Reading the Adolescent Romance 1138548049, 9781138548046

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READING THE ADOLESCENT ROMANCE

Children’s Literature and Culture Jack Zipes, Series Editor Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults edited by Carrie Hintz and Elaine Ostry Transcending Boundaries Writing for a Dual Audience of Children and Adults edited by Sandra L. Beckett The Making of the Modern Child Children’s Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century by Andrew O’Malley How Picturebooks Work by Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott Brown Gold Milestones of African American Children’s Picture Books, 1845-2002 by Michelle H. Martin Russell Hoban/Forty Years Essays on His Writing for Children by Alida Allison Apartheid and Racism in South African Children’s Literature by Donnarae MacCann and Amadu Maddy Empire’s Children Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children’s Books by M. Daphne Kutzer Constructing the Canon of Children’s Literature Beyond Library Walls and Ivory Towers by Anne Lundin Youth of Darkest England Working Class Children at the Heart of Victorian Empire by Troy Boone Ursula K. Leguin Beyond Genre Literature for Children and Adults by Mike Cadden Twice-Told Children’s Tales edited by Betty Greenway

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Representing Africa in Children’s Literature Old and New Ways of Seeing by Vivian Yenika-Agbaw The Fantasy of Family Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature and the Myth of the Domestic Ideal by Liz Thiel From Nursery Rhymes to Nationhood Children’s Literature and the Construction of Canadian Identity By Elizabeth A. Galway The Family in English Children’s Literature Ann Alston Enterprising Youth Social Values and Acculturation in Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Literature Monika Elbert Constructing Adolescence in Fantastic Realism Alison Waller Crossover Fiction Global and Historical Perspectives Sandra L. Beckett The Crossover Novel Contemporary Children’s Fiction and Its Adult Readership Rachel Falconer Shakespeare in Children’s Literature Gender and Cultural Capital Erica Hateley Critical Approaches to Food in Children’s Literature Edited by Kara K. Keeling and Scott T. Pollard Neo-Imperialism in Children’s Literature About Africa A Study of Contemporary Fiction by Yulisa Amadu Maddy and Donnarae MacCann

Children’s Fiction about 9/11 Ethnic, Heroic and National Identities Jo Lampert The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children’s Literature Jan Susina Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young Readers Maria Nikolajeva “Juvenile” Literature and British Society, 1850–1950 The Age of Adolescence Charles Ferrall and Anna Jackson Picturing the Wolf in Children’s Literature Debra Mitts-Smith New Directions in Picturebook Research Edited by Teresa Colomer, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Cecilia Silva-Díaz The Role of Translators in Children’s Literature Invisible Storytellers Gillian Lathey The Children’s Book Business Lessons from the Long Eighteenth Century Lissa Paul Humor in Contemporary Junior Literature Julie Cross Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature Tison Pugh Reading the Adolescent Romance Sweet Valley High and the Popular Young Adult Romance Novel Amy S. Pattee

READING THE ADOLESCENT ROMANCE Sweet Valley High and the Popular Young Adult Romance Novel

A M Y S . PAT T E E

NEW YORK AND LONDON

First published 2011 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Taylor & Francis The right of Amy S. Pattee to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in by Minion by IBT Global. Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper by IBT Global. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pattee, Amy. Reading the adolescent romance : Sweet Valley and the popular young adult romance novel / Amy S. Pattee. p. cm.—(Children’s literature and culture ; 75) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Pascal, Francine—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Sweet Valley High. 3. Young adult literature, American—History and criticism. 4. Young adults— Books and reading—United States. I. Title. PS3566.A7727Z83 2011 813'.54—dc22 2010050157 ISBN13: 978-0-415-87594-3 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-83150-2 (ebk)

To my family, with love: Judy Pattee, Ben Florin, Ellie Pattee Esmond and Kevin Esmond

Contents

Series Editor’s Foreword

xi

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

xiii

Introduction

1

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California: The Evolution of Young Adult Literature and the “Sweet Valley High” Series

7

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California: The Ideological Content of Francine Pascal’s Series

27

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California: The Literary Landscape of “Sweet Valley High”

53

The Readers’ Text(s): Reading and Re-Reading “Sweet Valley High”

93

Chapter 5

The “New” Sweet Valley High

139

Chapter 6

The Legacy of “Sweet Valley High”

169

References

177

Index

185

ix

Series Editor’s Foreword

Dedicated to furthering original research in children’s literature and culture, the Children’s Literature and Culture series includes monographs on individual authors and illustrators, historical examinations of different periods, literary analyses of genres, and comparative studies on literature and the mass media. The series is international in scope and is intended to encourage innovative research in children’s literature with a focus on interdisciplinary methodology. Children’s literature and culture are understood in the broadest sense of the term children to encompass the period of childhood up through adolescence. Owing to the fact that the notion of childhood has changed so much since the origination of children’s literature, this Routledge series is particularly concerned with transformations in children’s culture and how they have affected the representation and socialization of children. While the emphasis of the series is on children’s literature, all types of studies that deal with children’s radio, fi lm, television, and art are included in an endeavor to grasp the aesthetics and values of children’s culture. Not only have there been momentous changes in children’s culture in the last fifty years, but there have been radical shifts in the scholarship that deals with these changes. In this regard, the goal of the Children’s Literature and Culture series is to enhance research in this field and, at the same time, point to new directions that bring together the best scholarly work throughout the world. Jack Zipes

xi

Acknowledgments

With thanks and gratitude to Ellie Pattee Esmond and Kristin Nefzger Munday; Erin Curtis, Shannon Rumberger, and Robin Hardwick; and the young women who shared their “Sweet Valley High” memories with me. This book would not have been possible without the initial guidance of my dissertation committee, who saw me through the first iteration of this project. Thanks to: Brian Sturm, David Carr, John McGowan, Barbara Moran and Paul Solomon. The support of my colleagues at Simmons College has been invaluable. Thank you to Dean Michele Cloonan and Professors Cathie Mercier and Candy Schwartz for their help and guidance.

xiii

Introduction Francine Pascal’s “Sweet Valley High” series of novels for older girls and young adults was one of the most protracted and successful series of the twentieth century. The romance-themed novels followed gorgeous and popular sixteen-year-old Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, twin sisters whose identical appearance belied their opposing personalities. In spite of its cool reception by teachers and librarians, the series developed a large fan base of young readers whose purchasing power pushed one volume of the series—a “super edition” called Perfect Summer—to a position on the New York Times list of best-selling paperback fiction. While today this seems commonplace, the 1985 appearance of a teen paperback on the Times’ list marked the first time in history that a young adult novel reached these best-seller heights. As the series grew in popularity, it spawned a television show and a number of spin-off book series: “Sweet Valley Twins” for younger independent readers, “Sweet Valley Kids,” for newly independent readers, and “Sweet Valley University,” for “graduates” of the high school series, are but three of even more sub-series associated with Pascal’s first serial. “Sweet Valley High”’s association with a contested form of youth literature—series fiction—and its relationship to the romance genre and popular reading practices has kept the series from critical consideration; however, the success and subsequent ubiquity of “Sweet Valley High” and Pascal’s literary domain deserves attention. An examination of the series’ history, content, structure and reception reveals the series to be an influential marketing and literary phenomenon and offers opportunities to interrogate the intersecting influences of history, audience positioning and readability that allowed “Sweet Valley High” to flourish.

Considering Popular Fiction While librarians’ booklists, class assigned reading and literary reviews may delineate a canon of young adult literary classics or touchstones, popular fiction 1

2 • Reading the Adolescent Romance for young adults—that adolescent literature written in the popular vein that is picked up and popularized further by readers—occupies a different, equally important, but often overlooked canon. Interestingly, although this popular fiction is created to appeal to a mass audience, its popularity is never certain. Popular literary and cultural researchers have long attributed a popular text’s popular status not just to its compelling or conventional narrative, but also to the relationship between narrative and audience. A text does not become popular because it adheres to a specific set of formal criteria, these critics argue, but because it engages with its audience and, perhaps more importantly, with an audience’s experiences, in a specific way. Stuart Hall writes, “popular culture always has its base in the experiences, the pleasures, the memories, the traditions of the people. It has connections with local hopes and local aspirations, local tragedies and local scenarios that are the everyday practices and everyday experiences of ordinary folks” (1996, p. 469). Popular texts, as formal articulations of an idea of popular culture, produced, to some degree, to appeal to a mass audience in hopes of solidifying the texts’ status as artifacts of popular culture, must also have the same connections to the “local hopes and local aspirations,” the “pleasures, the memories, the traditions of the people” that Hall describes. While a text might be written to adhere to the formulae associated with a popular genre and might be designed and marketed like other works that have proved popular, this is only a minor informant of a text’s popularity. Literature that becomes popular does not just capture what Hall calls “local hopes and local aspirations,” but also depicts these hopes and aspirations in accordance with audience sensibilities. Elizabeth Long’s argument related to the historical and cultural significance of popular fiction further supports Hall’s claim. Long writes: [N]ovels, and especially popular novels . . . are built in part on a set of perceptions about the world that are shared with their audiences. This does not mean that novels provide a mirror of the external world, or should be judged as useful cultural evidence according to how accurate a reflection of the world they generate. But novels imply a community of shared meaning (1985, p. 4). Long continues, “Not only the author’s own perception of the world, but the perceptions of the hypothetical audience to whom the author writes, are implicated in every novel” (1985, p. 4). In Long’s view, it is the perceptual familiarity of the best-selling novel that makes it a popular text. John Fiske calls popular novels “producerly texts,” books that neither “challenge the reader to make sense out of it [nor] faze the reader with its sense of shocking difference both from other texts and from the everyday” and, further, argues that these texts “do not impose laws of [their] own construction that readers have to decipher in order to read [them]” (1989, pp. 103 –104). In essence, novels that become popular tend to be easy to read, not because they employ simple or

Introduction • 3 easily decoded language, but because they rely on familiar conventions and representations of everyday life analogous to those found in the social world and because their depictions of fictional reality do not deviate far from the reality understood by a reading community. Popular novels are not just invested in implying “communit[ies] of shared meaning,” as Long argues, they are also complicit in the reproduction and maintenance of these communities. Fiske contends that “a popular text, to be popular, must have points of relevance to a variety of readers in a variety of social contexts,” furthermore, he continues, the taste for such popular texts is “formed by the conditions of subordination, and the commodities out of which it makes popular culture are ones that are relevant both to the readers’ experience of those conditions and, more generally, to the conditions themselves” (1989, p. 141). That is, while a popular text’s popularity is contingent on a judgment (or judgments) of relevance made by its readership, its popularity also depends on its perpetuation of the social conditions that make it popular. To this end, popular texts are invested not only in their own production and presentation as preferred media, but also in the correspondence of their content with the social status quo. The “Sweet Valley High” series is an excellent example of the confluence Fiske, Long and Hall describe. Pascal’s series has what Fiske might call literary, social and cultural “points of reference”: the novels are clear articulations and expansions of an established popular tradition in adolescent fiction and, as reflections—in terms of political and social ideology—of the time period in which they were produced, do not, as Fiske would argue “challenge the reader to make sense . . . [nor] faze the reader with [a] sense of shocking difference” from both the popular romance novels they appeared beside nor the everyday world in which they were situated (1989, pp. 103–104).

Considering “Sweet Valley High” While the success of the “Sweet Valley High” series was not guaranteed, the series’ canny production and position in what was then a growing popular literary market for youth certainly contributed to its ascendancy. Although most young adult literature published during the previous decade had aspired to greater realism than those first junior novels for adolescents published in the mid-century, by the late 1970s and early 1980s adolescent literary focus had returned to light novels of romance. Pascal’s romance-themed series entered a market primed for such a product; the first Sweet Valley novel, Double Love, debuted at a time during which stand-alone teen romance novels issued in brand-name series—like Bantam’s “Sweet Dreams” or Scholastic’s “Wildfire”— were in high demand. Double Love—and subsequent installments of the “Sweet Valley High” series—expanded upon the literal model these romance series provided, and, as such, distinguished Pascal’s series from the publishers’ novels.

4 • Reading the Adolescent Romance New installments of Pascal’s paperback series—the novels were issued as paperback originals—were, like the publishers’ romance novels, released on an approximate monthly calendar and fed what was becoming an adolescent paperback revolution. While, prior to the late 1970s, publishers had focused the sale of novels for adolescents to the adults who served teens—teachers, librarians and other youth advocates—and had concentrated on the production of hardback novels that may or may not be reissued as less expensive paperback reprints, economic recession reduced many public budgets and forced publishers to expand their client lists. Ironically, while public institutions faced cut budgets, young adults were relatively flush with cash and publishing companies targeted these new consumers with inexpensive and stylish-looking paperback novels, many of which were produced as media tieins and were sold through school book clubs. With new volumes appearing as often—if not more often—as school book club catalogs and featuring low prices and attractive and formalized covers that encouraged collection, the “Sweet Valley High” paperbacks used the form to advantage. Although the series distinguished itself as a literary soap-opera by featuring cliff-hanger endings and teasing advertisements for successive volumes following the climax of each installment, the Sweet Valley novels adhered to the generic romantic formula associated with the publishers’ romance novels published contemporaneously. Unlike the more realistic and even frank adolescent fiction of the previous decade, the “Sweet Valley High” novels were decidedly “clean.” Plots of the individual novels concerned heterosexual romantic relationships and depicted male and female characters’ searches for love and “deep” and “searching” but mostly chaste kisses. As in the publishers’ romance novels, the action in “Sweet Valley High” took place in the distinctly adolescent environments of the high school, the home—the kitchen and the bedroom in particular—and in whatever commercial establishment teenagers might have adopted as a hangout. Visible in both the series’ romantic storylines and in the plots involving conflict between the central heroines, Elizabeth and Jessica, “Sweet Valley High,” like traditional romance, maintained that true love— either romantic or familial—was a reward worth work and sacrifice. Although in marked contrast to the more overtly challenging realistic fiction of the previous decade, the “Sweet Valley High” series mined familiar ideological territory. The series’ similarity—in content and tone—to the stand-alone popular romance novels that were its competitors underscores Pascal’s novels’ adherence to the generic romance traditions critics argue are ideologically conservative. That these novels rose to popularity at an historical moment during which traditional and politically conservative values were being emphasized in the American political, social and cultural worlds was a coincidence noted by literary and cultural critics. While the “Sweet Valley High” novels published during this conservative ascendancy may not have been created as tools of propaganda, the novels did reflect the ideology of what was, at the time of their publication, the “ruling” class.

Introduction • 5 With these conclusions in mind, the “Sweet Valley High” television show theme song proves surprisingly prescient and relevant to an investigation of the series as a publishing phenomenon. Where the theme song intends to capitalize on the ubiquity of the series’ identical twin heroines, I feel that the question asked in the lyrics, “Is she really everywhere, or a reflection,” is an inquiry one might pose about Sweet Valley itself. The full lyrics are as follows: Look down any crowded hall You’ll see there’s a beauty standing Is she really everywhere, or a reflection? One always calls out to you The other’s shy and quiet Could there really be two girls Who look the same at Sweet Valley, Sweet Valley High . . . You can never really tell Which one you’re standing next to One thing is for sure, you can be sure of nothing Lots of gossip going ’round About this one or that one Not too many secrets kept in the world of Sweet Valley, Sweet Valley High . . . (Fisher and Hromodka, 1995) Although grand philosophical statements are seldom found in the lyrics of television theme songs, the Sweet Valley High theme manages to incorporate a few thoughtful truths. If, as Fiske, Hall and Long argue, a literary work (or a media product) becomes popular because of its ability to reflect an ideal—or, at least an agreed-upon—version of the world back to its audience, the lyric to the theme song asking if “a beauty” could ever possibly be “everywhere” or if this beauty is a mere “reflection” of something hidden or just out of sight, is rich with meaning. As the novels flooded the market (at the rate of about one per month) and rose to popularity, their presence became—for a period of time—ubiquitous. The series that began as a “reflection”—of the romance novels enjoying a popular renaissance at the time of Sweet Valley’s first publication, of the idealistic but traditional and conservative world in which the novels were set and in which they literally appeared—was soon “everywhere” and, in its omnipresence, was soon reflected in both the popular series that spun-off of “Sweet Valley High” and in the popular romance series Pascal’s novels influenced. This investigation of Francine Pascal’s “Sweet Valley High” begins with a brief and historical discussion of adolescent literature that describes the series’ appearance as part of the evolution of the literary form. Following a description of Sweet Valley’s literary situation, I describe the historical milieu in which the series was produced and which the novels reflect, noting generically

6 • Reading the Adolescent Romance and historically significant themes as they evince the conservative historical moment that gave birth to the series. Since before Sweet Valley’s ascendency, professional and academic critics have decried adult and adolescent romance, noting what seem to be intersections between generic convention and ideology; as Pascal’s series makes clear use of both adult and adolescent tropes of romance, I draw from the primarily feminist academic work critical of the adult and young adult articulations of the genre and demonstrate how “Sweet Valley High” operates as a distinctly political wish-fulfi llment narrative. Because their remembered readings of the novels differ so strikingly from contemporary critiques of the series and its generic sisters, I follow my feminist critique of the novels with the memories of the series’ erstwhile readers and compare the meanings these young fans recall making of the series to the contemporary interpretations of the texts authored by adult re-readers of the same. As the initial Sweet Valley readers describe their introduction to the series and their investment in Pascal’s novels, a cohesive image of the Sweet Valley reader emerges. This reader encountered Pascal’s series in late elementary school and considered her Sweet Valley reading to be evidence of her maturity, described the novels in terms of the fantasies of adolescent life they inspired, and detailed an eventual disinterest in the novels that grew as she aged. Although ambivalent about the original series’ contemporary resonance and reluctant to recommend the novels for present-day readers, the Sweet Valley reader associates her period of engagement with pleasure and escape, acknowledging the novels’ value as “cultural capital” in her world of early adolescence. The former readers’ responses to the series stand in contrast to the contemporary readings offered by these readers’ peers, women of similar age who are reading, re-reading and responding to Pascal’s series in adulthood. These re-readers emerge as what Jonathan Gray (2005) calls “antifans” of the novels as they, as popular bloggers, construct public identities in opposition to Pascal’s series. The anti-fans, who acknowledge their adolescent investment in “Sweet Valley High,” call their childhood readings into question as they re-evaluate the novels as adults, taking new pleasure in criticizing the texts they enjoyed as young people. The professional and academic critiques of “Sweet Valley High,” in concert with the series’ fans’ remembered readings and contemporary re-readings, work to characterize Pascal’s novels as both fantastic and problematic. While many of the novels’ more troublesome features have been attributed to the series’ historical situation and adherence to generic romantic tropes, an examination of one of the series’ more unconventionally structured spin-offs, “SVH: Senior Year,” reveals the extent of these historical and literary influences. This investigation concludes with a discussion of “SVH,” as well as of the 2008 publication of revised editions of the original “Sweet Valley High” novels. Although the new novels feature new cover art as well as updated language and cultural references, the new Sweet Valley novels’ adherence to the original novels’ romantic sensibilities works ironically to underscore the series’ historicity.

