Teen Female Sexuality in Seventeenth Summer and Forever

Introduction: Two Novels, One Framework

"Sybil Davidson," begins Judy Blume's classic novel of teen sexuality Forever, "has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys." (Blume 9) The implications are obvious: Sybil is equally brilliant and beautiful, sexually precocious yet mature in mind as well as in body and bodily experience — at least according to the teenage rumor mill. Regardless, this assertion shows how in Blume's world, the antiquated associations of brains with chastity, and of sexual openness with being a loose or bad girl, are being challenged in a confronting fashion by narrator Catherine's less experienced yet still authoritative voice. The narrator seems to want to assure the reader that although she may not have been "laid by at least six different guys," like the fabled Sybil, she is no prude in her morals or intentions about her romantic future, either.

Maureen Daly's world of Seventeenth Summer could not seem farther away from Blume's world of sexually open teens. Daly's central character is a virgin, almost unaware of her own sexual desire. Angie is charmed when a boy tells her that the wind looks nice blowing through her hair, although he makes no real reference to the rest of her physical body. Although the books take place at roughly the same moment in the narrator's lives — the summer between high school and college for Daly's main character, and during the senior year of high school for Blume's central female protagonist — the two books initially seem to come from different planets. Daly's teens say "Gee whiz" and worry constantly about what the parents of their significant others will think. Blume's teens seem cut off from their parents, who often just "don't understand" the modern, shifting sexual morals their children navigate; Blume's teens are more concerned with what their peer groups think than what their parents think. By contrast, Angie is mortified at one point when she sees a boy at her parents' table bump his spoon against his teeth, clearly viewing him through the lens of her mother's sense of etiquette rather than through her own moral eyes.

However, both Daly's and Blume's novels present an essentially similar framework for the female protagonist to define herself: the question of the female's sexuality becomes the main conduit of self-definition available to her, a way to define her new independence. Although Daly's main character is not actively sexual, Angie's decision to date over the summer — more than any other decision during her previous four years of high school, her future college career, or her current intellectual accomplishments — becomes the defining moment of her life. For Blume, sexuality becomes a kind of proving ground for her main character's individuality: Catherine's discretion about making the leap into sexuality will change things, in the words of the title, forever.

Angie Morrow and the Incomplete Girl

Sexuality alone, and the desire to have sex, will define a young woman's ability to morally distinguish herself from her peers. Daly's young woman uses her crush to distinguish herself from her parents; Blume's Catherine uses sexuality to become a more morally complex and self-aware individual. For both authors, then, the decision about sexuality — and who to choose as a prospective partner — is what defines the female protagonists as nice or good girls more than anything else in their lives, in ways that do not equally apply to the male protagonists.

Angie Morrow of Seventeenth Summer, although college-bound and evidently considered intelligent and perceptive in her observations of the world around her, is presented by Daly as fundamentally and emotionally incomplete as a young woman because she lacks a boyfriend. Angie is dominated by the conservative morals of her mother and seems emotionally — though not intellectually — ill equipped to attend college in the coming fall. Angie's older sister Loraine is already in college, has a boyfriend, and enjoys the independence of a summer job, but Angie remains under the thumb of her doting mother and acts like a child. She does not date — or at least has not had what the book defines as a real date throughout high school — something Angie perceives as a significant absence in her life. She does not even have a job for the summer, and her life remains adrift until the day she meets Jack and everything changes.

Setting, Social World, and Sexual Awareness

When Angie falls in love, over that titular seventeenth summer, with Jack Duluth — the rising star of the town, the basketball standout of the high school, and the son of a bakery owner — she truly comes into her own as an independent individual. Gazing at the boy's shining crew cut, glimpsed over a booth in McKnight's drugstore one night, she is suddenly smitten at first sight, as is he with Angie. The book implies that this girl's intellectual development has stymied her emotional growth — as if this late bloomer is suddenly going through a kind of social puberty, newly aware of everything she has missed by attending an all-girls institution throughout high school.

Although both books use ordinary settings — fondue parties and high school halls for Blume, cars and the local drugstore for Daly — Blume's book begins while the protagonist is still in high school, rather than during a mythic, out-of-school summer like Daly's. Blume ties sexual development more integrally to the mental and social life of her main character by placing her within adolescent as well as adult social life. This contrasts with the rather limited summer world of Daly's character, who mainly interacts with her boyfriend and parents, along with a few of Jack's friends she did not know before, given that she attended a different high school.

Conclusion: Sexuality as Self-Definition

Sexuality thus changes Angie's life, and undeniably for the better. However, while the sexuality of Blume's protagonist is equally transforming, it is not in the sense that it gives Catherine mere independence. Rather, it encourages Catherine to question a black-and-white approach to relationships and morality. For both characters, sexuality becomes the main experiential source of definition and conflict in their lives — romantic relationships, not college, not the basketball court, and not even friendships provide the same rich source of moral lessons (for Angie) or lessons in individuality and frustration (for Catherine). In Daly's novel, only nice girls "get the guy" — and the most popular guy at that — by being shy and reserved and by listening to him open up. In Blume's novel, adolescent love demands a moral inventory of what it means to be nice and good, and this demand falls more heavily on the female than the male: as a result of their sexual engagement, Catherine's self-examination emerges as far deeper than Michael's.