Thoughts on: Judy Blume's "Forever"

Judy Blume’s novel “Forever” is the story about one young woman’s sexual awakening. Katherine must face the choices that every young person must make in dealing with her relationship with Michael. Like most teenagers today, Katherine and Michael must define “forever” and “love” for themselves. While I suppose that I wish that “Forever” would have ended in that typical sappy way—cliché as it might be—I am also glad that it didn’t. The typical teen movie ends with the young woman and her hunky love interest finally getting together, but it usually stops there. Most of us like to assume that it was a “happily ever after” kind of thing, but we are never told. Blume refuses to fall into the trap of the teen love story formula by not ending the story with our two favorite characters truly finding forever. Still, what I love most about “Forever” is that our heroine is able to learn and grow through her experiences. Katherine becomes a woman in the pages of this novel. Her emotional maturation lends credence to the feminist ideals.

While I found Trites discussion on how sex and power relate in young adult novels fascinating—“sexual potency is a common metaphor for empowerment in adolescent literature” (84)—I feel that she is much too harsh on Blume’s “Forever.” I consider myself a feminist, and in doing so I tend to agree with a great deal of feminist criticism. But, Trites has nothing good to say about teen novels that deal with sex—even those like “Forever” that were intended to change how female sexuality is portrayed.

Trites declares of Judy Blume’s novel, “[t]he text tries to liberate teen sexuality by communicating that curiosity about sex is natural, but then it undercuts this message with a series of messages framed by institutional discourses that imply teenagers should not have sex or else should feel guilty if they do” (88). In defending her position, Trites recalls the conversations that Katherine has with her mother and grandmother. Katherine’s grandmother warns her to be sure that she should “mak[e] wise choices with her sexuality” (Trites 89), and her mother asks her to make sure that whether or not she chooses to have sex with Michael, that she be responsible in her decisions. Trites asserts that Katherine’s mother’s and grandmother’s discourses “construct intercourse in terms of something that requires emotional and physical protection, implying Katherine’s vulnerability” (90). I agree that their words of warning represent sex as something that “requires emotional and physical protection” (90) but I disagree with her belief that this is a bad thing. Katherine’s “matriarchal support-system” (89) are not forbidding her to have a sexual relationship with Michael. What they are doing is making sure that she is prepared for it. Is that so wrong? Most parents who try to raise there children to have morals or to be cautious do not do so with the intent of restricting their children, but rather to empower them by allowing them to make choices based on as many of the facts as possible! Trites would like to brush sex off as a big deal only because we have a wrong perception of sexuality, and not because it is something that should be treated as a big deal. In my opinion, this isn’t what feminism is about. Feminism is about empowering women, now pretending that our actions don’t have consequences. As Katherine’s grandmother makes clear, there are decisions that must be made once someone decides to have sex. What kind of birth control to use. The problems involved with contracting sexually transmitted diseases. What to do if pregnancy occurs—birth control is not a guarantee. If someone is mature enough to make the decision to have sex, then they must also be able to handle the decisions of the “what ifs” that go along with it. Katherine’s mother and grandmother would be wrong not to discuss the responsibilities she will have as a sexually active woman. Katherine’s own discourse reveals that she believes that having sex is a big decision that she must be ready for. It was a decision that she had to make for herself. Had Katherine’s mother and grandmother given her the wrong impression of sex—if they had presented it as something that isn’t as important as she seems to think—they would have taken away some of Katherine’s power to choose for herself. She likely would have not thought so seriously about how she wanted her relationship with Michael to progress and instead of making sure that it was what she wanted, had sex with him just because she perceives it as nothing of importance.

Wow. I don’t think I would want to teach this novel to a high school English class. It deals with so many controversial things—most of which will be based on the many moral standings and view points of individual students and parents. It would be easy to assume that every high school student is like Katherine and Michael, and that in this day in age, every parent would be as “progressive” as Katherine’s parents, but this simply isn’t true. Trites would obviously disagree with me, but I don’t think sex is something that should be taken lightly. And while I do think that students should be exposed to various views on controversial subject matter, not every student thinks the same way, and we can’t assume that every student is mature enough to deal with some of this stuff. That being said, I do think that it is important for students to understand sexuality. Where I am uncertain is whether or not that should be my job as their high school English teacher.

If I were to teach this novel, I would probably have the students compare Katherine and Michael’s view of “love” and “forever” to other couples—either in another novel or perhaps in a movie.


Some Essential Questions:

1. What is the relationship between “love” and “sex” as defined by they story of Katherine and Micheal?
2. What does “forever” mean to Katherine? How does it affect her actions, and does her perception of “forever” change as the novel progresses?