Chapter One Now Entering Sweet Valley, California: The Evolution of Young Adult Literature and the “Sweet Valley High” Series

Unlike that fiction written for adults, literature for children and young adults is created on behalf of its audience by authors and editors who are no longer among that audience and who, as many critics and scholars of children’s literature and childhood have argued, often have distinct ideas about childhood that inform the parameters of possibility with regards to literature and media created for that audience. As such, children’s and young adult literature is defined in part by its address to a youthful audience, an audience considered en masse and primarily as a construct, a product of its historical, social and cultural situation. The nature of this construction of the young audience— how the creators and facilitators of children’s and young adult literature define, imagine and wish for this audience—will, in part, inform the content of the media created for it, as will, as Jack Zipes has argued, “the vast institution of children’s literature” which “operate[s] more and more within the confi nes of the culture industry in which the prevailing commercialism and consumerism continue to minimize and marginalize the value of critical and creative thinking, and with it, the worth of an individual human being” (2001, p. 40). Thus, as products, children’s and young adult literary artifacts depend on the reification of a cohesive definition (or definitions) of youth, the form of which is suitably recognizable so that products addressed to this audience are distinguished as such, and the content of which remains within parameters of appropriateness and accessibility as defined on behalf of this audience. Beginning with the early twentieth century recognition of adolescence as a distinct and separate phase of human social and psychological development, a “discovery” that encouraged thinking and imagining about the particular needs of this demographic; the subsequent mid-century re-conception of this age 7

8 • Reading the Adolescent Romance group as a consumer demographic, for whom specific and unique products might be created; and continuing as the popular and academic conceptions of adolescence and young adulthood fragmented along gender, racial and social lines, the history of adolescent literary publishing stands as an example of this process of demographic and audience formulation.

Introducing the Adolescent In spite of G. Stanley Hall’s 1904 assertion that adolescence was a “separate state” in the cycle of human development, it wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that American society began to recognize adolescence as a distinct demographic. Prior to the Great Depression and “up until the 1930s, most teenagers worked for a living on farms, in factories, or at home,” and were considered “teenage children who could expect to be seen but not heard within their family circle and ignored, for the most part, outside of it” (Palladino, 1996, p. 5). Depression-era unemployment led to an increase in the number of adolescents attending school and, with decreasing opportunities to enter the labor market, teens looked to secondary education for training and found unexpected community and a group identity within the halls of the high school. As Ilana Nash writes, the “forced proximity” of young people in high schools “fostered a distinct teenage subculture, allowing the events of high school life to shape common experience along an age axis that ameliorated differences in geography, class, or ethnicity that had more rigorously separated youth in previous years” (2006, p. 87). Away from home and its immediate influence—at least for part of the day—teens were free to shape identities that were, to some degree, independent of family and its history. During this same period, the literal growth of the adolescent population contributed to public recognition of the demographic and its diversity. By 1940, 15–19-year-olds represented the largest segment of the American population (Hobbs and Stoops, 2002, p. 53). This population increase, Emma Patterson wrote in a 1956 English Journal essay chronicling the development of the adolescent novel, led to “the increasing awareness by society in general of the importance of adolescence, psychologically as well as physiologically, of its special problems and needs” (p. 385). Because, Patterson argued, the high school population no longer comprised a “selected group predominantly of college preparatory caliber” (read: the privileged elite), a more socially and economically diverse group of students was making itself visible to the adult establishment. This diverse group of teens was in need of the guidance and training that a public high school education could offer all students. Ideally, during the adolescent’s high school years, Grace Palladino writes, “the least fortunate would learn the same rules of respectable living and self-discipline

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California • 9 that the middle class were supposed to learn at home, through classes, extracurricular activities, and a supervised, high school-based social life” (1996, p. 15). Thus, the high school became not only an institution devoted to practical training for employment or preparation for higher education, it also emerged as a socializing mechanism invested in the perpetuation of what many called “middle class values.” Interestingly, this would be a job tacitly assigned to the literature that would soon be created expressly for this new population. In accordance with the growing public interest in the education and socialization of the young and their preparation for adulthood, teachers, librarians and other professionals working with youth began to consider adolescents’ reading habits and preferences. Recognizing that what Margaret Hutchinson called the high school’s “expanding and increasingly diverse clientele” entered school with such different educational and social backgrounds and abilities that “teachers . . . were forced to abandon the notion that every young person could read the same books” (1973, 1978, p. 39), schools began to reconsider the traditional high school literary canon. Indeed, Hutchinson observed, the inability of many young people to read precluded their likely adoption and understanding of the classics. Meanwhile, many literate students were requesting “in perfectly casual manner for all the modern fiction that public libraries usually restrict or charge to gray-haired patrons with misgivings” (Hutchinson, 1973, 1978, p. 39). While, prior to what Ruth Cline and William McBride call the “frankness that hit the adult market in the 1920s” (1983, p. 26), the “moral tone” of most best-selling adult novels was, in Patterson’s estimation, “suitable for adolescents,” many judged modern fiction to be not only scandalous but also potentially harmful to young readers. Patterson criticized novels like Forever Amber, The Naked and the Dead, and From Here to Eternity for “present[ing] a realistically revolting or morbid or cynical picture of life” and cautioned that “indiscriminate reading in this field can give [the adolescent] a warped and unhealthy concept of life” (1956, p. 385). This attitude was a common one and was reflected in one of the first professional monographs for librarians serving adolescents, The Public Library and the Adolescent (1937). “[The adolescent] has not yet acquired the balance of an adult,” warned author Eric Leyland, “and he is more open to suggestion than at any other time of his life . . . If we must avoid planting evil seed in the adolescent mind, we must also make every endeavor to provide [reading] material that will yield good results” (1937, p. 11). To this end, librarians and teachers tried to encourage teen reading of carefully selected adult novels and reluctantly recognized what G. Robert Carlsen called that “body of adult literature that is ultimately taken over and kept alive by successive generations of teens” (1976, 1978, p. 71). With reading considered among the practices that could contribute to adolescent adoption of middle-class values and the “rules of respectable living,” the nature and content of the material read by teens became increasingly important to adult collectors and gatekeepers of the same.

10 • Reading the Adolescent Romance From World War II to the Cold War: Introducing Young Adult Fiction Written in 1942 and initially published as an adult novel, Maureen Daly’s Seventeenth Summer achieved a prominence among teen readers and a level of respectability among adult critics that led many to consider it the prototype of a new kind of writing accessible to and appropriate for adolescent readers that would come to be called the “junior novel.” Although the category of “junior novel” had been invented with the marketing campaign used to support Rose Wilder Lane’s adolescent-friendly 1933 Let the Hurricane Roar, it was Seventeenth Summer that was considered the first novel to, as librarian Margaret Edwards wrote in 1952, capture “the awakening of love . . . for teenagers in language they could understand” (p. 335). Narrated from the first person perspective of its seventeen-year-old heroine, Angie Morrow, and set during the summer preceding her freshman year in college, the novel describes Angie’s first romantic relationship. A decidedly innocent writing, Lois Kuznets and Eve Zarin write, the novel “reproduced quite realistically not only the limited sexual experience and social situation of a small town (not suburban) teenager of the late 1930s and early 1940s but also the solipsistic and barely perceptive state of mind of an ordinary teenager of that period” (1982, p. 29). Kuznets and Zarin note, too, the “unassimilated fragments of ‘real life’” that appear in the narrative—including a secondary plot involving Angie’s older sister and a “fast” boy—(1982, p. 29) and argue that the narrator’s failure to assimilate these bits of information contribute to the “adolescent” status of the novel. The judgments of critics considering Seventeenth Summer in the decade following its initial publication seem to confirm Kuznets and Zarin’s thesis linking the novel’s narrow innocence and simplicity—products, in part, of the narrator’s insularity—to its appeal to young readers. While Richard Alm judged the novel a “simple one of commonplace events,” the critic also allowed, “it is an engrossing story because the reader is able to identify himself so closely with the reactions of the heroine” (1955, p. 319–320). The “reactions of the heroine” Alm identifies seem to appeal to the universal adolescent reader; Edwards wrote, even the “generation of bobby-soxers despaired of by the moralists have identified themselves with unsophisticated Angie Morrow,” (1952, p. 336). Alm’s and Edwards’ critiques emphasized the freshness and difference of Daly’s narrative in comparison to other novels published during the same period and allowed that these features—first person narration, a focus on the world of the teenage protagonist to the exclusion of the greater (adult) world, and a lack of cynicism—were ideal characteristics of writing for young people. The critical and popular success of Daly’s novel influenced the creation of a first body of adolescent fiction, “junior novels” Hutchinson described as “designed to please the young people: short, entertaining, easy to read, and about themselves” (1980, p. 47–48). Cultivated in publishing houses by

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California • 11 women Patterson called “editors of vision, awake to the growing need and to the possibilities inherent in this new form” (1956, p. 386), the junior novels were, like the juvenile series fiction of the same period, delineated by the presumed sex of the reader with light romances inspired by Seventeenth Summer written to appeal to an audience of adolescent girls and adventure and sports novels modeled on John Tunis’ 1938 Iron Duke produced for boys. Although Alm noted that “most of the stories dealing with the adolescent’s personal problems . . . are for girls” (1955, p. 319), Patterson observed, “boys have found ample compensation in sports novels where they hold a virtual monopoly” (Patterson, 1956, p. 383). Gail Murray described the novels for girls as such: “the teenage protagonist, usually from an intact, happy nuclear family, struggled with popularity, dating (although not much overt sexual activity) and self image” (1996, p. 177); however, the boys’ books did not stray far from this mold, substituting adventure and success in sports for mere popularity. The inaugural adolescent novels for girls and boys adhered to a recognizable formula that perpetuated dominant ideologies not unlike those associated with the middle class values engendered in the high school. The primary conflict of these novels mirrored the conflict or problem high school socialization was purported to resolve. As Alm argued, the novels featured a “young hero or heroine . . . attempting to cope with a personal problem” and a demonstrated literary concern with “the question of the maturity of the central character” (1955, p. 322). In the adolescent novels of the mid-century, the “question of maturity” was successfully answered by the hero or heroine who succeeded in adhering to and maintaining dominant scripts. The novels “repeatedly emphasized that . . . good boys and girls will accept society’s rules without question, for society is, in the final analysis, always right” (Donelson, 1977, 1980, p. 60). Thus, the romance novels for girls emphasized the importance of heterosexual romantic relationship, modeled chaste, proper behavior on dates and discouraged heroines from attending to dangerous, hot-rodding heroes of the type populating cautionary tales for boys. Even Henry Felson’s provocatively titled and popular novels for boys, Street Rod (1950) and Hot Rod (1953), were thinly veiled morality tales about young men intrigued by adolescent car racing culture but who manage to avoid its dangerous lure. From novels with such moral endings, wrote Cecile Magaliff in her 1964 study of the junior novel, “emerge the qualities of goodness, kindness, understanding, the desirability of a good education, respect for authority, and an appreciation of the family as a unit” that “very few adult books can give . . . to the adolescent reader” (pp. 103–104). The first junior novels were marketed and sold primarily to high school and public libraries—Patterson argued that these institutions “provided a market and distribution center for the junior novel without which it could scarcely have survived” (1956, p. 386)—however, by the end of World War II, newly prosperous teenage consumers began to purchase these novels on their own in drugstores and through school book clubs. Murray writes, “Postwar

12 • Reading the Adolescent Romance affluence meant that middle-class children had allowance money to spend . . . [and] if libraries and schools did not have the books young people wanted to read, readers simply bought their own”(1998, pp. 177–178). As the publishing world responded to adolescent affluence by encouraging the production of more junior novels, adult critics noted differences in quality among the now plentiful books. Alm lamented the popularity of “poorly-written stories” that evidenced little adolescent “regard for the disdain or reservations of adults” and that the critic judged “superficial, often distorted, completely false representations of adolescence . . . . . . sugar-puff stories of what adolescents should do and believe rather than what adolescents may or will do and believe” (1955, pp. 318, 315). These “sugar-puff” stories succeeded because, Patterson argued, teen readers were unwilling to “show some discrimination in the [novels] they select to read or even express a preference for the ones with sound characterization and plausible plot construction” (1956, p. 383). Thus, while the institutional market was the first to support the junior novel venture by introducing the books to teen readers, when teens began to purchase the books themselves, publishers began to recognize a dual market for adolescent fiction. Although adolescent taste extended to and included the novels selected for them by teachers and librarians, teen readers were also purchasers of junior novels of the popular, “sugar-puff” variety. While the slow bifurcation of the market would seem to predicate or at least encourage alternative forms of adolescent literature to appear, from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, most popular and literary novels for adolescents continued to adhere to the time-tested although gendered formulae established with Daly’s Seventeenth Summer and initially with Tunis’ Iron Duke and later with Felsen’s Street Rod. By the end of the 1950s, the adolescent literary form was firmly established, if not always critically regarded. Kenneth Donelson writes By the 1950s, certain taboos had been clearly established for the adolescent novels—no early or forced marriages; no pregnancy outside marriage; no drugs, alcohol, or smoking; no profane or obscene language; no deaths; almost no ethnic references; no school dropouts unless as object lessons; no divorce; no sense of the ambivalent cruelty and compassion of young people; no alienation of young people from society or family; no sexuality or sensuality (1977, 1980, p. 59). While authorial and editorial compliance with these taboos meant that most adolescent literature would continue to adhere to the same narrow formulae associated with the adolescent “girls’ book” and “boys’ book,” these unofficial guidelines also ensured that young readers of adolescent fiction would not be surprised or disturbed by elements or content adults feared would negatively influence them. Thus, as Anne MacLeod writes, “While the postwar era had its share of anxiety over adolescents,” the junior novels written for the adolescent audience betrayed none of this and “on the whole conveyed confidence

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California • 13 that community values would prevail” (1997, p. 126). In this way, the adolescent literature of the 40s and 50s served to pacify not only its young readers, but also to reassure the adults concerned with the education and development of the young. By the mid-1960s, the dominant narratives associated with adolescent literature were becoming less and less credible—for teen readers as well as for adult critics of the novels. Alleen Pace Nilsen and Kenneth Donelson write, “as more and more people began to think that the educational value of fiction is to extend young readers’ experiences and to give them opportunities to participate vicariously in more roles and activities than would be either desirable or possible in real life,” the “mode” of writing for young people shifted from overly moral and upbeat to realistic (1985, p. 83). In other words, as Hutchinson, quoting critic Kenneth Shaffer, wrote, by the late 1960s, “‘The image of adolescence as happy-go-lucky, baton-twirling, automobile-driving, money-in-the-pocket, twisting, coke-drinking, boy-and-girl-hand-in-hand Elysium’ begun to look pretty thin” (1980, p. 57). The 1951 publication of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye signaled what Murray calls an “alteration” of the “construction of childhood that would permeate American culture by the end of the 1960s” (1998, p. 185) and that had informed the creation of the adolescent novels Schaffer criticized. Unlike what Michael Cart (1996) calls the 1940s and 1950s era “head-in-the-sand” literary approach to addressing adolescents, this new view of youth “recognized that children could not always be protected from the dangers and sorrows of real life” (Murray, 1998, p. 185). Cart, Murray and others identify S. E. Hinton’s 1967 novel The Outsiders and Paul Zindel’s 1968 The Pigman as the “first novels to take up the Salinger banner and realistically re-create the often dismal world of teenagers” (Murray, 1998, p. 186). These new novels represented what Donelson named “a quite different kind of adolescent novel” (1977, 1980, p. 61). The modern adolescent novel was less “worried about taboos, closer to touching the reality of young people’s lives, less concerned with pandering to obvious and superficial needs, and rarely condescending to readers” (Donelson, 1977, 1980, p. 61). Ironically, the new wave of novels ushered in first by Salinger then by Hinton and Zindel resembled more closely the “cynical” adult novels Patterson feared adolescents would read than the cautionary but optimistic romance and sports books encouraged in their stead. Because this period was characterized by the publication of adolescent novels that strived for (and, in some cases, achieved) both social relevance and literary excellence, contemporary critics have labeled the decade following the publication of The Outsiders and The Pigman the “golden era” of adolescent literature. This period witnessed the publication of many of the realistic texts considered classics among young adult scholars: Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War (1974), Alice Childress’s A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich (1973), and M.E. Kerr’s Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! (1972) each addressed institutional and social failures and inequalities and refused to pander to the

14 • Reading the Adolescent Romance adolescent audience by offering easy answers and happy endings. Cart writes that the period between 1967 and 1975 was “remarkable for the boldness with which writers began to break new ground in terms of the subject manner they chose to address” (1996, p. 64). In addition, novels for teenagers changed from being what Al Muller called “novels of incident” to “novels of character,” a shift in focus that allowed for a greater tolerance for literary latitude and the subsequent emergence of more novels told from a first-person perspective and through the use of flashbacks (1980). The novels for adolescents appearing during this decade were notable not just for their realism and their shift from the theme of “adaptation to a larger world to contemplation of the inner self” (MacLeod, 1997, p. 126) but also for their introduction of non-middle-class settings, of characters of color and of characters who were beginning to question the compulsory chastity and heterosexuality of the previous decade.Unlike the junior novels of the 1940s and 50s, the adolescent literature of the “golden era” was invested in an uncensored and realistic depiction of teen life and, to that end, was often criticized and challenged by adult critics and selectors of the material. While selectors, teachers and parents worried about the frankness of the dialog and situations depicted in the new adolescent literature, literary critics wondered if these changes were merely cosmetic. Although, Murray writes, “Without a doubt, the young adult novels of the 1960s and 1970s opened up new themes for children’s writers, utilized the first-person narrative almost exclusively, failed to state moral standards and mores even implicitly, let alone explicitly, and broke all language taboos with the liberal use of slang and formerly censored four-letter words” (Murray, 1998, pp. 189–190), some argued that greater surface-level explication masked the perpetuation of old literary ideologies. In a 1975 examination of five popular realistic novels—many of which have also been considered as critical groundbreakers—Gayle Nelson criticized the works for perpetuating outdated gender stereotypes. According to Nelson, even novels that seemed to challenge tradition by addressing teen sexuality and drug experimentation situated their female main characters in “middle class, conventional famil[ies] with a professional father (banker, professor), a socially conscious mother, and they are, in general, the type of people labeled ‘nice’ . . . Most of the high school girls presented are concerned primarily with weight control, clothes, dates, proms, and whatever makes them more attractive and pleasing to boys” (Nelson, 1975, 1980, p. 228). Similarly, while many have noted that the gradual adolescent literary acknowledgement of homosexuality began with the 1969 publication of John Donovan’s I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip, critics Cart and Christine Jenkins also observed that Donovan’s novel and the few similar titles to follow “were marred by stereotypical characters and predictable plots centered on the inherent misery of gay people’s lives” (2006, p. 17). Consequently, as young adult novels published during this period expanded the earlier parameters of adolescent literature in terms of the language of literary explication, the nature of this expansion remained subject to question and critique.

