What do we mean by ‘happy’?
It is perhaps the most famous first line of all — the one that begins Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
It’s a great opening gambit. Sucks you right in to the travails of the Oblonsky household, where the paterfamilias has been banished to his study because of his latest dalliance. The line has only one drawback: It isn’t true.
To begin with, I am not sure if there are happy or unhappy families. Happiness, it seems to me, is something one ascribes to individuals, not groups, even groups bound by ties of blood. To find an individual who is truly happy is rare enough. An entire family that is would seem a prodigy.
No, most families, composed as they are of persons, have — like the persons who compose them — good days and bad, and many other days in between. What Willa Cather says in her essay on Katherine Mansfield about “the many kinds of personal relations which exist in an everyday ‘happy family'” seems more to the point than Tolstoy’s glib pronouncement. “[E]very individual in that household (even the children),” Cather writes, “is clinging passionately to his individual soul, is in terror of losing it in the general family flavor … the mere struggle to have anything of one’s own, to be oneself at all, creates an element of strain which keeps everybody almost at breaking point.”
The question that needs to be asked, of course, is, “What do we mean by happy?” The word itself doesn’t tell us much. It descends from a Middle English word, hap, meaning luck. Luck can be either good or bad, but when we call someone lucky we have in mind the good kind. So happy can be taken to mean blessed with good fortune.
Only that isn’t usually what we mean when we say someone is happy. After all, there are people with every advantage who, if not downright miserable, we would never describe as happy, and others whose circumstances are far from ideal, perhaps even straitened, but who seem quite happy indeed.
In The Art of Happiness, John Cowper Powys proposes a definition of happiness that strikes me as about right: “that particular glow of well-being that arises when something deep in us is being satisfied and fulfilled.” That, however, is not something likely to be ascribed to an entire family.
Despite what Tolstoy says, the discontents that make for an unhappy family are depressingly the same: Dad cheats on Mom, who in turn drinks too much, while No.1 son is failing at school, and his little sister is hanging with a bad crowd, etc., etc. (In the suburban narrative that dominates America’s so-called literary fiction, of course, there simply are no happy families: However fortunate they may be in terms of health, wealth, looks, whatever, their lives are empty of everything but some nameless anxiety, which of course ends up driving Dad to cheat on Mom, who then turns to drink — you get the picture.)
Nevertheless, though it may not be that “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” the particulars of misery almost always make for high drama and low comedy, and those particulars are common enough, Lord knows, to make their depiction recognizable to all. Such is not the case with happiness. A successful portrayal of genuine goodness or felicity is as difficult as it is rare. Worse, while rogues and misfortune are no impediment to a willing suspension of disbelief, when it comes to goodness and felicity, we recoil in skepticism.
We may speak fondly of “the pursuit of happiness,” but the fact is, we’re not quite sure what it is we’re pursuing, or how exactly to pursue it. Powys, in fact, thinks there is a kind of happiness-taboo at work:
There does seem to be a wide-spread notion … that although in reality all these great “purposes” of life, God, Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Work, are precious to us because they alone, in the long run, bring us happiness, we can only obtain this happiness, or create this happiness, by treating these things as ends in themselves and by letting the happiness they bring, their by-product, come and go as it will.
So the point of his book — long out of print but easily available from used-book sellers online — is that we defy this taboo and set about doing whatever we have to in order to be as happy as we can within the limits of our circumstances. A good first step is to confront our discontents more directly than we are apt to.
Many years ago I found myself in a relationship that presented regular opportunities for outbursts of rage. I routinely availed myself of those opportunities until, one day, I just happened to notice that there wasn’t anything pleasant about rage. Quite the contrary. It was awful. So I paused to consider why I was letting myself feel so bad and quickly realized that my anger had its source in a toxic combination of injury and impotence: I felt hurt and there really wasn’t anything I could do about it. The rage was simply fuming over what I would do if there were anything I could do.
The moment I realized how much my rage was an exercise in futility, it stopped, and I was left just feeling hurt and sorry for myself. I next decided that the only honest thing to do was go with it and feel hurt. And you know what? You can’t keep that up too long. You just stop feeling it, the way you get used to a strong odor.
Ever since, I have rarely been moved to anger. I have also found this works for other strong emotions. Feeling depressed? Then go with it, be as depressed as you can. You may just find you can’t keep it up over the long haul. (Obviously, I am not talking about the clinical variety of depression — I am much too shallow a person to be subject to that.)
