Happily Ever After?: How Loving Ends

Henry Green’s odd and wonderful novel Loving (1945) ends with the familiar phrase ‘‘happily ever after,’’ but there have long been conflicting views about how these words should best be understood. The article adds a new reading that – by closely analysing the ways Green’s careful, almost microscopic textual innovations invite and defer closure – reveals fuller ironic possibilities than have hitherto been seen. Deploying concepts derived from the criticism of Theodor Adorno to examine the significance of Green’s mode of ending in its broader cultural context, the article suggests that the ambiguous close of Loving exemplifies late modernist literary and social attitudes. These are interestingly different from high modernist and postmodernist mores and modes of leaving off. Finally, the article explores the larger implications of Green’s ending for our sense of what an ending is, in literature and in life.