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California • 15 Just as the popularity of Seventeenth Summer led to the publication of imitators of varying quality, the critical consideration and popularity of the realistic young adult novel led to the publication of an imitative type of literature critics called the adolescent “problem novel.” These novels attempted to offer a view of contemporary social issues—teen pregnancy, rape, drug and alcohol use and abuse—through a distinctly adolescent lens and depicted characters struggling with and usually overcoming these problems. Critics of these novels emphasized the novels’ reliance on the prurient motivations of readers interested in depictions of taboo activity and argued, as Cart does, “the subject matter too often became the tail that wagged the dog of the novel” (1996, p. 64). Calling the adolescent problem novels “low mimetic comed[ies]” that were more invested in describing “solutions to those problems, and . . . the integration of the wayward (or waylaid) protagonist into responsible, adult society,” Roger Sutton argued that these popular novels “trad[ed] in tragedy, [albeit] in a very safe way” (1982, pp. 33, 35). Critiques like these did not preclude the genre’s popularity. Maia Pank Mertz and David A. England wrote that “because they deal with relevant issues” the novels are “more appealing to adolescent readers;” however, the authors continued, “many are poorly written or deal with sensationalized topics, such as sex and drugs, only as a means of attracting readers” (1983, pp. 123, 119). Mertz and England’s argument that “such works usually do not appeal to mature readers” (1983, p. 119, emphasis mine) is reminiscent of Alm and Patterson’s observations that most teen readers were indiscriminant selectors of reading material. As such, while “mature readers” may have preferred critically acclaimed young adult fiction, general teen demand for realistic fiction supported the publication of both literary and popular titles.

Changes in the Wind: Popular Paperbacks and the Youth Market Since its introduction in the 1940s, the adolescent fiction market had been supported by both teen readers and adult buyers of young adult literature; teachers and librarians purchased primarily hardcover adolescent fiction for school and public libraries and teen readers consumed these novels as well as the occasional paperback reprint found in the drugstore or newsstand or purchased through a school book club. When, in the 1970s, Bantam Doubleday Dell publisher George Nicholson introduced the young adult paperback original novel, the publishing world of young adult literature expanded to address the teenager more directly as a consumer of teen fiction (Aronson, 2001, p. 56), a move that led to greater emphasis on popular rather than institutional publishing and marketing. Nilson describes the shift this way: Books for teenagers used to be controlled mostly by teachers, librarians, and book reviewers because schools and libraries were the ones who

16 • Reading the Adolescent Romance had the money to purchase books. But within the last decade, funding for schools and libraries has decreased, and business and marketing practices have changed so that publishers now make bigger profits by selling directly to teenagers through shopping-mall bookstores, drug and grocery stores, book clubs, and magazine and direct mail advertisements (1993, p. 81). Coupled with their emergence at a time when the teenage “supply of pocket money became plentiful” and the “rise of the shopping mall as the home away from home of choice for America’s young adults” (Cart, 1996, p. 104), the paperback—inexpensive, attractively designed and easily found on the shelves of shopping mall bookstores—became the format of choice among teen readers. Unlike hardback novels traditionally purchased by libraries only after they “jumped through the . . . . . . hoops” of the “review and library selection process,” the new paperback originals existed primarily in the “open spaces of free-market, ad- and peer-driven reading” (Sutton, 2007, p. 235). Young adult paperback novels were comparatively less expensive to produce and much easier to sell to the growing chain bookstores and their teen consumers than hardback novels were to the youth-serving institutions experiencing late 1970s and early 1980s budget cuts. While, in the past, many publishers had recognized libraries as the primary market for hardback books for young people, Nicholson noted in 1981 that institutions were buying hardbacks “more discriminatingly” (Natov and DeLuca, 1981, p. 95). At the same time, young people were beginning to demonstrate strength as individual consumers of books. “We are now finding,” reported Nicholson, that we don’t need those good reviews [from professional journals like Horn Book and School Library Journal] to sell books, particularly paperbacks . . . . . . if there’s a snappy cover and a good title and particularly if there’s a recognizable author, the book will move without anybody’s recommendation because the kids are making judgments which have nothing to do with whether there is a quotation from Horn Book on the back cover (Natvo and DeLuca, 1981, pp. 94–95). In the interest of “moving” books, publishers began focusing more on selling paperbacks to teen customers in retail outlets than selling to institutional buyers. By 1983, the success of paperbacks in chain bookstores and through school book clubs outpaced hardback publishing to such a degree, wrote Dinah Stevenson, an editor at Knopf and Pantheon, that it had “become more cost efficient for paperback publishers to originate their own projects than to buy the rights to hardcover originals” (Stevenson, 1984, p. 87). Once the format associated with pulps and reprints of hardcover novels, the youth paperback original grew from its late 1970s introduction to become a form associated with profitable and popular publishing for young adults.

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California • 17 The success of the paperback contributed to the growth of young adult fiction; however, during the decade of its initial expansion, librarians and teachers were critical of the form. Originally considered a format associated first with inexpensive reprints of classic novels and then with reprints of modern literature (Ross, 1973, 1978), the original novel in paperback was a dubious proposition for many. Although in the past librarians and teachers selected paperback versions of popular and well-reviewed hardback titles as an economizing measure, the dearth of professional reviews of paperback originals often precluded their institutional purchase. When publishers began to market both the reprints and paperback originals directly to teens, adults, witnessing the growth of the media tie-in paperback market, were convinced that the paperback original market would be a faddish one that would focus on the heavy promotion of ephemeral novels. This concern led to both a professional disregard for material in this format, which librarians and book reviewers presumed were “formula fiction, written to be sold to kids who want another book exactly like the one they just finished” (Nilsen and Donovan, 1985, p. 441). Thus, few review sources dedicated space to the evaluation of original paperback fiction and perpetuated the attitude that paperback originals were not worth adult consideration. The publishers ignored professional disregard in favor of teen consumer support and, as a way of growing what was becoming a profitable teen paperback market, publishers introduced adolescent romance series to their lines, hoping that the teen versions of the genre would be as popular among young readers as they were among adults. This move towards the romance series was motivated by one publisher’s acknowledgement of the general popularity of the genre among teens. After it recognized that teen romance paperbacks were selling well through its Teen Age Book Club, Scholastic became the “fi rst paperback publisher to enter bookstores with romances” and the fi rst to develop its own romance imprint, Scholastic Wildfi re (Pollack, 1981, p. 26). Although, the New York Times reported, initial bookstore sales were slow, after six months in bookstores, novels bearing the Wildfi re imprint “started selling like—well, wildfi re” (Walters, 1981, para. 5). Following the publication and success of Scholastic Wildfi re’s stand-alone romances (the series sold 1.8 million copies of 16 titles in a single year [Cart, 1996, p. 102]), publishers Dell, Bantam and Simon and Schuster introduced their own lines of romance paperbacks. While all of the novels debuted in Book Club catalogs—Scholastic’s novels continued to be sold through its Teen Age Book Club; Dell’s “Young Love” series, Bantam’s “Sweet Dreams” series, and Simon and Schuster’s “First Love” series were sold through the Xerox Education Corporation’s school book club (Madsen, 1981)—the novels soon appeared in bookstores as well. These series, too, were nearly instant successes. In an article in an issue of the journal Interracial Books for Children Bulletin devoted to the discussion of the new romance novels, Selma Lanes called the success of the original paperbacks “the publishing phenomenon

18 • Reading the Adolescent Romance of the decade” (1981, p. 5). Lanes’ comparison of the average print run of a “quality teen novel” to the average romance paperback run revealed the nature of this phenomenon: Romance novel print runs exceeded those of other adolescent fiction by a factor of 25. The novelty of the romance paperbacks may have contributed to their initial popularity; the romance novels represented a distinct departure from the realistic and problem novels of the previous decade, if not a return to the junior novel form of the 1940s and 1950s. Murray judged the publishers’ romances were written “[f]or those who grew tired of the realistic problem novels,” and described them as “a new, revised version of the 1950s high school romance stories” (1998, p. 198). Set in idyllic suburbs and featuring heroines from intact, middle-class families, the novels were, as Scholastic Books editor Ann Reit described them, “non-sexual” novels that “deal[t] mostly with the emotional feelings of a young girl’s first experience in a boy-girl relationship” (Rather, 1982, R25). The contemporary romances adhered to formula in much the same way as the junior novel “girls’ books” did. Kuznets and Zarin describe the formula this way: A basic situation is repeated: a wallflower heroine is initiated into the world of high school dating either by her more worldly well-meaning girl friends or the slightly older, more experienced boy friend. A superficial coating of makeup, a new dress, or the sponsorship of the knowing boy are all it takes to resolve the disabling condition of inexperience, though . . . innocence is never lost (1982, p. 31). To establish each imprint’s “brand” and to ensure a degree of consistency across imprints, writers of the publishers’ romance novels were given “tip sheets” describing the literary parameters—often including the age, social class and even race of the books’ protagonists—established for each series. While the publishers’ tip sheets included essentially the same directives, the imprints did try to distinguish themselves subtly from each other. For example, romances in Scholastic’s Wishing Star series, a spin-off of its Wildfire series, “attempt to deal with such specific ‘problems’ as teenage alcoholism, joint custody, blindness and paraplegia” (Watson, 1981, p. 11), while its Windswept line was “a line of contemporary Gothic romances for teenage girls” that feature “no occult elements” (MacCann, 1981, p. 28). The success of the publishers’ romance series is remarkable as it introduced a new concept of teen book advertising and selling that would influence the young adult literary market. “For the fi rst time,” wrote Pollack, “publishers are vying for the primary market . . . . . . these publishers are beginning to reach past the institutional intermediaries between teenagers and the books published for them” (1981, p. 25). As the sales of the romances expanded from book club to shopping mall, M. Daphne Kutzer noted the novels’ sudden ubiquity:

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California • 19 [B]ooks that once existed in small numbers and that in many locales could be bought only through school clubs and only at specified times (once a month or so) were suddenly available in large numbers, with bright photographic covers of attractive but ordinary girls, in that paradise where contemporary teens spend so much time, the shopping mall (1986, p. 90). While the book club continued to be a significant source of sales, publishers began to market the popular novels more aggressively and mounted advertising campaigns for the publishing lines. Scholastic, the teen romance trend setter, continued to rely upon its book club and “word-of-mouth” to continue its Wildfi re series’ popularity, Simon and Schuster budgeted $1.4 million in advertising to promote its First Love imprint, Silhouette planned to buy advertising space in teen magazines and add promotional content to television advertisements, and Bantam “showed up at teen-age fashion shows presented by Seventeen magazine and handed out several thousand Sweet Dreams books, as well as Sweet Dreams posters and Sweet Dreams nightshirts” (Kleinfield, 1981, D1). These marketing campaigns were unprecedented in young adult publishing and represented not only a change in young adult literature’s historical format—from primarily hardcover to paperback—but also to what Pollack (1981) called a “more profit-intensive” impulse in young people’s publishing. Schools and libraries—the publishers’ institutional customers—were uncertain as to what to do with the romance series. “We endlessly debate the worth and quality of these books,” wrote Sutton, “but most of us do purchase some for our collections . . . most of us do buy at least some books simply because our patrons want them” (1985b, p. 28). The historical association of the paperback format with pulp novels for adults and the growing association of the adolescent paperback with popular and mass market fiction led to a growing division in adolescent publishing and would lead to the association of form—either paperback or hardback—with literary content—either popular or literary. Thus, by the 1980s, Kristin Ramsdell observed, “two types of [paperback] publishing” had developed: “One is concerned with the publishing of the more traditional ‘hardcover in paperback format’ and is aimed at the institutional market. The other is more profit-intensive, producing slick, well-packaged series of books intended for direct retail sale to teenagers” (1983, p. 175). Ultimately, Sutton concluded, “just because we have to purchase [paperback romances] (and I think we do) does not mean we have to like them” (1985, p. 29). The growth of the adolescent paperback market led to the gradual division of young adult fiction into mass market retail and institutional sales categories and displaced some of the power institutions had wielded over young adult publishing. When professionals and institutions were the primary purchasers of adolescent fiction and a novel’s success was directly linked to its

20 • Reading the Adolescent Romance acclaim in the professional review media, these same professionals—acting as selectors or reviewers—could both determine a novel’s success and influence the production of future novels in the same vein. Most importantly, however, the selections made by these professionals began to take on symbolic weight, as these selectors’ opinions—as they were displayed in their hardback collections—informed public judgments of taste. While, outside of the literary boundaries set in public and school library collections, young readers continued to exhibit a taste for the popular novels and comics not present in library collections, it wasn’t until the buying power of the demographic exceeded that of the adults selecting material on their behalf that the world of publishing for adolescents changed. Associated with the (presumed less cultivated) youth market, paperbacks for young adults—and paperback originals in particular—grew to represent sub-standard literature with mass, rather than considered appeal. The new romance novels fell distinctly within the realm of the popular and sub-standard. Initially produced in response to adolescent demand (determined by book club sales), the paperback novels existed and thrived outside of the institutions built to instruct and socialize youth.

From Stand-Alone Romance to Romance Series: Introducing “Sweet Valley High” By 1981, the teenage paperback market—and the romance paperback market and publisher imprint series—was recognized as what Pamela Pollack called a “lucrative ‘growth’ industry” (1981, p. 25). In comparison to the 7,500-copy average print run for what Selma Lanes called a “quality” teen novel, paperback romance series were being printed in runs between 150,000 and 200,000 copies (1981). The success of the series led to their ubiquity in the marketplace which, in turn, reinforced their popularity among teen consumers. This popularity was troublesome to many of the romance novels’ critics who, like Pollack, argued that “mass-market paperback publishers give teens what they ‘want’ as determined by market research, rather than what they ‘need’ based on their problems as reflected by social statistics” (1981, p. 28). This “want” was in many ways created and sustained by the publishing companies who, Mary M. Huntwork observed about Bantam books, “targeted an audience, determined what that audience wanted, and made it readily and widely available” (1990, p. 138). Arguing that the mass market publishers’ focus on teen consumers was akin to the mid-century appeal to parents to buy books for their children and that the subsequent increase in the sale of children’s material earned publishers extra money that “attracted better writers to the field resulting in more and better books for both home and school use,” Nilsen and Donelson postulated, “Perhaps the direct marketing of fiction to teenagers will have an equally happy ending” (1985, pp. 436, 437). The happy ending for Bantam was decidedly different than Nilsen and Donelson predicted;

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California • 21 however, there is little doubt that the success of Bantam’s Sweet Dreams series led the publisher to take a chance with the less-conventional series that would earn more money, greater readership, popular acclaim and critical disdain, “Sweet Valley High.” Prior to Bantam’s establishment of “Sweet Valley High,” teenage romance novels, like the Harlequin novels published for adults, were identified primarily by publisher imprint and not necessarily as distinct fictional series. That is, while the novels produced for Sweet Dreams or Wildfire or Wishing Star may have adhered to tropes of the genre or subgenre associated with the imprint and may have featured a characteristic cover logo or design, with the exception of one or two books, none of the novels related internally, none featured the same characters. When, in 1983, author Francine Pascal proposed a romance series that would operate more conventionally—featuring a central and unchanging cast of characters—but that would be constructed soapopera style and feature cliff-hangers at the end of each novel, the idea was both distinct enough to stand out among the bounty of paperback romances, but familiar enough not to exclude readers and fans of the romance genre. Pascal, a writer with a history of writing for magazines and television, had already published three novels for young people, Hangin’ Out with Cici (1977), My First Love and Other Disasters (1979) and The Hand-me-down Kid (1981) (n.a., 1995a, p. 171). Initially, Pascal had wanted to produce a television soapopera for teenagers—she had already written scripts for an adult soap opera called The Young Marrieds and had participated in the transformation of two of her novels for young people (The Hand-me-down Kid and Hangin’ Out with Cici) into ABC Afterschool Specials—however, when an editor suggested she propose the idea as a book series, Bantam “immediately” bought the project (n.a., 1995a, p. 177). Titled “Sweet Valley High,” the novel series featured two heroines: gorgeous and popular sixteen-year-old Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, twin sisters whose identical appearance belied their opposing personalities. The broad but extreme characterization of the series protagonists, combined with Pascal’s plan to have “each book . . . have to be a complete story in itself, but with a hook ending to lead you to the sequel” (n.a., 1995a, p. 177), expanded the series’ prospects for Bantam. While the individual stories would be as satisfying as Bantam’s free-standing romance novels, the cliffhanger endings of each novel would encourage serial reading. Bantam books’ experience with producing and marketing its Sweet Dreams imprint informed its production of the “Sweet Valley High” series. Like Bantam’s Sweet Dreams novels, the “Sweet Valley High” books were “packaged products” of Bantam, produced in conjunction with book packager Cloverdale Press and Daniel Weiss Associates; however, while Bantam’s Sweet Dreams novels were credited to individually named authors, the Sweet Valley novels were all attributed to both Pascal (she is listed as the series’ creator on each book cover) and “Kate William,” the pseudonym accorded to the authors of each installment. In her role as creator, Pascal supplied an outline for each novel while

22 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Cloverdale managed the authors hired to write the series, edited the books and then designed the covers and aided with the series’ marketing (Crossen, 1988, para. 16). Just as the authors of the Sweet Dreams novels followed a “tip sheet” describing the acceptable parameters of the romance, the authors hired to write each “Sweet Valley High” installment followed Pascal’s outlines, and referred to the series’ “bible” (“a long, detailed guide spelling out the themes, characters and settings” that endure across the novels) to construct each story (Dougherty, 1988, para. 4). Sutton cites the influence of Edward Stratemeyer, the creator of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series, on this assembly-line process, arguing that this “unique division of labor is a trademark of the book-packaging industry, which has a great deal to do with the current volume of YA series publishing” (1985, p. 27). Indeed, the “Sweet Valley High” novels contributed to what Sutton called the “volume” of YA publishing; Pascal’s partnership with Bantam, Cloverdale and Daniel Weiss Associates allowed her to introduce one new novel—in initial print runs of 350,000 (Crossen, 1988)—each month. Bantam’s plan for marketing “Sweet Valley High” was informed by its campaign for Sweet Dreams as well and began with the creation of a characteristic cover design for the series. Quoting Bantam’s Judy Gitenstein, Huntwork writes that, with the success of the Sweet Dreams series still fresh, “by the time Sweet Valley High was ready [in 1983], the marketing department was more than ready to deal with it aggressively” (1990, p. 138). Like many of the publisher romance novels—including Bantam’s Sweet Dreams novels—the cover images of the first editions of the “Sweet Valley” series featured “medium shot” images of that installment’s main characters (either the Wakefield twins together or one of the twins and a friend) against a neutral background. Where the images gracing the publishers’ romance covers were photographs of fashionably dressed young women, the “Sweet Valley” covers featured photorealistic paintings of the main characters in an oval frame, the top of which was emblazoned with the series’ “Sweet Valley High” logo. This frame was placed against a pastel background—the color of which varied from book to book—and beneath which that volume’s title was placed. This decision to use paintings rather than photographs was a considered one. “Designers at Scholastic and Bantam [grew to] consider color portraits with photographic realism more romantic looking” (1990, p. 138), Huntwork observed, and they relied on this new technique to illustrate the “Sweet Valley” series. Like the Sweet Dreams series, the “Sweet Valley High” books were numbered; however, where the numbers on the “Sweet Dreams” book covers merely reminded a reader that there were other, similar romances to read, the “Sweet Valley High” volume numbers suggested an orderly progression through the books. To emphasize the importance of reading in order, the volume number of each “Sweet Valley” book was placed in the upper left corner of the cover and highlighted with a graphic depiction of a pennant. Although Children’s Literature Review argues that the “Sweet Valley” novels can be “credited with opening the market for formula fiction for their

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California • 23 audience” (n.a. 1991, p. 175), the publisher series and romance imprints truly “opened the market” and worked to set the stage for Pascal’s series’ success. It is clear that the “Sweet Valley High” novels are indebted to the romance series; as Norma Pecora argued, each “is simply an overlay onto the original teen romance genre, consequently, all the Sweet Valley books are romance novels first, building on all the conventions of a romance novel” (1999, p. 55). Although the “Sweet Valley” series focused primarily on its twin protagonists, love or the search for love—by Elizabeth and Jessica or by their friends— motivated most of the books’ plots. Like the series romances, the “Sweet Valley High” plots fit the formula described by Christine Madsen in a Christian Science Monitor article critical of the teen romance genre: “The girl always ends up with the boy of her dreams, or with someone even better. Along the way, she may work out a problem of some sort, ranging from the agony of being too beautiful, to painful shyness, to her parents’ divorce” (1981, B14). While Pascal publicly compared her series to the writing of Danielle Steele and Stratemeyer’s Nancy Drew novels, the author maintained that her “Sweet Valley High” were not merely “Harlequins for teenagers:” “Harlequins are slow, they don’t have a lot of plot,” argued Pascal, claiming that contemporary readers “would not have any interest in the romantic adult series, ‘because nothing happens’” (Pisik, 1989, para. 42, 43). The “Sweet Valley High” novels, Pascal has claimed, represent “the essence of high school. The world outside is just an adult shadow going by” (Dougherty, 1988, para. 6). Although the “Sweet Valley High” series was similar in appearance and content to the already popular stand-alone romances that constituted the publishers’ series, it was the soap-opera style storylines—complete with end-of-the-book cliffhangers—that distinguished Pascal’s books and, perhaps, hooked readers. In an article discussing the series’ success, Crossen observed, “Sweet Valley’s greatest appeal, both as fiction and business, lies in its continuing cast of characters and each book’s hook ending” (1988, p. 1). Although each installment of the series resolved an essential romantic confl ict, the fi nal chapter of each book introduced a new problem promised to be addressed in the next episode/volume. For example, the conclusion of the fi rst book in the series describes Elizabeth’s return home following a successful date with Todd, the boy whose love she won in the novel’s essential conclusion, and “the sharp ring of the doorbell” that indicated a surprise visitor (William, 1983a, p. 182). The visitor turns out to be Elizabeth’s best friend, Enid, who, through tears, confesses, “Something terrible has happened. I can’t even tell you, it’s so awful . . . I’m afraid I’m going to lose everything” (William, 1983a, p. 182). Following that pronouncement, an italicized paragraph reads: What is the dark mystery in Enid’s past, and how does Jessica use it to her own advantage? Find out in Sweet Valley High #2, SECRETS (William, 1983a, p. 182).

