Siren song

"Contemporary women novelists, aware of the effect of fictions (both literary and cultural) on themselves and their readers, also write cautionary tales, but they subvert the marriage plot.  Their characters leave marriages, or refuse them altogether, they have affairs and do not drown themselves or turn on the gas, they seek identity in work, their friends, and themselves rather primarily in men."

--- Nancy A. Walker, Feminist Alternatives, Irony and Fantasy in the Contemporary Novel by Women.

Writers can choose to avoid the "feminine ending."  But that is easier said than done.  It's hard to ignore the siren song of culturally ingrained myth.  I want the girl to fall in love at the end of the movie.  I yearn for it.  At the same time, I know there's got to be something else.