth and meaning in life in no greater or lesser amount than our romantically hooked-up brethren.

So, if representation matters, where are the single, spinster, bachelor, disabled, ace, or aro women/other-identifying protagonists with happy endings? I suppose there’s Miss Marple. A few other female detectives of elder states-people status. This allowance probably owes more to the serial reset and repeat nature of the mystery genre and the demands and expectations it sets for the detective figure than anything else.

We’re woefully underrepresented. Some of us are fascinating people; some are heroic; some inspiring. We deserve stories that see and celebrate us. The romance of the self in community with the wide world and the other beings in it, two-legged or otherwise, is not just for male-identifying figures, but also for female, nonbinary, and otherwise identifying ones.

I am happy to celebrate your romances, matchups, the love stories between two people, in real life and in story, but would you please consider celebrating some other forms of romance, other kinds of life paths, without seeing them as sad or unfulfilled?