24 • Reading the Adolescent Romance A cliffhanger and advertisement all in one, this conclusion characterized the endings of each novel in the series. Sutton reluctantly admitted that what he called this “soap-opera suspense” was effective: “The links between successive volumes are clever, and you really want to know (the way you really want to know about Dynasty’s Alexis Colby) what Jessica is going to pull next” (1985, p. 27). With the exception of its cliffhanger endings and its soap-operatic structure, little else can be said to be innovative about the “Sweet Valley High” series. Each novel clearly followed the romantic template established by the teen romance imprints and which, critics of the teen romance argued, was influenced by the adolescent romance novels of the 1940s and 1950s. Although it relied on realistic illustration rather than photograph, each installment of “Sweet Valley High” had a characteristic cover look and demonstrated a kind of branding associated with the earlier publisher romance lines. Even the literal creation of the series—ghostwritten by authors-for-hire paid to follow an outline and adhere to a specific style—is reminiscent not only of the 1980s teen romances, but also of the syndicate publication style of Edward Stratemeyer. Pascal’s series’ success can be attributed to both its timely publication and its adherence to and very slight manipulation of a recognized and popular standard. Published at a time when what Cart (1996) calls the “retail market for young adult books” was changing and shifting its focus from institution to consumer, the “Sweet Valley” novels appealed to the audience that had been pre-captured by the earlier romance imprints. The comparatively tame content of the “Sweet Valley” novels continued to pacify readers (and even critics) overwhelmed by the realistic fiction of the 1960s and 1970s. The series’ emphasis on itself as a series, its appeal to and encouragement of continual, completist, and orderly reading, and the eventual development of stand-alone “super editions” (longer novels featuring the “Sweet Valley” characters) that rewarded devotees represent what would seem to be minor adjustments to a strategic marketing and packaging plan that had performed profitably in the past and that, with Pascal’s series, exceeded expectations. As young readers became aware of and began reading the new series, “Sweet Valley High” began to, claimed Roger Sutton (quoted in the Washington Times), “fi ll a social need, providing a group of kids with currency for conversation” (Pisik, 1989, para. 36). Thus, the rapid development of the series and its quick publication pace allowed the novels and characters to become evolving topics of conversation among readers. While the first popular romance novels were formulated to help develop an expanding market of young readers, the “Sweet Valley High” novels deliberately capitalized on established reader interests and ignored institutional promotion opportunities in favor of direct marketing to young people. In this way, the “Sweet Valley High” books aided in the re-recognition of adolescents as a reading audience. The initial recognition of adolescents as a demographic and reading audience occurred in the early and mid-twentieth century, when

Now Entering Sweet Valley, California • 25 economic depression forced more young people into secondary schools and the literal population of adolescents increased. While this population growth spurred a new market in publishing and led to both the establishment of the young adult novel and a recognition of adolescents as a distinct reading audience, the primary selectors, purchasers and arbiters of this new literature were adults. Fifty years later, as funding for the institutions that once supported the adult purchase of adolescent fiction dwindled, the publishing industry shifted its focus to young people and, as this generation exercised its buying power, the distinct popular and literary categories of adolescent fiction emerged, associated with the paperback and hardback forms respectively. While the success of genre fiction and the new direct-to-teen marketing campaigns invited questions related to potential teen manipulation and exploitation, these critiques were issued primarily by adults on behalf of teens who, by exercising their buying power, spoke with a single voice about their preferences.

Chapter Two A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California: The Ideological Content of Francine Pascal’s Series

In the 1980s, young adult literature seemed to revisit its own past as the popular novels in this literary category shifted focus from realism to romance and publishers produced series of stand-alone romance novels in the junior novel tradition. Critics of the new, popular romance novels argued that the oldfashioned content of these books reproduced a conservative fantasy of American family life that—unlike the realistic young adult fiction of the previous decade—ignored contemporary social problems affecting teens as well as both the struggles and accomplishments of the civil rights and feminist movements of the second wave. Appearing at the height of this popular romantic “turn” in young adult fiction, “Sweet Valley High” can be considered beside the publishers’ romance novels it resembled and from which it clearly drew inspiration. As the popularity of publishers’ romances waned and the “Sweet Valley High” series continued, Pascal’s novels moved away from the romantic fantasy plots associated with the publishers’ romances and began to address some of the social issues affecting youth during that period. This shift—from purely romantic to more realistic content—provides for opportunity to examine both what Peter Hollindale calls the ideological “commonalities of an age” reflected in both the romance novels and the Sweet Valley series as well as what the critic calls the “intended surface ideology” of the texts—those beliefs or “lessons” the author or literary producer might wish to impart to readers and which appeared with greater frequency once the series began to address social issues directly. Recognizing, as Hollindale argues, that “a large part of any book is written not by its author but by the world its author lives in” (1988, 1992, p. 32), the criticism of literature often involves consideration of “the world [an] author 27

28 • Reading the Adolescent Romance lives in” and the ways in which that world’s political and social ideologies might be absorbed and reflected by its literature. While Terry Eagleton warns that “the notion of a direct, spontaneous relation between text and history . . . belongs to a naïve empiricism which is to be discarded” (1990, p. 70), John Stephens argues that “ideology is implicit in the way the story an audience derives from a text exists as an isomorph of events in the actual world” (1992, p. 2); thus, the “actual world”—or its literary representation—becomes a referent in any text that situates its story within a fictionalized “real” world. Using Stephens’ definitions of “story” (“what we might roughly think of as ‘what certain characters do in a certain place at a certain time’” [1992, p. 17]) and “discourse” (“the complex process of encoding that story which involves choices of vocabulary, of syntax, or order of presentation, of how the narrating voice is to be orientated towards what is narrated and towards the implied audience, and so on” [1992, 17]), I argue that the “Sweet Valley High” series reflects what was, at the time of the series’ initial publication, a politically conservative ideology ascending in the “real” world outside of the text. The series’ ideological orientation is visible through its reference to and manipulation of what Stephens might call “discursive” conventions associated with the popular romance novels published prior and concurrent with the series as well as by its manipulation of “story” to, in the example referenced here, reflect a moral panic occurring outside of the series text.

Considering Context: Young Adult Literature and Society As Eagleton argues previously and Linda K. Christian-Smith, in her examination of young adult romance novels across three historical periods, maintains, literary works are not direct representations of reality nor should they be read as evidence of history; however, they can “construct meaning” and “articulate the tensions and contradictions within a society” (Christian-Smith, 1990, p. 117). The nature of these articulations is of particular importance in an examination of young people’s fiction as, Stephens writes, “children’s fiction belongs firmly within the domain of cultural practices which exist for the purpose of socializing their target audience” (1992, p. 8). That literature for the young is often judged in terms of “appropriateness” to the audience—itself often a judgment of the correctness of models of attitude or behavior put forth in a young person’s book—underscores Stephens’ argument that “writing for children is usually purposeful, its intention being to foster in the child reader a positive apperception of some socio-cultural values, which, it is assumed, are shared by author and audience” (1992, p. 3). In the world of children’s and young adult literary criticism, the most virulent critique emerges when the “socio-cultural values” ascribed to a literary work’s author or creator (which, Stephens, Christian-Smith, Eagleton and others argue are present as ideology in any text) confl ict with those of the

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 29 critical reading audience. For example, much of the criticism of the publishers’ romance novels erupted, in the early 1980s, as a reaction against what critics charged were the conservative socio-cultural values perpetuated by the novels. That, the same critics charged, the popular romance novels represented publishers’ political responses to and repudiations of the increasingly explicit adolescent fiction of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, demonstrates the dialogic nature of what Christian-Smith calls fictional “articulations” of “tensions and contradictions within a society.” A brief discussion of these confl icts will highlight the political and social environment in which the publishers’ romance novels appeared and which, I argue, informed the discursive and story content of the “Sweet Valley High” series. Academic and popular critics argue that the early 1980s re-introduction and subsequent success of popular romance novels for teens were dependent on distinct literary and cultural circumstances. The publishing world’s popularization of the paperback novel for teens and its successful introduction of young adult literature to drug stores and shopping mall bookstores at a time when teenagers were considered, as Michael Cart writes, “America’s arch-consumers” (1996, p. 104), serves as one example of the confluence of supply and opportunity that fed the success of the romance novel. That the new romances more closely resembled the junior novel romances of the 1940s and 1950s than the more realistic fiction produced for young people in the 1970s added to their novelty and appeal. While these factors give credit to the literary marketplace for targeting an audience and preparing new material to attract its shifting allegiances, many critics of the romance novels considered their creation an expression of the ascendant conservatism of the time period. Christian-Smith writes: Teen romance fiction appeared at the moment of the shift in the political climate of the United States to conservatism. I am not implying an outright conspiracy here. Rather, many segments of the culture industry, particularly publishing, have been acquired by multinational corporations whose interests are politically conservative. These interests make their way into publishing through business practices and the very content of books (1993b, p. 47). While Christian-Smith is careful to avoid “implying an outright conspiracy” in her critique, other critics of the romance novels—most notably the Council on Interracial Books for Children, who devoted an entire issue of their journal, Interracial Books for Children Bulletin, to criticism of the novels—supported Christian-Smith’s claim. Early critics of the publishers’ romances initially argued that these novels— which ignored the social problems on which the young adult fiction of the 60s and 70s had capitalized in favor of light and formulaic romance plots—were written as direct responses to the frank and often challenging realistic fiction

30 • Reading the Adolescent Romance of the previous decades. Wendy Smith, writing for Publishers’ Weekly about the romance fiction trend, summarized the argument: “Everyone agrees that romances sprang in part out of a reaction against the problem novels of the ‘70s” (1981, p. 58). According to Ray Walters, in his “Paperback Talk” column for the New York Times, it was in part the “grass roots” efforts of booksellers that motivated such a reaction. Walters wrote, “Back in 1979, a number of booksellers told representatives of Scholastic [the company responsible for the Wildfire romance series] . . . how uneasy they were about the hyper-realistic stories they had to sell to teenagers” (1981, p. 35). Pamela Pollack noted an additional constituency expressing concern for realistic fiction: “[t]he hardcover problem novel is an increasing bad odor with parents, who say they don’t want the ‘muck’ of reality spilling over their children” (1984, p. 26). The novels associated with the publishers’ romance lines made little if any mention of what Pollack called the “muck of reality”; their absence of such “muck” was, against the backdrop of the realistic fiction of the earlier decade, a clear appeal to the adult critics of the young adult novels of the previous decade. This growing “uneasiness” with the contents of realistic adolescent fiction and the YA problem novel—a feeling attributed equally to teen readers, their parents, publishers, booksellers, librarians and teachers—aligned with what, in the early 1980s, was a growing political and social movement to recover what some critics argued was a “disappearing” childhood. Articles in newspapers, weekly magazines and even nonfiction tomes addressed public concern for the contemporary generation of youth whose natural innocence and optimism, experts argued, had been compromised by a lack of parental guidance and exposure to inappropriate media. Marie Winn’s Children without Childhood and Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood, published in 1981 and 1982, respectively, each posited that the concept of childhood innocence was quickly disappearing and implicated the media—including contemporary children’s and young adult literature—in this disappearance. Unlike the children’s books “about fairies and animals, about other children engaged in the innocent pleasures of childhood” Winn associated with a bygone and golden era, contemporary books for youth “prepare[d] young children for future complexities in an increasingly troubled society” (1981a, p. 15). Postman’s ominous pronouncement that “Our culture is not big enough for both Judy Blume and Walt Disney” (1982, p. 125) foreshadowed Winn’s prediction that the culture that fails to choose between Blume and Disney also abdicates its responsibility for child safety: As we make the transition from an era of separation and protection of children to one in which children are once again incorporated early into a less-differentiated society, we cannot fail to observe that child abuse, child neglect, child exploitation are again on the rise, and that the lives of great numbers of children have become more difficult (Winn, 1981a, p. 15).

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 31 While Winn’s and Postman’s arguments regarding the influence of media on the young did not represent new thinking—critics and sociologists had been lamenting the content of youth media and young people’s access to adult media for decades—the appearance of these public and popular arguments coincided not only with emerging professional criticism and consideration of realistic fiction—in what seemed to be terms of its innocence-shattering potential—but also with a growing concern for the young people whose fictional surrogates might lie between the pages of such challenging adolescent literature. While Postman’s and Winn’s arguments regarding the influence of new media made oblique reference to and cast vague blame upon the parents who had come of age in the 1960s and 1970s for encouraging the “disappearance” of childhood, the news media, holding up data describing the decade’s increasing number of teen mothers and growing incidence of divorce, argued for the reconsideration of the “liberal” childhoods and morals that generation was passing down to the next. In a special series of articles about “today’s youth” for the Washington Post, Dan Morgan compared the children of the 1960s and 1970s to the child of the 1980s, seemingly blaming what he calls the “more open and tolerant society” created by the previous generation for the contemporary youth crisis: Out of [the 1960s and 1970s] came a far more open and tolerant society than existed in the 50s . . . young people found themselves growing up in a world of expanded options and opportunities . . . But the shifts left teenagers growing up in the 1980s in a curious limbo. In some respects they live an existence that is more “adult” than their parents did as teenagers . . . but at the same time, “youth” can seem interminable to young people who now mature earlier, engage in more adult activities—but must stay in school longer because of the requirements of the economy (1981b, para. 29–31). Newsweek took a more dramatic tack and described these teenagers “in limbo” as “reckless sybarites,” blaming their behavior on “fallout from the decade’s great social upheavals: women’s liberation, the exploding divorce rate, the decline of parental and institutional authority, the widespread acceptance of ‘living together’—and the swift media reflection of those trends” (Gelman, 1980, para. 7). Expressing agreement with other media sources, U.S. News and World Report asserted that this “new generation of American teenagers is deeply troubled . . . alienation and a lack of clear moral standards now prevail to the point where individual lives, families and in some cases whole communities are threatened” (Wellborn, 1981, para. 5). As with Winn’s and Postman’s arguments, the public debate about the future of young people coming of age in the 1980s was not a new one; in this articulation, however, the “openness,” “tolerance” and “liberation” associated with the social movements of

32 • Reading the Adolescent Romance the previous generation would become points of contention, just as similar disdain for the “openness,” frankness and explication found in the young adult literature of the 1960s and 1970s emerged. As media outlets charged the children of the 1960s with the disappearance of the child of the 1980s, Americans looked back on the post-World War II era as a period of comparative safety borne of social and familial stability. As incidents of divorce rose in the U.S., Lorraine Fox Harding writes, “Family change away from the model apparently current in the 1950s, of male breadwinner, economically dependent female home-maker, with low divorce and ‘illegitimacy’ levels, was blamed as the root cause of many social problems” (1988, p. 120), and a return to the mid-century model of family and society began to seem more attractive. This argument coincided with the increasingly voluble pro-family argument associated with the growing New Right. Larry Grossberg describes what was, in the early 1980s, a new critique of the modern family: “according to many conservatives, the failure of the family is the result of the failure of the baby boomers to leave behind the values and cultures of the 1960s and to enter into stable and traditional nuclear families” (2005, p. 99). To save the family—which, many liberals and conservatives agreed, represented the essential structuring agent of a modern society—Americans would have to, as Grossberg noted, leave the social revolution behind. Thus, as media critics like Winn and Postman argued that American childhood was “disappearing” as a result of rapid technological and social change and popular media outlets lamented the attendant disintegration of the family, many Americans longed for the stability they associated with the post-World War II generation. That recently inaugurated President Reagan had, as part of his campaign strategy, “embraced the defense of the ‘traditional American family’” (Hornblower, 1980, para. 1) added an overt political dimension to this cultural nostalgia. This longing to return to an idealized past was reflected in the new young adult romance novels of the 1980s that, critics argued, were “eerie replication[s] of . . . the forties and fifties romances” (Cart, 1996, p. 99). The publishers’ romances, wrote Kristin Ramsdell, “have many characteristics in common with their earlier relatives” including “plot, theme, setting, characterization and general style” (1983, p. 176). Unlike their problem novel counterparts, the heroines of the new romance novels were ignorant of contemporary social issues related to race, class or gender inequity and, as Silhouette editor-in-chief Karen Solem maintains, weren’t “worried about how far to go on a date . . . They’re worried about getting a date” (quoted in Pollack, 1981, p. 27). While many critics noted the stylistic similarities among the different decades’ romance novels, critic and historian Gail Murray linked the appearance of the 1980s romance to the nation’s political climate. Writing that “the 1980s presented a new, revised version of the 1950s high school romance stories,” Murray argued, “Just as the politics of the Reagan years repudiated much of the social activism of the previous two decades, so the

