Opinion | Know your place: Emily Henry and the spheres of existence for female authors

There’s a certain level of performance required for being an English major. Whenever someone asks me what I like to read in my spare time, I tell them that I’m in my memoir era, mentioning Joan Didion and Michelle Zauner. Or, I say there’s not enough time for pleasure reading between all of my assigned readings, the highly intellectual likes of which currently include the “Harry Potter” series. 

In truth, sometimes I just don’t have the energy to defend the merits of my beloved — women’s fiction. My favorite reads are things that make me feel deeply. I want to root for characters, laugh with them and sob with them. I love women’s fiction and romantic comedies, and I wish it didn’t feel so taboo to admit that. 

Undeniably, Emily Henry — of “Beach Read,” “People We Meet on Vacation” and “Book Lovers” fame — reigns champion of this genre. Though “Beach Read” is my favorite book of all time and nothing will ever replace it as my favorite Henry read, her most recent novel, “Happy Place,” instantly earned a very special place in my heart after reading it this summer. I actually have a creeping suspicion that Henry may dwell in my subconscious for the way that she so intrinsically grasps at what I need to read without me even fully understanding it myself. “Happy Place” is heartbreaking, heart-wrenching and, like a cow with their many stomachs, makes you bloom an entirely new heart to store all the love you have for this story. 

Set on the coast of Maine during the peak of the summer leisure season, “Happy Place” is a commemoration of the love you make for yourself. A group of old friends — chosen family — gather for one last trip to toast off their beach house before it’s sold. What is meant to be a sentimental trip down memory lane is strained by the group’s golden couple who have broken off their engagement, vowing to tell no one. Rather than ruin this last trip, Harriet and Wyn fall back into old habits, feigning the love they once had for each other and questioning why they fell apart.

What follows are the typical hijinks you expect from the mind of Emily Henry — public nudity, grocery store competitions, a spontaneous elopement and, of course, a renewal in the belief that love can be found anywhere. However, this novel stands apart from Henry’s other works in that she also allows it to lean into its darker themes. Where “Beach Read” is meant to remind its audience that hope always exists within darkness, “Happy Place” demonstrates the stakes — and the consequences — of suppressing the less happy things we fear confronting. 

The plot of “Happy Place” certainly engages its readers, but the characters are why the novel stays with you long after it’s over — as is the pattern thematically across all of Henry’s books. “Happy Place” protagonist Harriet is a dutiful surgical resident reeling from her recent breakup, which reverberates into aspects of her life far wider than heartbreak. Harriet is real. She doesn’t make all the right choices that you want in an escapist read. She’s people-pleasing at her own expense, and we watch her stifle her needs out of fear of rocking the boat. It’s infuriating to watch, yet it’s the realistic nature of her self-sabotage that makes it impossible to look away.

I’ve been seeing negative reviews on social media about “Happy Place,” which is inevitable for any book. But, still, I was shocked. What’s interesting is that I see gripes being made with Henry’s work from both sides of the aisle. Some readers find too much reality in what they expect to be a lighthearted romantic beach read, and other readers find her perspective on life too hopeful, too feminine, to be realistic or taken seriously. 

This is a work of women’s fiction, but even if it weren’t, romance as a genre is allowed to be multifaceted. If they bothered to contemplate “Beach Read” protagonist January’s professional insecurities as a writer, they’d easily find a portrait of Henry herself. As the fictional author expresses in the novel, “If you swapped out all of my Jessicas for Johns, do you know what you’d get? Fiction. Just fiction. Ready and willing to be read by anyone, but somehow by being a woman that writes about women, I’ve eliminated half the Earth’s population from my potential readers, and you know what? I don’t feel ashamed of that. I feel pissed.”

It is not an author’s job to alter their creative outlet to satisfy the misogynistic cravings of people that are far too scared to actually write the book they want to see published. She is not a vessel for your projections, nor should female authors be corralled into these niches designated unsubstantial by bitter egotists. Your opinion doesn’t discredit her accomplishments in the way you think it does. It just makes you look like an ass.

A pinnacle truth of womanhood is wondering whether you are deserving of the space you occupy. Emily Henry is at the top of her professional game, and it makes me wonder — when will she be deemed worthy of playing?

Gabriela Herring is an English Writing major with minors in English Literature and Secondary Education. She mostly writes about things that her friends (and her mom) are tired of hearing her talk about. Write to her at gnh6@pitt.edu.