Anyway, this causes me to wonder if perhaps some enterprising young novelist might want to try his hand at depicting a character who doesn’t succumb to that legendary suburban disenchantment, but strives to overcome it and, by God, succeeds! Would anybody publish such a book? And what would the reviewers say?
That’s What He Said appears every Tuesday.
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Interesting that you suggest a novel portraying happiness. If I recall correctly, Michel Faber said he intended to work on one, since it was a sadly neglected – though much more difficult – condition to portray. I believe he intends to use some elements of fantasy to do so. And ever since reading what he had to say – he’s very happy in his marriage, apparently – I too have been wondering how I could take up such an challenge.
Conflict and pain are so much more dramatic!
Hrm. I wonder if DFW would still be among us if he’d undertaken such a project? He ought to have been happy; perhaps, if he’d discovered the guilt over feeling blessed, acknowledging it, might have lead him to inking that nebulous novel, the one he couldn’t quite conceive? Even a genius has good days, after all.
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http://booksinq.blogspot.com
Hm-m… Conflict and pain are not just more dramatic. They are necessary elements of a story. They can be overcome or succumbed to, but they have to be there. We feel happy when we are not facing adversity, when there’s no dark cloud over our head to cause anxiety – there’s no story, in the Western sense of storytelling, without adversity to overcome or foreboding to threaten the existing happiness. I’ve heard there are stories and sagas in cultures whose ethos is not rooted in guilt, like the Judeo-Christian civilization (maybe India?), but I’ve never read them. They may never have been translated in Western languages — and I’m not entirely sure I’d want to read a book about somebody being happy. Perhaps a poem. A short one. Like this one, written by a Facebook friend back in high school:
ODE TO SPRING
by Doug Reed
Boing!
And, Frank, thank you for this: “the suburban narrative that dominates America’s so-called literary fiction.” I’m so tired of suburban angst. Move to the city already!
Oh, I don’t think you can have happiness if you’ve never experienced conflict or pain, Olga. That’s innocence, not happiness. My point is simply that not everyone is defeated in life – which is the “message” of those suburban angst novels we both have had enough of. Some people meet challenges, come through, and achieve contentment, fulfillment – and something deep down in their being is satisfied. That happens. Somebody should write about it. Notice, though, how we all assume that conflict and pain are more dramatic, as Lee says. But do we know for sure. Imagine the genuine hero confronting conflict and pain. Perhaps he defeats it because he is not awed by it.
I should add that Judith knows, from our correspondence, that I am relentlessly upbeat guy.
I’m not sure I’m understanding you here, Frank, but it seems to me that, Tolstoy aside (and don’t even get me started about him), there are novels that end with a hero beating the odds and establishing a new, contented and tranquil balance. Unfortunately, happy endings have been trivialized by chick lit and really, really bad thrillers, but, while every story needs conflict, not every story is a tragedy. (Although, it seems, in contemporary publishing it’s sufficient to have the hero defeated by adversity to label a novel “literary.”)
Am I missing your point? I have a feeling I might be. Who is awed by conflict and pain except the whiny suburban brats?
No, I think you got my point, Olga. I think I was a bit unclear at the end. Your point that the happy ending has been trivialized is very good. It has, but that doesn’t mean a really good writer could not revive it.
But to clarify my point: The “we” I meant was all of us. And it comes from a misunderstanding about tragedy that has been with us since Elizabethan times. Taking their cue from Aristotle and Seneca, tragedy for them meant the fall from grace of a great but flawed hero. But Aristotle was wrong about tragedy. To understand Greek tragedy you have to remember that they were all trilogies – like the Oresteia. They end with a resolution of the conflict. The Oresteia ends with the Furies being transformed into the Happy Ones. The Oedipus trilogy ends with Oedipus being taken away by the gods in the grove at Colonus. What I am suggesting is that the contrived unhappy ending is as much a cliche as the contrived happy one. And that great art avoids cheap contrivances and depicts life as it actually is lived, which as often as not is characterized by the surmounting difficulties.
“What I am suggesting is that the contrived unhappy ending is as much a cliche as the contrived happy one. And that great art avoids cheap contrivances and depicts life as it actually is lived, which as often as not is characterized by the surmounting difficulties.”
This may explain why my favorite outcome is “bittersweet.” It’s the only kind that ever rings true to me. I wracked my brains trying to think of one happy ending in a Graham Greene novel (Graham Greene is easy to use for examples because he was so prolific), and couldn’t think of any besides Travels with My Aunt — and it’s sweet, but ultimately, not satisfying because it’s out of character and therefore dishonest. Neither is A Burned-Out Case, because the hero’s death is unnecessary and overwrought. My favorites are The Quiet American, The Human Factor, and maybe The Comedians. They don’t end happily, but they do end with the protagonist becoming a slightly better man than he started out. That’s enough for me.