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 33 new romance novels retreated from social problems to gendered, comfortable, feel-good topics” (1998, p. 198). Although reviews of the publishers’ romance novels were critical of the novels’ unchallenging prose and formulaic plots, academic and cultural critics were equally wary of what many argued was the conservative bent of the stories. Lois Kuznets and Eve Zarin summarized what they called the “self evident” criticisms of the novels: In the opinion of many recent reviewers of these “teenage” romances, such works represent a step backwards in content and philosophy, as well as a step downwards in style: their world is lily white, socially homogenous, economically untroubled, and supported of traditional, even reactionary, values and roles (1982, p. 28). Christian-Smith’s critique of the novels was more direct. In a comparative study of romance novels published during three historical periods, ChristianSmith judged that “[t]he New Right themes of anti-ERA, pro-life, familyprotection legislations, male breadwinners, female chastity and domesticity” were emphasized in those novels published between 1980–1982 in the stories’ “elevation of domesticity and a de-emphasis on sexuality and waged work” (1988, p. 95). The reappearance of these themes—which Christian-Smith compares to the themes of mid-century romances—“represent[s] the strong re-emergence of traditional views of femininity that have dominated all the books right from the beginning” (Christian-Smith, 1988, p. 95). ChristianSmith’s criticism echoed the judgment made earlier by the Council on Interracial Books for Children in its 1981 editorial “About Romance Series”: “The new wave of pre-teen and teen romances . . . can . . . be viewed as one of many efforts our patriarchal system is making to maintain power over women’s lives . . . These books are . . . but one manifestation of the conservative, turn-backthe-clock attitudes gaining acceptance today” (p. 3). Literature—and, more narrowly, popular literature, romance and the “Sweet Valley High” series—serves as evidence of historicity, but not as documentary evidence of history. The worlds presented in fiction, as M. Daphne Kutzer argues they are presented in teen romance fiction, are “familiar and recognizable, though fictional” and, through the incorporation of realistic details (like the brand names associated with clothing or soda) seem “both far enough away and close enough to home to be attractive” (1986, p. 91). Romance novels, Christian-Smith argues, “present imaginative resolutions to gender relations, allaying fears and creating hope and desire, along with reconciling readers to dominant social relations of gender, class, race, age and sexuality” (1990, p. 127). That is, as literature serves its “reconciliation” function, it suggests fictional but desirable ways in which one might function within the inescapable modern world. That these suggestions ultimately, as Christian-Smith argues, “reconcile readers to dominant social relations”

34 • Reading the Adolescent Romance introduces an ideological element to the text and suggests a political investment in the texts’ cultivation of what Kutzer calls an “attractive” literary world that Christian-Smith asserts “allay[s] fears” and cultivates “hope and desire.” Amy Benfer’s analysis of the “Sweet Valley High” series demonstrates Kutzer’s and Christian-Smith’s arguments as it describes the series’ representation of the world in which it was created and in which its characters were situated: When the novels debuted in 1983, our president was a Hollywood cowboy; Christie Brinkley was our supermodel, and our mythmakers were busy trying to get us all, once again, to dream the golden California dream . . . You won’t fi nd out much about how actual people live by reading serial fiction from random decades. But you will find out how they aspire to live: the houses they must build, clothes they must wear, and cars they must drive to become the Joneses; what their mothers are telling them about modesty, boys, and sex; who they are supposed to marry and what jobs they are supposed to take and how, exactly, they are supposed to get there (2003/2004, pp. 53, 47–48). According to Benfer, the “Sweet Valley” series does not (and did not) necessarily reflect the world as it is (was), but, instead, imagined a world that could be, and, as such, shaped the dreams of its readers. Because these imaginings are not, Christian-Smith and others argue, innocent or altruistic constructions but instead reflect and reproduce political relations and contestations outside of the text, it is useful to consider, for example, the way “Sweet Valley High” encoded the dreams it described.

From Romance: Sweet Valley High, Discourse and Family Although “Sweet Valley High” would, as its production and publication continued, begin to incorporate discussion of contemporary social issues within its plots, the first novels were, as Norma Pecora writes, “unrepentant romance novels” (1999, p. 55). Like the publishers’ individual romance novels, each installment of Pascal’s series focused on either a character’s search for love, his or her investment in maintaining a continuing romance, or that character’s attempt to overcome a problem or difficulty that barred his or her achievement of romantic relationship. As a series of romance novels, “Sweet Valley High” was, as Janice Radway argues romance novels in general are, exemplary of an “ideologically conservative form” (1984, p. 17) that, as John Willinsky and R. Mark Hunniford write, “contribute[s]. . . . . . to the reproduction of a patriarchal society which both creates the need for these vicarious pleasures [romance novels] and meets them in a way that perpetuates the inequities” (1993, p. 91). The “Sweet Valley High” series participated in the process Willinsky and Hunniford describe, congratulating the traditional American family at a time when its traditional constitution was being questioned. Just as the publishers’ romance

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 35 novels emphasized the traditional family lauded by the New Right and depicted the “two-parent family [as] the right one, and all others [as] atypical and less desirable” (Wigutoff, 1981, p. 17), Pascal’s novels placed particular discursive emphasis on family and its ideal constitution, demonstrating the influence of an historical conservatism invested in “family values” and existent outside the world of the text. Like the romance novels, the “Sweet Valley High” series presented its heroines’ traditional family as an ideal and, by comparing these central figures to secondary characters whose conflicts seemed to emerge from familial disruption or were considered an attendant result of familial deviation from tradition, underscored the “desirability” of the traditional status quo. The “Sweet Valley High” series is ostensibly about the romances and exploits of sixteen-year-old twin protagonists Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield; however, the twins’ family—consisting of a successful lawyer father, interior designer mother, college student brother and the twins—plays a significant role. Throughout the series, the Wakefield family is depicted as what Benfer calls the “new American ideal of the democratic working family” (2003/2004, p. 49). “In the same decade that brought us the Keatons (Mom’s an architect; Dad worked for PBS) and the Huxtables (lawyer; doctor) the hottest family was one in which both parents were working in chic professions,” Benfer notes (2003/2004, pp. 48–49). Benfer’s comparison of the Wakefields to the fictional Huxtable family depicted in “The Cosby Show” draws attention to the Wakefield’s fictional function. Like “The Cosby Show,” which, “Given the troubled condition of many American families in the 1980s,” Ella Taylor writes, “answers to a sense of distress about family life while articulating the fundamentalist rhetoric found in many areas of public and private life today” (1989, p. 25), the “Sweet Valley High” series addresses this “distress about family life” by comparing depictions of “distressed” families to the Wakefield ideal. While divorce and stepfamilies may foil the friends of the Wakefield twins, these “problems that bedevil other families” function in the “Sweet Valley High” series as Taylor argues they do in “The Cosby Show:” they “cast a brief shadow, but then slink away, intimidated by the fortress of Huxtable togetherness” (1989, p. 26). Or, as Benfer writes, “in practically every [Sweet Valley] novel, some hapless outside family is held up to, and falls pitifully short of, the Wakefield ideal” (2003/2004, p. 49). This repeated plotline addresses and attempts to solve what Taylor argues was then a growing concern about family life by, as Willinsky and Hunniford argue, meeting the needs of these concerns with the “vicarious pleasures” that confirm what Taylor terms the “fundamentalist rhetoric” related to the traditional family. Originally published in 1985, volume 25 of the series, Nowhere to Run, exemplifies the series’ method of comparing the Wakefields—as the “golden ideal” of what Benfer termed the “democratic working family”—to a less functioning contemporary model. In this installment, the Wakefield family—including their paternal grandparents—offer shelter and advice to Emily Mayer, one of the twins’ friends who, following a fight with her stepmother over the care of her stepsister, has run away from home. When Emily reveals

36 • Reading the Adolescent Romance that she plans to travel to Chicago to fi nd the mother who abandoned her family when she was young, Mrs. Wakefield muses, “I wish I could imagine a happy outcome to this story, but it strikes me that a mother who’s been out of touch for so long might not be overjoyed to find her full-grown daughter on her doorstep, out of the blue” (William, 1986b, p. 135). That Emily had delivered herself to the Wakefields’ doorstep (where Mrs. Wakefield, in a sub-plot, has been struggling to stay “in touch” with her children), practically “out of the blue,” leads, naturally, to a “happy outcome.” Following a call from Elizabeth (made on the advice of Mrs. Wakefield), Emily’s father, stepmother and baby sister come to make amends. And, although the early chapters of the book establish that Emily’s father had, prior to his remarriage, “been wonderful to his only child” and had “tri[ed] his hardest to be both mother and father to her” (William, 1986b, p. 14), it is only when Emily’s family features two parents—and bears closer resemblance to the Wakefield clan—does Emily finally feel “that she was part of a family, a real family, with a father and a mother” (William, 1986b, p. 145, emphasis in original). While Nowhere to Run concludes with the image of two happy families— the Wakefields and the Mayers—the specter of Emily’s runaway mother and the initial Mayer family disintegration looms large over this installment. Emily’s mother’s absence allows the volume to articulate what Kutzer argues are the teen romance novel’s two characteristic divorce plots, narrative conceits that emphasize “the ideal of the perfect family”: “In teen romance, divorced parents and their children tend to be working constructively towards either reunification or towards the creation of a new and more stable family” (1986, p. 91). With every mention of Emily’s birth mother, a nameless woman who “had just taken off one day, leaving Emily and her father alone” (William, 1986b, p. 14), familial reunification becomes less and less likely and, if this episode of the series is to achieve the consonant closure that is the hallmark of the romance, the necessity to stabilize Emily’s “new” family becomes paramount. The stakes attached to Emily’s new family’s harmony are high: “Mr. Mayer loved Karen so much that he was blind to weaknesses in her character” and, “especially after what had happened with her mother” (William, 1986b, pp. 17, 14), Emily is determined that her father remain happy. Emily’s investment in the maintenance of the “new and more stable family” restored at the end of the novel is described in a dramatic form that emphasizes the preciousness of the family that Emily describes is “like [a] photograph:” “They were all going to stay together,” Emily tells herself, “They were going to make it work . . . And nothing would ever separate them, not as long as they lived!” (William, 1986b, p. 146). Nowhere to Run resolves the divorce “problem” by allowing Emily to recognize the joy found in the ideal albeit reconstituted family, described in the series as a “real family, with a father and a mother.” This resolution frees Emily to enjoy what emerges as a reward for her effort: a romantic relationship with Dan, a male friend whose advances she rebuffed after he witnessed a fight

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 37 between her and her stepmother. Following the argument—during which Karen reveals that Emily’s mother is not dead, as she had told her friends, but is alive and is, in Karen’s opinion, a “tramp”—Emily’s shame is acute and she pushes him away, embarrassed for both her mother and herself: [Now that] Dan knew everything there was to know . . . All Emily wanted was for him to leave the house as soon as possible. She never wanted to see him again. Now that he knew what she really was, what her mother was . . . (William, 1986b, p. 56). While Emily worries Dan will judge her in the same harsh terms her stepmother employs, Dan only feels “furious every time he [thinks] about the way [Karen] screamed at Emily” (William, 1986b, p. 74). His concern leads him to step in when Emily tries to sell the drums her stepmother objected to and, pretending he is acting on behalf of a friend, Dan buys Emily’s drums himself. Following Emily’s family reunion and her mental vow to preserve her family “as long as they lived,” Dan presents Emily with the drums he has stored for her and, when she plays, “everyone, Karen and Mr. Mayer included, clap[s] to the beat” (Williams, 1986b, p. 149). When Emily visits the Wakefield family for the first time and describes the difficulty at home, Grandma Wakefield laments, “I just don’t know what’s happening to the American family these days” (William, 1986b, p. 62). While the series might not have an answer to Grandma Wakefield’s musing, pre- and post-Nowhere to Run installments dramatize the results of familial disintegration, drawing clear links between familial breakup and juvenile delinquency both major and minor. The second volume of the series blames divorce for one character’s drug abuse (Elizabeth’s best friend Enid reveals that she had “gone a little crazy” two years earlier during her parents’ divorce and had “drifted in with a bad crowd and . . . gone from drinking to drugs—trying just about everything that came [her] way” [William, 1983d, p. 6]) while the fourth novel in the series reveals that Jessica’s best friend Lila’s parents’ divorce has caused her kleptomania. When Elizabeth confronts her, Lila reveals, “My mother took off right after the divorce, and I never see my father, even though we’re supposed to be living in the same house” and confesses that she steals in a bid to get her father’s attention (William, 1983c, p. 106). The series links the fast reputation of the character of “Easy” Annie Whitman to her parents’ divorce and, when Annie admits that “My mother didn’t have time for me because of her schedule, and I guess I just didn’t know how to make friends with girls my own age,” Elizabeth realizes that, absent a “real” family, “[t]he poor, lonely girl saw [a] string of boys as her only companions” (William, 1984f, pp. 19, 21). The thirty-fifth installment of the series allies a male character’s violent temper with his parents’ divorce. When Elizabeth and her new boyfriend Jeffery discover that their friend will have to seek professional help to deal with his anger, Jeffrey’s conclusion attempts to naturalize therapy: “It’s not as if

38 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Aaron’s psychotic! He’s just got an emotional problem and he should see a therapist. Big deal” (William, 1987b, p. 121). Elizabeth’s response, however, reminds us of the source of Aaron’s anger: “Because of his parents’ divorce” (William, 1987b, p. 121). That many of the troubled characters whose misbehavior can be traced to familial strife openly envy the perfect Wakefield family exemplifies and particularizes Sharon Wigutoff’s argument that teen romance novels imply that “the two-parent family is the right one, and all others are atypical and less desirable” (1981, p. 17). While, Wigutoff notes, the Silhouette romances (published contemporaneously with “Sweet Valley High”) she examined imply this by ignoring or refusing to acknowledge single and divorced parents or families with same-sex parents, the “Sweet Valley High” series is more direct in its assertion. Volume after volume of the series congratulates the Wakefields and their ability to maintain an ideal family. Even though both Wakefield parents work, Lila points out to Elizabeth as she weeps over her own father’s inattention, “You and Jessica are lucky. Your father spends time with you. And your mother, too” (William, 1983c, p. 106). Similarly, Emily lists Elizabeth Wakefield’s “wonderful family” among the gifts granted this “girl who had everything” (William, 1986b, p. 60). After the sister of the Wakefield brother’s dead girlfriend finds solace in the Wakefield home, the young woman asserts, “you and your whole family [are the best] . . . you’ve helped me realize how important it is to have a family” (William, 1985b, p. 147). After viewing a romantic movie, Elizabeth compares her parents’ relationship to a friend’s: [Elizabeth] knew love could be like the movie. Her parents were obviously still very much in love, even after more than twenty years of marriage. But then, that was probably why Aaron was so cynical. His parents’ love hadn’t lasted. There was no “happily ever after” for the Dallases now that they were divorcing (William, 1987b, p. 33). In their address of the “Sweet Valley” series, Willinsky and Hunniford note that the novels “work in . . . the prescribed sources of adolescent anxiety” including “the threats of alcohol and drugs” and “parental divorce” in a way that encourages or continues “prejudices the reader has already seen mimicked from other sources” (1993, p. 102). While some of what Willinsky and Hunniford might describe as “prejudices” related to the issue of parental divorce may have been addressed and even re-directed or corrected in realistic young adult novels like Judy Blume’s 1972 It’s Not the End of the World or Paula Danziger’s 1982 The Divorce Express, both of which feature female narrators whose parents have divorced, Pascal’s novels continue those “prejudices” Wigutoff argues are “implied” in publishers’ romance novels, namely, that, “in the best of all worlds, [the traditional family home] is the most desirable environment” (1981, p. 17). That these prejudices ally with and even dramatize popular contemporary concerns about the disintegration and reconstitution of the family

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 39 and support what Christian-Smith argues are the “conventional gender sentiments . . . pro-family policies and endorsement of traditional views of women” associated with the Reagan (and Bush) administrations (1993b, p. 46) connect the novels to the political world outside the text. Nowhere to Run, like many of the “Sweet Valley High” installments, relies upon what Stephens would call discursive techniques to encode its pro-family ideology. For example, although Emily and her conflict with her family represent the novel’s primary narrative conflict, the narrative’s perceptual point of view allies the reader with the Wakefield family in general and with Elizabeth in particular. Although Nowhere to Run is a third person, limited omniscient narrative and, as such, allows access to Emily’s thoughts and activities independent of the Wakefield family, these actions—or, as Stephens would describe them, these “phenomena”—are “focalized by [a] perceiving agent” (1992, p. 27), Elizabeth Wakefield. This “perceiving agent” provides the lens through which we are encouraged to view the story and, Stephens writes, “is tied up with attitude-making and the credence we give as readers to what the text offers” (1992, p. 27). Nowhere to Run positions Elizabeth as the narrative focalizer and, through her eyes, introduces the character who will emerge as an agent central in the conflict the novel resolves. Elizabeth’s role as focalizer and, later, her family’s role in both sheltering Emily and imposing conditions upon her stay (for example, Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield insist that Emily inform her parents of her whereabouts if she is to stay for an extended period with the family), establish Elizabeth and the Wakefield family as narrative authority figures, a position of ideological superiority that confirms the characters’ and the family’s superiority. From the beginning of Nowhere to Run, we are encouraged to view the action through Wakefield eyes. In the novel’s first pages, it is Elizabeth who recognizes, “from the look on the girl’s face,” that Emily is troubled (William, 1986b, p. 5). As Elizabeth listens in on a conversation Emily is having with a friend at an adjacent cafeteria table, she notes that “Emily really sounded worked up” and reflects that she “had noticed that Emily seemed tense recently. She was jumpy, as if something were bugging her all the time” (William, 1986b, p. 6). Although the next chapter of the novel does elaborate on Emily’s tension by allowing the reader to accompany Emily home from school and “listen” as she recalls the growth of her father and stepmother’s relationship, Elizabeth has already described the “worked up” attitude and tension ascribed to Emily’s remembrances. As the story progresses and Emily wonders if she isn’t overreacting to conflict with her stepmother, it is Elizabeth whose judgment confirms Emily’s position as victim. After Emily tells Elizabeth of her family problems, “Elizabeth’s heart went out to Emily. It was clear that she wasn’t just paranoid about her stepmother. Karen sounded as if she were a confused woman, and she seemed to be taking things out on Emily” (William, 1986b, p. 39). Again, it is Elizabeth’s judgment—that Emily is not “just paranoid” and that Karen, indeed, is a “confused woman”—that confirms

40 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Emily’s point of view. By this, the twenty-fifth installment of the series, Elizabeth’s moral authority has been established. She has, for example, chastised Lila’s father for not paying attention to her daughter (William, 1983c) and counseled a friend to “do more drawing and less [drinking and drugging]” (William, 1985b, p. 29); thus, Elizabeth’s judgment regarding Karen and the Mayer family is clearly authoritative. Elizabeth’s position as focalizer, particularly in the series’ installments in which she offers guidance to other characters struggling with family problems, allows the character to emerge as an ideological mouthpiece. Because, as Stephens writes, “a key part of the outworking of ideology is then the situating of readers, who, in taking up a position from which the text is most readily intelligible, are apt to be situated within the frame of the text’s ideology” (1992, p. 67), it is important to consider Elizabeth’s “intelligibility” as a focalizer. While it is likely that serial reading would encourage a reader to establish a relationship with one of the series’ central characters, the narrative makes it clear that Elizabeth, not Jessica, might be the ideal character to “trust.” With the character descriptions that appear in the first chapter of every installment, the series encourages readers to authorize Elizabeth’s perspective over Jessica’s. The first volume of the series describes both girls as “generously blessed with spectacular, all-American good looks,” but notes that “A wicked gleam of mischief lurked in the aquamarine depths of Jessica’s eyes, while Elizabeth’s reflected only sincerity” (William, 1983a, p. 4). Described as “a person who cared” (William, 1983d, p. 7), “the one [her sister] turned to to bail her out when the water got a little too deep” (William, 1984c, p. 3), and “the most honest and straightforward person” (William, 1984b, p. 5), Elizabeth exists in angelic contrast to her identical twin sister. Jessica, who “often stretched the truth when it served her purposes” (William, 1984b, p. 5), and who, when she “set out to get something, she let nothing and no one stand in her way” (William, 1983d, p. 4), might live the more exciting fictional life; however, the novels clearly reward the reader who allies her subjectivity with Elizabeth’s more conservative perspective. Elizabeth’s monogamous relationships with the boys she dates throughout the series mirror the long-term and loving example of marriage provided by the Wakefield elders and underscores the series’ emphasis on traditional relationship. The first novel establishes Elizabeth’s relationship with Todd Wilkins, a good-looking star basketball player at Sweet Valley High School. Their relationship continues throughout twenty-three novels, after which Todd moves to Vermont with his family. By volume 31, Elizabeth has found a new love in Jeffrey French, a newcomer to Sweet Valley High School, whom she dates through volume 58, after which Todd returns to Sweet Valley and Elizabeth returns to his arms. Before Elizabeth and Todd begin a relationship, Elizabeth fantasizes about being his girlfriend, imagining him kissing her in the school cafeteria, “out there where everybody could see, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Todd loving her” (William, 1983a, p. 43).

