When I was a child, my Dad would read bedtime stories to me and my younger sister every night. He never chose traditional fairy tales, such as Cinderella or Snow White. Instead, he read stories from a 400-page hardback children’s book filled with nursery rhymes, poems, folk tales and longer-length stories, which still takes pride of place on his bookshelves more than 50 years later. Having been read to, and by, his children and grandchildren for more than five decades, the book is close to tatters, with a broken spine, sepia-toned pages and faded cover, but it is one of the most precious items in my parents’ home. The best-loved books, ironically, often look like they’re the least cared for. When eventually my parents are both gone, there’ll be no arguments among me and my siblings about money, property or jewellery, only about who gets to keep this book.

One of my favourite stories from it was Kiki Dances, the tale of an imaginative young girl who loved to pretend, dressing up as a cowboy one day, a magician the next and a ballerina the following; another was The Circus Baby, the story of a mother elephant who tried to behave like the circus people, before realising that she didn’t need to be anything other than who she was. Sometimes, my Dad would make up his own stories about two little girls called Marie and Barbara (me and my sister). We loved being the protagonists in his stories and always became excited about what adventures we might get up to. On occasions, we would make our own suggestions to further the narrative.

There were no handsome princes in any of our bedtime stories and no damsels in distress. I imagine this is the norm for children today, with such terrific bedtime reads as Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls available, but in the seventies, it wasn’t so. What strikes me now in middle age is that despite this, the women I grew up reading about from the earliest age all had agency. They didn’t play supporting roles nor did they spend their time daydreaming of love, marriage and a baby in a carriage. They were active, they were doers, they created their own happy endings. Nobody swooped in and saved the day. I don’t think this was a conscious decision on my Dad’s part, but he was a voracious reader and always liked to find new and different books, for both himself and us. In fact, I grew up in quite a traditional household; my Dad went to work, earned money and managed the finances, while my mother stayed at home, cooked, cleaned and looked after the children. But I don’t think either they or we ever thought this had anything to do with their genders, only their personalities.

We know that as children our imaginations are developed in part by the stories we are told. We begin to imagine ourselves within the narratives that are described to us. Cinderella and Snow White spend most of their time indoors cooking and cleaning for others. Their only way out of this deeply unsatisfying existence is at the hands of a prince charming.

If that’s the only tale a young girl is ever told, how is she to know that girls can be CEOs or scientists, mathematicians or mechanics?

Why would she think she can do rather than just be? Research reinforces this, showing that children often internalise the cultural and gender roles of characters in their bedtime stories. American scholar Karen Wohlwend discovered that very young girls influenced by Disney stories were more likely to become damsels in distress during playtime. I do recall owning a copy of Cinderella when I was little, but the only thing that stuck in my mind about this fairy tale was the heroine’s dress; a moonlight coloured gown with capped sleeves, a sweetheart neckline and a full skirt - my love of clothes began early on.

Is it a reach to suggest that these early bedtime stories are the reason I’m happily single at 45? Maybe, but I always had a sense that my own happy ending would be a different one. I recall at a very young age telling my Dad that I might want a baby someday but I definitely didn’t want a husband. Given we lived in good Catholic Ireland in the 1970s, my Dad dutifully and gently informed me that I couldn’t have one without the other. I have dreamt only once of walking down the aisle, as a teenager, but the refrain in my head was panic-stricken, “I don’t want to do this!” on repeat and eventually I woke up, relieved, from what was actually a nightmare.

If Say Yes to the Dress is any indicator, a lot of women still want to be princesses. The “happy ever after” narrative is a seductive one (it’s been sanctioned by generations after all), and I did spend a lot of time in my twenties and early thirties watching my peers celebrate engagements, weddings and christenings, wondering what it would be like to experience a milestone that appeared to make others as happy as it made you; so much so that if you’d told me at 25 that I’d be single at 45, I would have been devastated.

There’s safety in numbers, after all. But did I think that I knew better than these amazing women I had worked with and hung out with through the years and who were excited about marriage and babies? Of course not, but I did know what was better for me. You see, the traditional happy ending is a one-size-fits-all scenario and infers that women are cardboard cut-outs of each other; generic females with the exact same needs and desires, likes and dislikes. And this is where pursuing one prescribed happy ending can result in a sorrowful start to the rest of your life. One size of anything will never fit all because women are intricate, complicated and rich individuals. And anyway, princesses don’t always have shiny hair and princes are not always charming (just look at Andrew…). And which one of us wants to be limited to a single outcome? Having options is everything.

Irish writer Deirdre Sullivan, the author of Tangleweed and Brine, a retelling of traditional fairy tales, put it beautifully when she said,

“There are so many shapes to happy endings; all a happy ending requires is that it makes you happy in the end.”

That’s You, not your friend, sister, mother or aunt; not society or the patriarchy - and not any matriarchy either. The real challenge is identifying what it is that makes you happy, and having the courage to go out and get it for yourself. Then understanding that when you do, it’s not the end but only the beginning of the story. As I approach my 46th birthday, I have ticked none of the boxes a woman my age might have expected to: husband, children, 3-bed semi, secure pensionable job, but I have rejoiced in many mini triumphs that have mattered to me. There have certainly been a lot of happy ending chapters in my life.

So the moral of this story? There’s nothing wrong with wanting a princess dress and a handsome husband or wife, but it’s okay to not want them either. Every one of us should strive for a happy ending because we deserve it, but just must make sure it’s your happy ending and not someone else’s.

Marie Kelly, June 2020.