Difficulties are often surmounted and goals achieved, in novels; I think what makes a difference is whether the author is honest about light and darkness always being present simultaneously. There’s always a little loss/defeat in any victory, or a little salvation/hope in any loss – those are my favorite endings.
Writing about happiness does not necessarily mean writing a happy ending. In any case, I view our default human state as problem-solving, with its relationship to happiness worth exploring.
I was being a bit tongue in cheek regarding conflict and pain.
Frank, I would strongly strongly disagree with you that families cannot be happy. We have four kids and through their connections I would say I do know, and well, happy families. Indeed, we have been told often that we are one. It takes strong parenting to set the tone of course.
As to the mindset that there are not any, I suspect that you have a little hangover/takeaway from the postmodern navel gazing literature — whether suburban or not (indeed I dropped the NYT when it became pretty clear that was all it had become.)
According to that post modern “gestalt” of course all is bittersweet and indefinite.
I prefer the Jewish philosophy (even though a Christian) myself — we are going to suffer, unfairly at times — so we might as well live with it. Attitude and faith in God then takes you forever to happiness, even with the multiple drag of family!
Hi Joe:
I would be the last to suggest that there are not families in which the members get along with each, cooperate with each, take joy in each other and with each other, face challenges in solidarity with each other and so on. I just don’t think the term “happy” applies to groups. That would mean that each member of a household (confining “family” to just that) was having something deep within satisfied and fulfilled – and by virtue of membership in the family. Would the “happy” family suddenly be unhappy if one member of it became unhappy? A sane and healthy family would sympathize and try to help the unhappy member and be no less sane and healthy. I really don’t think we disagree all that much. My point has to do with a word and what it means and what it can be said reasonably to apply to.
Remember, in saying that I don’t think “happy” applies to families, I am also saying that “unhappy” doesn’t, either.
Frank, you should know, between here and Books, Inc., that you give me a tremendous antidote to many illnesses to which I fall prey: especially when I reference too much Drudge or other news/opinion sites.
You make me happy: “that particular glow of well-being that arises when something deep in us is being satisfied and fulfilled” because you provide me with satisfaction that God, Culture and a Deeper Meaning exists — and is good.
Groups like families provide that too — and to each member as you point out.
As most religions would have it, a catalyst is necessary to be happy — we can’t provide it by ourselves. So using your acceptable definition of happiness, certainly groups provide their members with “things” that make them happy.
I guess my point is that if “happiness” is defined as an individual emotion, it couldn’t be a group emotion. Yet group emotions do exist and ocassionally so strongly as to be tangible. The Phils 5th game WS win, which a friend was kind enough to bring me to, occurred before a happy group. On the flip side, I have given presentations before groups where the “group” was clearly disinclined to believe me from the beginning — and they got worse. They weren’t happy and I felt it — from the group.
Finally, it seems to me that any communication, as you note, has the potential to redound to happiness or not — and if that turns on cognitive manipulation — such as realizing your reaction and changing it so that you experience deep satisfaction from the original encounter or the subsequent cognitive manipulation, maybe everything is ambiguous after all…
Hi Joe,
You raise an interesting point. I experience something of the sense of deep-down satisfaction and fulfillment at morning Mass, and no doubt this derives at least in part from a sense of community (communion?). I think we can both agree that Tolstoy is wrong. If families can be said to be happy, then it is happy families that would be happy in their own way, matching the individual fulfillment of the members, whereas, as I pointed out, dysfunctional families are depressingly alike.
Who gets to proclaim a family happy? In my experience, people often think a family is happy because the family is trained to keep their dirty linen strictly in-house. Sometimes it’s the parents who claim their family is happy. Sometimes all it takes for a parent to think his/her family happy is to ignore their children’s individual unhappiness — and people have been known to be zealously invested in deluding themselves into thinking their family happy, no matter the cost of the delusion. Sometimes less powerful family members (and there’s always an imbalance of power) suffer from a form of Stockholm syndrome and don’t even know they’re unhappy because their criteria had been forcibly warped by the more powerful members.
In other words: a happy family — from whose point of view and based on how much information?
But please consider me on board with the idea that Tolstoy was wrong — about many things.
Hi Olga,
Again, a good point – and sort of the point of what Willa Cather says. And yes, Tolstoy is a great novelist. Not so great a thinker. In fact, rather dim at times.