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 41 Their relationship does prove “the most natural thing” in the Sweet Valley world and, when Jessica suggests Elizabeth consider another boyfriend, Elizabeth understands that “Jessica had a hard time understanding just how much she loved Todd. Her sister hadn’t yet experienced such a deep and caring relationship with any of her many boyfriends” (William, 1984b, p. 9). Indeed, while the series seems to revel in titillating the reader with details of Jessica’s brief encounters with good-looking boys, it is Elizabeth’s relationship with Todd that is described in ideal terms.

Encroaching Realism: Sweet Valley, Story and the Drug War Early in the production of the “Sweet Valley High” series and perhaps in response to critiques like those issued by the Interracial Books for Children Bulletin—that the romance novels “present a world untouched by any of the grim realities many teenagers face” (Harvey, 1981, p. 10)—Pascal made an executive decision to address such “realities” in the Sweet Valley novels. Although Pascal had noted that her initial intent was to present “Sweet Valley as a completely idealized fantasy world,” she added that “when she started getting letters from readers telling her how ‘real’ the books were to them, [she] decided to include some aspects of reality” (n.a., 1995a, p. 177). Thus, as the series progressed through the double digits, its twin protagonists encountered illegal drugs and drug users, counseled friends through their parents’ divorces and remarriages, and nursed accident victims and would-be suicides. By 1988, Pascal could assert in a Wall Street Journal interview: “We have black people, and we have plain people [in the series] . . . In fact, one of my lead characters was a deaf girl who overcame her problem. Unfortunately, she went and died anyway” (Crossen, 1988, para. 14). While Pascal’s quote seems to make light of any criticism of series homogeny, critic Joyce A. Litton has noted that “Pascal has also come out with books on racism, anorexia, divorce and Hispanic heritage. The stories are still soap operas with a fair amount of stereotyping, but there are more elements of the problem novel and some feminist teen characters in these later novels” (1994, p. 27). That the series attempts, as Litton writes, “to deal sensitively with serious topics” (1994, p. 26), reveals the influence of ideology at what Stephens calls the “story” level (“what certain characters do in a certain place at a certain time” [1992, p. 17]) and reflects what Christian-Smith calls the “political interests that shape the form and content of popular fiction” (1993b, p. 63). The series’ shifting address of illegal drug and alcohol use and abuse provides the strongest example of not only the emergence of what Hollindale would call “surface” ideology that would color the “stories” found in later installments of the series, but also the influence of intertextual ideologies—what Christian-Smith calls the “political interests” that inform a text—on the series. The fi rst Sweet Valley novels—those published

42 • Reading the Adolescent Romance before 1987—were somewhat cavalier about teen drug and alcohol use and depicted the kind of “experimentation” that, Washington Post columnist Dan Morgan wrote in 1981, “has now become a teen-age rite of passage [that] the majority of teen-agers pass through and survive” (1981a, para. 47). While the series had historically supported a mainstream abstinence ideology and, to this end, tended to depict drugs and alcohol as accessories to villainy, the question of whether to drink alcohol or use drugs never motivated or informed the movement of the series’ primary characters in significant ways. Volume 40 of the series—published in 1987 and entitled On the Edge—abandoned the series’ traditional concern with romance in favor of direct address of what Americans were beginning to recognize as a significant “drug problem” and placed the contemporaneous “war on drugs” at the center of its story. On the Edge, which encoded its plot—itself a fictionalization of a publicly reported tragedy involving drug use—in the language associated with the “moral panic” critics argue emerged around Reagan’s “war on drugs,” was a more explicitly ideological work that reproduced critical and political conversations around drug use and abuse taking place when the novel was published. The early Sweet Valley novels used a character’s drinking or smoking behavior to underscore his or her “badness” in a way that emphasized the series’ early reliance on a simplified and somewhat “conventional morality” of the type, Jane Abramson wrote, present in some of the more facile problem novels of the late 1970s (1976, p. 38). Instead of delving into what is arguably a complex phenomenon, the initial volumes of the “Sweet Valley High” series relied on a what Willinsky and Hunniford criticize as the series’ “shortform characterization” that “tend to reassure the prejudices the reader has already seen mimicked from other sources” (1993, p. 102) and served to generate this logic of characterization: illegal drug and alcohol use is wrong, therefore, characters who use drugs or alcohol illegally must be wrong as well. That these drinking and smoking characters were, in the Sweet Valley series, typically older boys described—like the drugs they used and the alcohol they drank—as dangerously attractive but decidedly off limits, complicates the series’ characterization, but only to a point. These older boys—who, in their forbidden attractiveness become metaphors for the equally forbidden alcohol and drugs—act out overindulgence and, as they disintegrate into drunkenness, reveal the alcohol and illegal drugs they both symbolize and ingest to be dubious pleasures at best. While most of the “Sweet Valley High” characters avoid these tempting specimens (the bad boys and drugs and alcohol), Jessica, in her role as the “bad” twin, succumbs to the lure of the forbidden and tests her fictional boundaries by accepting these young men’s invitations for dates. Just as Jessica’s brushes with badness allow, write Willinsky and Hunniford “the reader to taste through Jessica the temptations of coming of age” (1993, p. 101), the suffering and punishment resulting from Jessica’s “taste tests” ensure that her encounters serve as moral object lessons.

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 43 Jessica’s encounter with Rick Andover, described in Double Love, the first novel in the series, as a seventeen-year-old high school drop-out with “the ice-cool handsomeness of a junior Clint Eastwood” and with “a hint of danger . . . in his sultry dark eyes” (William, 1983a, p. 50), exemplifies the early series treatment of alcohol use and abuse. As “the most outrageous guy” in Sweet Valley, Rick “ran around with an older crowd and always had a lot of money in his pocket, even though it didn’t look as if he had a job” (William, 1983a, pp. 50, 51). When Jessica accepts his offer for a date, she feels “very grown-up, wedged beside Rick, with his arm clamped about her shoulders” (William, 1983a, p. 58); however, when the two pull up to Kelly’s, an establishment with “the most notorious reputation of any bar in the whole valley,” she experiences the mixed feelings of “alarm and excitement” and begins to realize that she is “definitely out of her league” (William, 1983a,, pp. 58, 59). As Jessica sips the beer she is served “with a growing sense of unease,” Rick “tip[s] back his glass of whiskey as though it were water” (William, 1983a, p. 60) and, as he gropes Jessica drunkenly, “Suddenly, he didn’t seem fascinating anymore. Just dangerous” (William, 1983a, p. 61). When Rick refuses to let Jessica leave the bar, a brawl ensues between her date and a bystander and Rick ends up “sprawled on the floor amid the cigarette butts, mumbling curses at everyone in sight” (William, 1983a, p. 63). While Rick is hauled to jail for participating in affray, Jessica is brought home by the police who let her off with a warning. Although she, as Willinsky and Hunniford write, “succeeds in letting the shame she should suffer fall onto her twin sister through the old Shakespearian ruse of mistaken identity” (1993, p. 101), Jessica is eventually punished and receives a public dunking in the school pool. Jessica’s experience with Rick follows a dramatic arc that mirrors her date’s physical and mental deterioration and allows her to symbolically partake in the forbidden; the excited high with which she began the evening (the series narrative comments, she “was bubbling over with excitement” [William, 1983a, p. 56]) becomes anxiety as the situation spins out of her control. Published in the following calendar year, the fifth volume of the series, All Night Long, finds Jessica in a situation similar to the one she escaped in Double Love. Although her family has forbidden her to go to a college party at a distant lake, Jessica attends the fète anyway and ends up stranded when her date, Scott Daniels (a college student with a mustache, a “devilish glint” in his eyes, and a “manlike hardness to his bronzed build” that is both “dangerous and exciting” [William 1984a, p. 18]), is too drunk to drive her home. Jessica experiences the familiar dueling sensations of pleasure and anxiety on her date with Scott; she feels a “thrilling kind of fear” riding in the car with him and judges that, as with Rick, “she’d felt distinctly grown-up but at the same time somewhat uneasy” (1984a, p. 17). When, during the party, Jessica notices the group passing around a joint, “she knew she’d gotten into the fast lane this time—maybe too fast” (William, 1984a, pp. 19–20). After a walk in the woods ends up in a wrestling match as Scott tries to take advantage of Jessica in an

44 • Reading the Adolescent Romance abandoned boathouse, Jessica’s threats to tell her parents about his misbehavior fall on deaf ears and Scott leaves her alone to find her way through the woods and back to the group. When she does finally find the group of partiers, Scott is clearly drunk (his face “had the Silly Putty distortion of intoxication” [William, 1984a, p. 29]) and Jessica wonders how she could “ever have through he was good-looking” (William, 1984a, p. 30). All Night Long depicts Jessica’s trial in terms similar to those used in Double Love: Jessica’s initial feelings of control rapidly disintegrate as her date becomes drunk and high. While Jessica’s night shivering on the floor of the college students’ party cabin leads her to judge that she “had never been so miserable in her life” (William, 1984a, p. 33), the “raging case of poison oak” Jessica suffers as a “result of getting lost in the woods the day [she] had sneaked off with Scott” (1984a, p, p. 110) is a punishment her sister wonders “if Jessica didn’t deserve . . . after all” (1984a, p. 111). Just as the series relies on narrative focalization to underscore the novels’ pro-family ideology, this same technique ensures that Jessica’s adventures are recognized as the morality tales they are. Both novels include clear commentary regarding the inappropriateness of Jessica’s older suitors and, ironically, clear messages from these same suitors regarding Jessica’s willingness to date these young men. Unaware that Jessica is planning a secret date with him, Mrs. Wakefield pronounces judgment on Rick Anodver “with unusual vehemence”: “That kid is headed straight for trouble!” she exclaims (William, 1983a, p. 55). Similarly, both Mrs. Wakefield and Elizabeth note Scott’s inappropriateness as a suitor (“I think Mom’s right. Scott is too old for you,” Elizabeth tells her sister, remembering “the insolent way he’d looked her up and down when Jessica had introduced him to her” and the “dumb, leering smile on his face” [William, 1984a, pp. 2–3]) and Mrs. Wakefield “vetoes” Jessica’s request to attend Scott’s lake party for this reason. The Wakefields’ judgments are reiterated in the words of Jessica’s companions who confront her with her reckless behavior and suggest that any suffering at their hands is if not justified then at least should have been expected. When Jessica pulls away from Rick’s drunken groping, Rick growls, “All tease and no tickle, huh? Didn’t your mommy tell you not to put anything in the window that you don’t sell in the store?” (William, 1983a, p. 60). Scott issues a similar platitude: as he prepares to abandon Jessica in the isolated boathouse, he opines, “You know what they say—play with fire and you’re going to get burned. So you got a little scorched around the edges. Just be glad it wasn’t worse” (William, 1984a, p. 27). Both young men’s clichéd rebukes, Willinsky and Hunniford write “fail to question th[e] patriarchal ideology” that would seem to motivate them; however, both also serve as the final insults that underscore what readers are to understand is the inappropriateness of Jessica’s actions. Jessica’s brushes with the bad boys of Sweet Valley are similarly rendered and follow a narrative arc that not only emphasizes the correctness of her family members’ pre-judgments of her dates, but also depicts Jessica’s own

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 45 change in mind from (dangerous) rebellion to (contrite) conformity. The narrative describes Jessica’s desire for Rick and Scott in similar terms that hint at each young man’s potential danger: Rick is “wickedly fascinating” while Scott is “dangerous and exciting.” At the beginning of both dates, Jessica wonders at her ability to control her dates: as she speeds through Sweet Valley with Rick, she wonders “if she would be able to keep him at bay” (William, 1983a, p. 58) and, as she bathes in the sun with Scott and his friends, she mentally notes that although “she’d always been the one to call the shots with her boyfriends . . . She had a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy with Scott” (William, 1984a, p. 18). At the midpoint of both dates—when Rick begins to drink to excess and Scott’s friends pass around the joint—Jessica begins to suspect that she is “out of her league” (William, 1983a, p. 59) or that she has entered “the fast lane . . . maybe too fast” (William, 1984a, p. 20). Jessica’s realizations represent dramatic moments in these storylines during which she both realizes the truth of her family’s warnings and her dates begin to spin out of her control. Although Jessica is known for her skillful manipulation, the narrative emphasizes her genuine distress following her disastrous dates. When she begs the policeman who drives her home from Kelly’s following her date with Rick not to inform her parents of her actions, “tears pour down her cheeks” and, in contrast to those she musters for effect, “she didn’t have to turn on the waterworks—this time they were for real” (William, 1983a, pp. 63–64). Each date ends with Jessica’s disappointment and contrition; however, these endings also confirm the points of view expressed by Jessica’s family and, as such, “reconverge on the dominant ideology” (Hollindale, 1992, p. 38) expressed by the series’ primary moral center and focalizer, Elizabeth. The character of Betsy Martin, introduced in the first novel in the series and redeemed in volume 15, serves as the series’ reminder of what emerges as the gendered consequences of underage drinking and drug use. Unlike Jessica, whose dealings with Rick and Scott left her merely “scorched around the edges” (William, 1984a, p. 27) and newly—albeit briefly—attendant to her family’s morality, Betsy’s involvement with shady characters like Rick Andover and Crunch McAllister (a high school dropout with an alcohol problem whose drunk driving is responsible for a motorcycle accident that leaves Elizabeth Wakefield in a coma) and her patronage of establishments like Kelly’s have ruined her reputation. In Double Love, the twins worry that their brother has been dating Betsy, whom they condemn for her history: “Betsy’s been doing drugs for years—she sleeps around” (William, 1983a, p. 76). When they learn that Steve is actually in love with Betsy’s sister, Tricia, the twins are relieved; however, when Tricia dies (in volume 15, Promises), Steve promises to take care of Betsy. The Wakefields bring Betsy to their home after she shows up at her sister’s hospital deathbed, her breath smelling of alcohol, “her heavy makeup smeared under one eye, and her skimpy shirt . . . missing several buttons” (William, 1985b, p. 8). Although Elizabeth believes Betsy can be rehabilitated, Jessica is less certain and exclaims:

46 • Reading the Adolescent Romance “How can you believe anything good about that girl? . . . Don’t you remember they time she was racing around in Rick Andover’s Camaro, high as a kite? When the police stopped them, they found more drugs in the glove compartment than you could find in a doctor’s office!” (William, 1985b, p. 16). When Elizabeth reminds Jessica of her own dealings with Rick Andover, Jessica allows that while she had made a single mistake, Betsy’s history of committing similar “mistakes” made her “bad news” (“Betsy’s checkered past could fill a book the size of Webster’s dictionary,” Jessica thinks, “A girl like that wouldn’t behave for long” [William, 1985b, p. 78]). While Jessica maintains that “people like Betsy just don’t change,” Elizabeth counters with, “If they want to badly enough, they can” (William, 1985b, p. 134). Indeed, with the support of the Wakefields (minus Jessica), Betsy quits drinking and dismisses her crowd of unsavory friends, then thanks the Wakefields for “be[ing] so good to me” and vows to attempt to reunite with her alcoholic father so that “Maybe I can help him the way you’ve helped me” (William, 1985b, p. 147). While early volumes of the Sweet Valley series allow that illegal alcohol and drug consumption are tempting and introduces attractive but “bad boy” characters who embody this appeal, the figure of Betsy Martin serves as a reminder of what can happen to the person who succumbs to such temptation. Betsy’s association—and apparent complicity—with characters like Rick Andover and Crunch McAllister are evidence of her ruin. Unlike Jessica, who allowed that she had made a “mistake” with Rick, Betsy—caught “high as a kite” with Rick—appears a more willing participant in the lifestyle the young man represents. Interestingly, the series emphasizes not the health consequences of binge drinking or illegal drug use, but the havoc that being associated with such practices can wreak on one’s reputation. When Jessica’s friends learn that Betsy—known in Sweet Valley as a “tramp” for her hard-partying lifestyle and fast reputation—will be staying with the Wakefields, their sympathetic comments reveal their social judgment. “How positively awful—having to share your home with such low-class trash,” Jessica’s friend Lila remarks. “Why, our stable boy has more class than Betsy Martin” (William, 1985b, p. 43). Later, when Steven accompanies Betsy to the Beach Disco, the pair tries “to avoid the haughty looks and curious glances of people around them” and overhear a classmate of the twins’ say of Steven, “I guess he goes for women who’ve been around” (William, 1985b, p. 68). Ultimately, the early volumes of the series depict illegal alcohol and drug use as tempting but reputation-ruining activities. While contemporary concern about the health consequences of underage alcohol consumption or illegal drug use would seem to trump the early installments of the series’ textual price for illegal activity—a ruined reputation—in the context of the romantic series, damage to a character’s reputation is considered much more threatening than any physical danger. Thus, in Double Love, Jessica explains her willingness

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 47 to let Elizabeth appear to have been the twin who accompanied Rick on his controversial trip to Kelly’s this way: “I knew if it got around school that I was in that bar with those terrible people, I’d be finished. It’s a rule, an absolute rule, that you can’t be on the cheering squad if you have any black marks against your name. I couldn’t give that up . . . I knew that nothing really bad would happen to you, but it would have been the end of everything for me” (William, 1983a, p. 174). A bad reputation, the series seems to assert, is a death of sorts—“the end of everything”—and, as this kind of reputation proves difficult to shake, becomes its own punishment as well. Though the fear of social ruin Jessica describes above effectively deterred the fictional students at Sweet Valley High from illegal alcohol or drug use— at least for the first 39 installments—later volumes of the series addressed this and other social issues affecting teens with greater realism, exemplifying what Sutton deemed a “social (self) consciousness . . . making its way in formula fiction” (1990, p. 50). Following a 1987 announcement published in the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) that “in the next year, the Sweet Valley series will tackle some tougher teen-age problems, such as drug abuse and pregnancy” (Mitchell, 1987, para. 26), the first of such problem novel influenced installments appeared. On the Edge, the first volume of the series to deal with social issues in general and drug abuse directly and specifically, attached distinctly higher stakes to a behavior that early installments of the series had acknowledged but not fully addressed. Featuring a plot literally “ripped from the headlines,” On the Edge emphasizes a truism that Pascal allowed influenced its writing: “it isn’t only drug addicts that overdose . . . first-time users can overdose [too]” (Mitchell, 1987, para. 28). Unlike the previous novels, which reflected the unquestioned anti-drug attitudes Hollindale might argue could be considered reflective of the “commonalities” of the age in which the novels were published, On the Edge takes its plot cues from the publicly lamented and drug-related death of rising basketball star Len Bias and reflects—at the story level—the ideologies associated with the “war on drugs” movement and what some critics argue was a moral panic that arose regarding illegal drug use in the U.S. gaining momentum with Bias’s death and emerging during the period of the novel’s publication. While the early novels may have, in the words of Willinsky and Hunniford, “reassure[d] those prejudices” regarding illegal alcohol and drug use “the reader has already seen mimicked from other sources” (1993, p. 102), On the Edge “exploited intertextuality” (Stephens, 1992, p. 115) to clarify and represent a distinct anti-drug ideology emerging in the world outside the text. The story of Len Bias, whose sudden and cocaine-attributed death helped to ignite Reagan’s “war on drugs,” is a clear intertextual reference point in the novel. Bias, a University of Maryland college basketball star who only days

48 • Reading the Adolescent Romance prior to his death in June 1986 had been selected by the Boston Celtics as one of their first draft picks and had signed a multimillion dollar endorsement deal with Reebok, died of a heart attack after using cocaine for what many concluded was the first time. Bias’ death, according to Oklahoma Representative Glenn English’s comments in response to Congress’s 1986 formal declaration of a “war on drugs,” “shocked the nation” and became known as one of the “combination of events [including “the rapid spread of crack throughout the nation” and “the tremendous increase in the use of cocaine in the last couple of years”] that came together” to draw lawmakers’ and the public’s attention to illegal drugs (Palmer, 1986, para. 13). While, prior to 1986, the U.S. had focused its anti-narcotics attention on drug traffickers and cartels, popular outcry over Bias’ death led to greater emphasis on what the Washington Post called the “demand side” of the illegal drugs trade (Reid, 1986, para. 12) and the rejuvenation of drug-prevention programs that would target the user or potential user of illegal drugs. Just as the death of Len Bias became a point of reference in the increasingly user-focused war on drugs, increased awareness of the deadly potential of cocaine, and spawned “Len Bias Laws” which “authorize murder charges against anyone who provides a drug used in a fatal overdose” (Reid, 1986, para. 20), the cocaine-induced death of “Sweet Valley High” character Regina Morrow became an analogous referent in the fictional world of Sweet Valley and encouraged the characters’ consideration of similar issues. Like Bias, Regina Morrow, the ill-fated subject of On the Edge, was an exceptional character who Pascal described as “One that everyone loves. One that everyone will miss” (Mitchell, 1987, para. 29). A friend of the twins who had been deaf since birth but who had (within the time frame articulated by the series) participated in an experimental treatment that restored most of her hearing, Regina was “one of the most strikingly beautiful girls at school”: But Regina’s beauty wasn’t the thing people remembered most about her. She was sweet, soft-spoken, and somewhat shy, although once you got to know her, she had a delightfully warm sense of humor (William, 1987a, p. 5). When Regina’s relationship with her steady boyfriend Bruce dissolves, she begins a friendship with Justin Belson, a classmate with a reputation for drug use. In spite her friends’ warnings, Regina attends a party hosted by Justin’s ex-girlfriend where she decides to try cocaine, after which, a doctor explains, she “experienced an extremely rare reaction—rapid acceleration of the heartbeat, which brought on sudden cardiac failure” (William, 1987a, p. 131). The novel describes Regina’s death in terms similar to news accounts of Bias’ death and noted that “your first sniff of cocaine can be your last” and that “a firsttimer’s body isn’t used to the drug, and cardiac arrest—what killed Bias— is a possible reaction” (Cooper, 1986, para. 2). The character of Regina—a

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 49 significant but secondary character introduced to the series in 1984 with volume 13, Kidnapped!—like Bias, seemed poised to begin a new chapter in her life and the series emphasizes the tragedy of her death in much the same way the tragedy of Bias’s death was mourned in the press. That the plot of On the Edge is so clearly derived from early public accounts of Len Bias’ death—a tragedy Michael Weinreb calls “the most potent advertisement for the ‘Just Say No’ campaign” (Weinreb, 2008, “Two Commonly Told Elements,” para. 5)—is evidence of what Stephens might call an “intertextual ideology” that reflects the “war on drugs” raging when the novel was published. Weinreb’s observations regarding the death of Len Bias and the news coverage that followed are apt descriptions of the fictional death of Sweet Valley’s Regina Morrow and the fictional narrative that followed: The death of Len Bias “scared the hell out of me,” writes Weinreb, “It was supposed to scare the hell out of me; this was a moralistic passion play, an after-school special come to life” (Weinreb, 2008, “Disclaimer,” para. 3). Like an “afterschool special”—or, like its literary equivalent, the problem novel—On the Edge seems designed to “scare the hell out of” its readers. Scenes in which Regina’s estranged boyfriend Bruce and his new paramour Amy research illegal drug use are rife with exclamation and hyperbolic anxiety: “You wouldn’t believe some of the information Amy’s found out about the availability of speed and cocaine—even in middle schools around here!” Bruce exclaims in one scene (William, 1987a, p. 40). One of Bruce and Amy’s sources, Amy’s cousin Mimi, works at a local clinic and tells them about the drug users who visit for services and warns them of a local drug dealer known as Buzz: “Buzz is a smooth operator, and he’s been known to get kids who have never so much as tasted a sip of beer to try something dangerous” (William, 1987a, p. 83). Mimi’s description of a “mean world” of drug users, abusers, and dealers is a frightening one of predators—like Buzz—and prey, like the middle school children Mimi describes. Unlike the earlier novels featuring characters who drink alcohol illegally or who use drugs, On the Edge addresses drug use from a conspicuously ideological perspective, calling upon the tenets of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug movement in its intertextual narrative. The novel emphasizes the power of the transaction between drug seller and buyer and codes this transaction in terms of morality, in much the same way the “Just Say No” campaign growing in the outside world at the time of the text’s publication. The “Just Say No” movement, write Susan Mackey-Kallis and Dan F. Hahn, “tout[ed] . . . the moral force of individual action as the best answer to the drug problem in America” (1991, p. 2). The decision to try or use drugs, through this lens, became one fraught with morality and, in the terms of the “Just Say No” campaign to prevent youth drug use, coded young potential users as innocent victims and drug sellers as manipulative sociopaths who rely on peer pressure and lies to encourage drug use. This ideology is exemplified when the drug dealer Mimi warned Bruce and Amy about, Buzz, shows up at the party

50 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Regina attends and he and his friends pressure Regina to try cocaine. When Regina asks, “But can’t [cocaine] hurt you? Don’t you get hooked on it?” Buzz responds, “Is that what they’re teaching now? That you can get addicted to coke? Listen . . . if you’ve got the money, this stuff is the passport to heaven. It won’t hurt you, it won’t make you fat, it won’t get you hooked, all it’ll do is make you happy” (William, 1987a, p. 117). That Buzz’s sales pitch turns out to be a lie comes as a surprise not just to Regina but to the other students at Sweet Valley High, whose reactions emphasize the secondary tenet of the “Just Say No” movement: youth education. Following Regina’s death, “[Elizabeth] wished there were some way Regina could have known in advance how dangerous the drug was. It seemed terrible that they were all finding out now—only because Regina had become a victim” (William, 1987a, p. 138). Mr. Collins, a beloved teacher at Sweet Valley High, emphasizes the need for such education, arguing, “For Regina to have died in vain would be unthinkable. We must all do what we can to make sure this kind of senseless tragedy never happens again” (William, 1987a, p. 145). Mr. Collin’s words echo those of Bias’ coach Lefty Driesell, who concluded, “Len Bias died for a purpose . . . and that purpose was to bring attention . . . to the world that drugs can kill. We need to stop cocaine from coming into the country” (Williams, 1986, para. 7). Those few “Sweet Valley High” novels including mention of illegal drug or alcohol use published between 1983 and 1987 reveal not only the series’ gradual incorporation of more realistic social issues as plot motivators, but also changing American attitudes and what some critics argue was a growing moral panic response to increased reporting and attention paid to the illegal drug trade. While illegal drug use—and drug use by minors in particular—had long been an issue of general public concern, when, in 1986, the Reagans appeared together on television, announcing a “great, new national crusade” and urging Americans to “[make] a fi nal commitment not to tolerate drugs by anyone, anytime, anyplace,” the anti-drug mood shifted from general concern to moral panic. James Hawdon cites the Reagans’ 1986 speech as exemplary of the rhetoric that made American drug use into a moral panic. Although, “based on governmental figures, drug use declined in the 1980s,” Hawdon writes, “By 1986 Americans were convinced that drugs were sweeping the nation like a ‘white plague’” (2001, p. 419). This panicked attitude regarding the “white plague” of illegal drugs emerged as the result of the appearance of what Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda (1994) argue are the “crucial elements or criteria” that allow a moral panic to arise. According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda, when public concern about an issue increases to a point of “hostility toward the category of people seen engaging in the threatening behavior” (1994, p. 157) and, following the achievement of consensus regarding this issue and the necessity for hostility, a resulting disproportionate response to the initial issue brands the event a moral panic. That the “war on drugs” was declared at a time when, Hawdon argues, drug use was actually declining and that,

A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California • 51 as Mackay-Kallis and Hahn note, the “war on drugs” relied on the cultivation of a morality hostile of drug use—no matter the degree—supports the argument suggesting a growing moral panic around illegal drug use during the fi rst five years of the “Sweet Valley High” series publication. The shift in Pascal’s series attitude towards illegal drug and alcohol use dramatizes the emergence of this moral panic, particularly as the anti-drug messages encoded in the series texts ascended to the story level. The first novels, which did not address drug and alcohol use and abuse as directly as 1987’s On the Edge did, nonetheless condemned illegal drug and alcohol use while acknowledging the temptations these substances might offer. Double Love and All Night Long were clear in their association of drugs and alcohol with delinquency and, as Jessica considered associations with such delinquents, delivered swift but humorous punishment to her for straying from the straight path advocated by her sister and family. On the Edge, in contrast, demonizes drug use to a greater extent than the earlier novels. No longer a “dangerously attractive” behavior, drugs are, in On the Edge, associated with manipulative and immoral drug dealers (like Buzz) and drug users like Jan Brown, whom Amy’s cousin describes as “extremely messed up” (William, 1987a, p. 82). The punishment for dabbling in drug use is equally extreme: even the character Pascal described as “One that everyone loves. One that everyone will miss” (Mitchell, 1987, para. 29) cannot escape the death sentence.

Chapter Three A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California: The Literary Landscape of “Sweet Valley High”

While the influence of contemporaneous politics is clearly visible in the content of the “Sweet Valley High” series, the novels’ literary formula and structure are indebted to historical and generic models. The plots of individual installments of the “Sweet Valley High” series adhere to literary formulae associated with adult and teen romance fiction, while the structures of both the individual novels and the series as a whole build upon literary tropes associated with young adult literature in general and young people’s series fiction specifically. An examination of “Sweet Valley High”’s formula both tempers and enhances a socio-cultural analysis of the series. Although, as Jean Radford writes, “it does not help to explain the evolution of cultural forms in relation to social and cultural developments,” the critic notes that popular fiction’s adherence to or departure from particular formal codes and tropes may be socially and culturally significant and continues, “A structural and semantic reading of these changing codes necessarily engages with questions of gender, ideology, and change” (Radford, 1992, p. 5). As critics of romance reading and writing have noted, the iterative nature of the genre serves to reify already conventional assumptions about gender and sexuality. When these observations are applied to the analysis of romance series written for young people, the issues of gender and sexuality are complicated by audience. In the case of “Sweet Valley High,” these complications are visible where formulae intersect: In consideration of the series’ incorporation of adult romance conventions within its greater adolescent romance formula and in its serial nature, the maintenance of which challenges a foundational convention associated with the romance: the happy ending.

53

54 • Reading the Adolescent Romance As Norma Pecora has written, the “Sweet Valley High” novels are “unrepentant romance novels” (1999, p. 55) and, as such, exhibit characteristics associated with the genre. In her description of Francine Pascal’s “Sweet Valley High” series and its spin-offs, Pecora observes: “Each new series is simply an overlay onto the original teen romance genre, consequently, all the Sweet Valley books are romance novels first, building on all the conventions of a romance novel” (1999, p. 55). These “conventions” can be described not only in terms of literary structure and content, but also of what critics theorize are their ideological functions. “Sweet Valley High” distinguishes itself as an adolescent romance series by manipulating formulae and referring to tropes associated not only with the growing body of young adult popular romance being produced during the same time period, but also with adult romance. The series’ formula is circumscribed by its identity as a series of adolescent texts; however, that “Sweet Valley High” employs conventions associated with both romance novels for adult and young adult audiences is significant, meaningful and, ultimately, influential. An examination of the series’ formula— particularly as it refers to what John Cawelti calls “different formulations” of the popular generic “supertext” (1997, p. 67)—allows us to consider the “Sweet Valley High” novels in terms of the “questions of gender, ideology and change” Radford argues are represented by popular and generic fiction (1992, p. 5) and that critics of the adult and young adult versions of the romance have associated with the genre.

Considering Genre and Formula While discussion of both literary and popular genre often begins with reference to Northrup Frye and his archetypal theory of genre, Cawelti’s distinction of the popular from the literary and historical and his subsequent development of a framework for considering the popular generic novel is more relevant here. While Frye argues that “the structural principles of literature” which underpin all literary and popular writing, “are as closely related to mythology and comparative religion as those of painting are to geometry” (1957, pp. 134–135) and urges critics to consider literature in terms of its adherence to the formal structures he identifies as meaningful archetypes, Cawelti suggests that popular genre fiction—to which he refers as “formula fiction”—“are embodiments of archetypal story forms in terms of specific cultural materials” (1976, p. 6). “Formulas,” Cawelti continues, “are ways in which specific cultural themes and stereotypes become embodied in more universal story archetypes” (1976, p. 6). While both critics reference a standard text that informs the creation and categorization of generic or formula sub-texts, Cawelti suggests a relationship between culture and genre or formula, arguing, “Formulas are cultural products and in turn presumably have some sort of influence on culture because

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 55 they become conventional ways of representing and relating certain images, symbols, themes and myths” (1976, p. 20). It is Cawelti’s theorized relationship between popular formula and culture that is at the heart of contemporary criticism of popular romance fiction for adults and young adults. As Kay Mussell has written of adult romance fiction, romances “delineate important aspects of the values and socialization patterns of their readers and, by extension, provide a valuable source of information about women’s lives and experiences” (1984, p. 25). Janice Radway is more specific; in her analysis of the narrative structure of women’s romance novels, she concludes that it is this literary structure that “demonstrates . . . all women inevitably end up associating their female identity with the social roles of lover, wife, and mother,” arguing that the romance novel “denies women the possibility of refusing that purely relational destiny and thus rejects their right to a single, self-contained existence” (1984, p. 207). While Radway particularizes the ideology that permeates the romance, Tania Modleski specifies the relationship between content and culture, arguing that “Even though [romance novels] can be said to intensify female tensions and conflicts, on balance the contradictions in women’s lives are more responsible for the existence of Harlequins than Harlequins are for the contradictions” (1992, p. 42). Regarding adolescent romance novels, Linda K. ChristianSmith describes the relationship between formula and culture, writing “Teen romance fiction articulates the long-standing fears and resentments of segments of society regarding feminism and women’s growing independence” (1990, p. 2). Christian-Smith’s assessment of the ideology that permeates the novels echoes Radway’s: [W]oven throughout teen romance fiction’s saga of hearts and flowers is an accompanying discourse that a woman is incomplete without a man, that motherhood is women’s destiny, and that a woman’s rightful place is at home (1990, p. 2). Romance novels, critics of adult and adolescent romance agree, both depict and encourage the maintenance of a certain kind of femininity, offering the promise of a happy ending for those heroines who perform this femininity with perfection. While political arguments have been made to explain the interaction between adult (majority) female romance readers and the romance novels they enjoy, arguments regarding the adolescent reader and her romance are presented in more cautionary terms that suggest an extra, epistemological function of the adolescent texts. This theorized function is at the heart of John Willinsky and R. Mark Hunniford’s critique of young adult romance, who compare adolescent romance reading to adult romance reading (as it was described by Radway), arguing:

56 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Rather than turning to these books as a way out of their world, as the adults in the Radway study had, these students, on the verge of full-blown adolescence, are turning to the books as a way of preparing to get into the world, at least as they imagine it to be (1993, p. 88). Christian-Smith assumes a similar point of view, arguing that the content— preparatory or not—of adolescent romance novels is not useful to readers: Even though romance novels may give pleasure to readers and facilitate reflection, their knowledge will not help students secure diplomas, qualify for well-paying jobs and gain access to the dominant power structures (1993b, p. 63). It would be difficult to prove that adolescent romance novels had a deep impact on readers’ futures—either in terms of their preparation for adolescence, as Willinsky and Hunniford argue, or as distraction from activities that might lead to, as Christian-Smith argues, “well-paying jobs” and “access to the dominant power structures.” The novels, do, however, inform the fantasies and imaginations of readers, particularly as they describe a world presented in similar terms in other cultural forms, themselves reflections of dominant ideology. Amy Benfer writes of this relationship between the “Sweet Valley High” novels and “the real world” in an analysis for The Believer, arguing You won’t fi nd out much about how actual people live by reading serial fiction from random decades. But you will find out how they aspire to live: the houses they must build, clothes they must wear, and cars they must drive to become the Joneses; what their mothers are telling them about modesty, boys, and sex; who they are supposed to marry and what jobs they are supposed to take and how, exactly, they are supposed to get there (2003/2004, pp. 47–48). As Benfer argues—and Cawelti, Radway, Modleski and Mussell seem to agree—popular formula fiction creates and reflects ideology cast in terms of the fantastic; while this representation of what one is supposed to do, be, or become to achieve a cultural ideal is compelling, especially as it resonates with the attitudes and ideologies that exist outside the text, this resonance does not make the text a weapon of causality. Causal relationship between adolescent romance novels and the development of their young readers aside, the texts remain the subject of inquiry as they represent and reflect what Mussell, in her analysis of adult romance, calls the “values and socialization patterns of their readers” (1984, p. 25). This ideology that critics of the romance argue is present in the adult versions of the text is similarly present in the novels’ adolescent younger sisters; however, it is further circumscribed by its incorporation in the form of the young adult

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 57 novel. Roberta Seelinger Trites has written of the ideological content of the adolescent novel, arguing that “everything in adolescent literature is designed to teach adolescents their place in the power structure” (2001, p. 480). Trites challenges the traditional characterization of young adult literature in terms of its depiction of character growth and maturity, positing instead that “most adolescent novels carry some ideological message that reinforces the need to conform to the status quo” (2001, p. 480). Young adult fiction, Trites continues, “is the probably the only genre in the world designed to propel the reader out of his or her own subject position,” a feat it accomplishes by conveying to its readers that “the only way for adolescents to empower themselves is to quit being so adolescent. Grow up. Get over yourselves” (2001, p. 481). The adolescent romance novel encourages its readers to “get over themselves” in a formulaic way, offering heterosexual romance as an experience that has the potential to “propel the reader out of his or her own subject position,” as it “propels” the adolescent characters from their own. Thus, while critics argue that adult romance novels urge their female readers to accept traditional positions by “reinforce[ing] traditional female limitations” and “validat[ing] the dominance of domestic concerns and personal action in women’s lives” (Radway, 1984, p. 214), the adolescent romance is a text that models and depicts the progression towards this goal. Whether this different thrust of the adolescent romance makes it, as Willinsky and Hunniford and Christian-Smith imply, a preparatory novel remains in question. It is certain, however, that the adolescent romance is invested in the depiction of the development of heterosexual relationship, a depiction that offers examples of successful and unsuccessful (in terms of their contribution to the achievement of romantic relationship) subject positions for its female and male characters and delineates the extent and nature of the sexual activity appropriate for the same.

“Sweet Valley High” and the Adolescent Romance Formula As a series of so-called unrepentant romance novels, individual installments of “Sweet Valley High” adhere to narrative formulae drawn from both popular adult and adolescent romance novels. While, Mussell writes, “All romance novels focus on love, courtship, and marriage” (1984, p. 29), adolescent romance novels, attendant to the limitations of their not-quite-adult characters, focus on love and courtship, while, as Christian-Smith, Willinsky and Hunniford and M. Daphne Kutzer argue, intimating that these formative relationships are preparation for marital relations. Not as idealized as the mysterious and cruel heroes and breathtakingly beautiful heroines of the adult romance, teen protagonists of adolescent romance novels are lighter and even incomplete versions of their adult counterparts. Lois Kuznets and Eve Zarin’s summary of the contents of the Bantam books “tip-sheet” for writers of its Sweet Dreams line of romance novels describes the characteristic adolescent romance plot:

58 • Reading the Adolescent Romance The protagonist must be an ordinary, middle-class, suburban girl of about sixteen; the romantic interest must be introduced early in the form of a boy of the same age or slightly older; the protagonist must have a warm, supportive family and one or two good girl friends in whom she can confide; she must experience some kind of typical adolescent conflict of “identity,” such as choosing between two suitors, overcoming shyness, and self doubt, succeeding in sports, writing, etc.; characterization rather than plot complication is to be emphasized; no profanity, explicit sex, or explicit religion is permitted; hugging and kissing are encouraged (1982, p. 29). The “Sweet Valley High” series—initially published by Bantam books— adheres, in part, to the formula Kuznets and Zarin outline and the characterization of its heroines Kutzer describes as “fairly conformist and of average looks. They may be attractive, but they aren’t the stunning beauties one finds in a romance by Woodiwiss or Dailey” (1986, p. 91). The “Sweet Valley High” novels, which revolve around the lives and romances of identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield and their friends, feature characteristically adolescent romance stories at the center of nearly each series installment, but frame these narratives with the continuing saga of Elizabeth and Jessica, whose characters and lives are described in terms more suggestive of adult than young adult romance conventions. “Sweet Valley High”’s incorporation of tropes of adolescent and adult romance formulae allows the series to develop distinct parameters of characterization and behavior for its fictional characters, a narrative move that adheres to the ideological function of adolescent literature Trites posits. As the individual romance stories depicted in almost every volume of the series describe a (usually female) character’s quest for social recognition or romantic relationship (two “accomplishments” that usually go hand-in-hand in adolescent romance), they describe the character’s launch from what Trites (2001) calls his or her “subject position” as he or she conforms to the heterosexual model of romantic relationship that serves as the optimal “status quo” the novels put forth. While these characters do achieve romantic and social success, they remain distant also-rans to the characters who adhere to the adult romance novel’s model of characterization: the series’ central twins, Elizabeth and Jessica. As the representative “adult” figures, Elizabeth and Jessica are aspirational characters admired and emulated by their fictional peers and suggest the desirability of adulthood Trites proposes is the thrust of the adolescent novel.

The Teen Heroine: A “Typical Girl” The heroine of the single-volume popular teen romance of the type that both gave rise to and competed with the “Sweet Valley High” series was not an

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 59 idealized figure. Instead, the characteristic heroines of romance imprints like Sweet Dreams and Wildfire were, as Kutzer writes, not “bigger and better than life” and tended to “be shy or artistically inclined or socially a bit inept, so that they are not automatically part of the inner circle of student government members, cheerleaders and athletes” (1986, pp. 93, 94). The adolescent romance heroine is a cipher, write Pam Gilbert and Sandra Taylor: [she is] a stereotype, in love with love. She . . . is preoccupied with her clothing, with her hair, with the shape of her body . . . She is also always attractive, although she may not initially think so and needs external verification of her feminine/romantic appearance. Usually she belongs to no ethnic group or religion, and exists in a buffered unreal social group where money and privilege are seldom discussed (1991, p. 82). It is only through romantic relationship that the adolescent romantic heroine begins to recognize herself as a woman; in fiction this progression of romance, writes Christian-Smith, “endows girls’ lives with meaning and importance . . . it . . . functions as a larger field in which girls are elevated and given recognition by virtue of becoming a girlfriend” (1988, p. 84). If, broadly speaking, the “central theme of YA fiction” is, as Patty Campbell has written, “becoming an adult, finding an answer to the question, ‘Who am I, and what am I going to do about it?’”(2004, p. 359), the answer to this question in romance fiction is, for the heroine, a function of her status as a girlfriend in a heterosexual romantic relationship. In the typical adolescent romance novel, the progress of romance leads to the heroine’s transformation from what Gilbert calls “the pre-romantic child into the sexual female adolescent” (1993, p. 75), and positions the heroine-as-sexual-subject on the straight road to adulthood. The “Sweet Valley High” series frequently incorporates this trope of character growth—what Trites might call a transformation of the heroine’s subject position—in its installments featuring secondary characters and their searches for love. These characteristic volumes include plots and passages that exemplify the process of what Gilbert calls “external verification,” the recognition of the heroine as a legitimate romantic subject or “sexual female adolescent” (1993, p. 71). These novels in the series that don’t focus directly on the exploits of Elizabeth and Jessica focus instead on one of their single friends who, usually with the help and guidance of Elizabeth, progresses from anonymity to notoriety when she secures a boyfriend. In Pascal’s series—as, critics note, in other adolescent romance series—the heroine’s status as a girlfriend results in both her public recognition and reconsideration. No longer is she just a face in the crowd; once her accessories include a good-looking boy, her fellow students and friends admire the beauty and sociability that seem to be revealed through her romantic partnership. This transformation, Christian-Smith writes, “ultimately involves the construction of feminine identity in terms of a significant other, the boyfriend” (1988, pp. 86–87). In the “Sweet Valley High” series, this

60 • Reading the Adolescent Romance new identity fully and completely replaces any identity or reputation (good or bad) associated with the character-as-single-girl and any sins or misdeeds the heroine-as-girlfriend has committed are locked in the past. Volume 2 of the series, Secrets, exemplifies the reputation re-building romance offers the single heroine. In this installment, the details of Elizabeth’s best friend Enid’s past as a drug user and wild child become public and not only lead to the dissolution of the romantic relationship she is nursing with new boy Ronnie Edwards but also threaten her reputation. Determined to hold her head high in spite of the gossip about her situation floating around school, Enid makes plans to attend a school dance solo. A surprise reunion with an old friend ignites a spark of romance and, when the friend offers to escort her to the dance, Elizabeth notes the way Enid, “on the arm of an absolutely gorgeous boy . . . was glowing with excitement . . . Liz had never seen her look so beautiful” (William, 1983d, p. 105). Elizabeth is not the only one who notices Enid’s transformation from the subject of scorn to an admirable target of jealousy: As George [her date] and Enid whirled off onto the dance floor, Elizabeth noticed a number of people staring. Enid had certainly never looked so lovely. And George made her the envy of every girl in the room (William, 1983d, p. 109). Described by her peers in the first pages of the book as “a nerd” and “a little creep” (William, 1983d, pp. 23, 24), “on the arm of an absolutely gorgeous boy” Enid transforms from the subject of mean-spirited rumor to “the envy of every girl in the room.” This admiration continues through the series and, in volume 6, when Enid hosts a Sweet Sixteen party, Elizabeth notices that “nearly everyone from school” was in attendance, including those who had shunned Enid in volume 2 (William, 1984b, p. 78). DeeDee Gordon, a secondary character introduced in volume 8, Heart Breaker, undergoes a similar transformation from “average” to “loveable” and even enviable, albeit in a more dramatic fashion. Described in the first pages of the novel as “small and athletic-looking, with a roundish face dusted lightly with freckles and merry brown eyes that peered out from a glossy fringe of bangs” (William, 1984d, p. 9), DeeDee feels like an also-ran to Jessica, her competition for the attention of surfer Bill Chase. Although Jessica notices that DeeDee “managed to make herself look alluring enough” in an “eyecatching canary-yellow one-piece” bathing suit, she reassures herself that “DeeDee wasn’t half as pretty as she was” (William, 1984d, p. 29). Infatuated by Jessica, who flirts with him outrageously, Bill seems oblivious to DeeDee’s charms until she nearly drowns during a surfing lesson at the beach. After Bill tows DeeDee to shore he bent close to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation [and] became aware of how pale her skin was next to the dark, wet swirls of her hair.

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 61 How come he’d never noticed before how pretty she was? Even the freckles that stood out sharply on the bridge of her adorable snub nose seemed precious to him (William, 1984d, p. 96). The narrative’s question—“How come he’d never noticed before how pretty she was?”—finds an answer in Bill’s realization upon DeeDee’s recovery: “He knew now that DeeDee was very special to him” (William, 1984d, p. 96). As Bill comforts DeeDee following her scare, he confesses, “DeeDee, I must have been totally out of it not to see what a terrific person you are” (William, 1984d, p. 100). Soon, the two are the subject of good-natured gossip, and one of her classmates reveals to Jessica that, under Bill’s tutelage, DeeDee placed third in a surfing competition and, following the announcement of her victory, Bill “got so excited for her he kissed her in front of everyone,” confirming their romantic relationship (William, 1984d, p. 107). Jealous and humiliated that Bill chose DeeDee over her, Jessica snaps to the friend who teases her about “losing [her] magic touch” that “I was getting tired of [Bill] anyway” (William, 1984d, p. 132). In both examples, love literally affects the female subjects’ public image and identity; these average-looking girls become more “lovely” than they had ever looked—even their freckles are rendered “precious”—once they become part of an established heterosexual couple. Not overly popular (Jessica frequently calls Enid a “nerd”) but not outcast; good-looking, but not beautiful, DeeDee and Enid represent the type of heroine Kutzer describes as characteristic of popular adolescent romance fiction. These “imperfect heroines,” Kutzer writes, “provide teen readers with an escape from their own family and school problems as well as an escape from anxieties about romantic and sexual relationships, and offers the promise of happy endings and secure families even for the imperfect girls of the world” (1986, p. 94). This promise of the “happy ending,” even for imperfect or typical girls, represents the wish-fulfi llment fantasy of the adolescent romance novel of this type. As if following the model of the romance novel Radford describes as a “wish-fulfi llment” narrative, in each example cited from the “Sweet Valley High” series, following the heroine’s negotiation of numerous “obstacles to fulfi llment,” she is allowed to “have it all” (1992, pp. 16, 17). Thus, after competing with Jessica for the affections of Bill—a process that involves a number of minor social humiliations—DeeDee’s dream of a relationship with the surfer is finally realized. Similarly, after she recognizes the narrow-mindedness of her current boyfriend, who dumps her before a big dance after hearing rumors about her past, Enid finds happiness with a boy who loves her in spite of these rumors. It is notable that in both cases, the heroines’ objectification is a sign of their triumph; once chosen by the object of her desire, each is finally recognized as the “sexual female adolescent” she imagined herself to be. Christian-Smith describes this “continuing thread” that appears “throughout teen romance fiction”: “By the end of each novel, a large change in personality has occurred;

62 • Reading the Adolescent Romance the heroine feels more confident and desirable as a girlfriend” (1990, p. 89). This change in status and self-esteem is not affected by the heroine herself; as Christian-Smith writes, “the boyfriend is responsible for this wondrous transformation” (1990, p. 89). That the heroine must seem to acquiesce—to the sting of gossip, to other girls’ advances towards her crush—and resolve to suffer silently emerges as the behavioral option that invites the boyfriend who subsequently produces these wished-for results. In Heart Breaker, it is only after DeeDee resolves to “learn to accept the fact that Bill would never see her as anything more than a friend” and recognize that “she would never be even half as beautiful or popular as Jessica. Not in a million years” (William, 1984d, p. 92), that DeeDee is literally swept off her feet; she falls off the surfboard she is riding, is knocked unconscious, and saved by Bill. Similarly, Enid resolves to go to the school dance without a date and, after spending over an hour getting ready, she grits her teeth and tells herself, “You’re going to have a good time at this dance if it kills you, Enid Rollins” (William, 1983d, pp. 93–94). Immediately following this pronouncement, an unexpected visitor rings her doorbell and George, a friend from her past (who had become “absolutely gorgeous”) offers to take her to the dance himself. In the character of the “typical girl”—the friend of Elizabeth or Jessica whose search for love is at the center of many of the series’ installments— the “Sweet Valley High” novels reify a version of femininity similar to the one described by Valerie Walkerdine in her analysis of British pre-teen girl’s comics. Walkerdine notes the way the somewhat fantastic stories romanticize poverty and suffering, presenting their heroines’ poverty as “the result of tragic circumstances” that must be “suffered virtuously and moved beyond” in spite of the cruelty and viciousness of others (1984, p. 168). Comparing the popular stories to fairy tales, Walkerdine writes that the heroines of these comics are like “the beautiful girl whose rewards for her good deeds is to be taken out of her misery; she is freed by the prince” (1984, p. 175). In this way, Walkerdine concludes, the comics engender a passive, selfless female sexuality; “it is here that girls are produced as victims ready to be saved, prefiguring the heterosexual practices of Jackie [a British teen girls’ magazine]” (1984, p. 175). The “Sweet Valley High” series supports a similar version of femininity. In Sweet Valley, being single is a “tragic circumstance;” however, the victims of this tragedy—the single girls—are powerless to resolve this circumstance themselves. Like Walkerdine’s heroines, the single girls of Sweet Valley eventually “accept their fate in the most selfless manner” (1984, p. 172), a gesture of surrender that leads to what Walkerdine might call the arrival of the prince and the achievement of the happy ending associated with the genre. In Secrets, only after she has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous gossip (rumor mongering that would be described in a later installment of the series as “the gossip [that] had nearly destroyed her” [William, 1984f, p. 65]) and ultimately “determine[s] not to give in to” tears, does her old friend turned boyfriend confess, “somehow I just couldn’t stand the idea of not being able to see you,

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 63 Enid” (William, 1983d, p. 95). Similarly, it is only after Bill spies DeeDee’s lifeless body bobbing in the surf does the “idea of losing her [become] too unbearable to imagine” (William, 1984d, p. 95). Appearing at the moment the heroines have lost all hope, romance, the “Sweet Valley High” novels suggest, is something that happens to girls who suffer silently and wait for salvation, not something girls actively invite and build.

The Teen Heroine: A Girl with a “Problem” The path to romance for the “imperfect heroine” is sometimes rocky; in the world of Sweet Valley, this character type must assume a passive stance in order to be rewarded with romance and recognition. This process, Gilbert asserts, describes “the romantic construction of femininity,” the feminine subject positions that seem to be “connected to the heroine’s quest for love” and “the resultant qualities of femininity such a quest is seen to demand” (1993, p. 72). While Walkerdine argues that female passivity is a component of this fictional femininity, Gilbert describes the exception to that rule, the trope of “metamorphosis” characteristic of teen romance novels of the time period: In novels reliant on this trope, in order to fi nd romance, the protagonist “may have to carve out her new romantic identity by inscribing her body romantically; she must be ‘made-over’ in the way that teen magazines make-over the ordinary girl into the desirable, ‘feminine’ girl” (1993, p. 75). A character’s successful make-over becomes a plot convention that describes the romance’s parameters of heterosexual femininity. As the “imperfect” girl recognizes (or is told) that something mutable is preventing her from achieving romantic relationship, the narrative of her transformation from “unlovable” to “lovable” particularizes what features or characteristics are desirable or undesirable. The “Sweet Valley High” series relies on the metamorphosis narrative in several installments and describes its female characters’ physical transformations in detailed, almost instructive fashion. While Benfer has observed that “Everyone in Sweet Valley is gorgeous, of course, which eventually becomes comical as the series progresses, as the writers have to come up with even more creative ways to distinguish one beautiful girl and boy from another” (2003/2004, p. 51), she fails to notice the admittedly few but distinctly less attractive students who have been known to slip into Sweet Valley. These characters represent a common type found in the popular romance novel, write Gilbert and Taylor, and “are often lampooned . . . Ugly, mannish or assertive women are ridiculed as being unfeminine, as are bitchy women who don’t know how to treat their men, and flirts or sexually permissive women who flaunt their desire” (1991, p. 82). These characters, Gilbert writes, “serve as oppositional points of difference” (1993, p. 71) and, as such, operate both as examples of what to do to ensure romantic failure and as models of the transformation process necessary to succeed in the romance

64 • Reading the Adolescent Romance game. That, in the romance novel, these oppositional characters discover that “the only way to attract a boy is to maximize the visual effect they have” has led Christian-Smith to identify this trope of transformation and decoration as the romance novel’s “code of beautification,” a theme often present in adolescent romance novels (1990, p. 54). Two examples of such problematic characters appear within the first thirty volumes (1983–1986) of “Sweet Valley High”: Robin Wilson, the overweight heroine of volume 4, Power Play, who finds love and popularity after she loses weight and undergoes a makeover, and Lynne Henry, the shy, musically talented heroine of volume 28, Alone in the Crowd, who comes out of her shell after a series of fashion and beauty lessons from her mother. Robin Wilson exemplifies the “ugly” secondary character who, in the words of Gilbert and Taylor, “do[es] not fit the parameters of the romance ideology” (1991, p. 82). Called a “fat wimp” and “tub of lard” by Jessica when she asks to pledge admission to the high school’s exclusive sorority, Robin’s lack of popularity is underscored in a scene describing her public humiliation at a school dance. Although Elizabeth has convinced popular and goodlooking senior Bruce Patman to escort Robin to the school’s “Discomarathon” dance so that Robin might complete a sorority pledge task, when Bruce and Robin arrive at the event, he embarrasses her, steering her to the center of the dance floor and announcing: “OK, that’s it. I brought you to the dance, Tubby. I’ve got better things to do now. Hey! Anybody want to steer the Queen Mary around the floor tonight? She’s all yours!” (William, 1983c, p. 52) Robin—who, by virtue of her weight, does not “fit” within the “parameters of the [Sweet Valley High] romance ideology”—is denied even this ritual of adolescent romance. When she enters the dance, Robin’s face is “absolutely radiant with happiness” (William, 1983c, p. 51); following the public mockery, “Waves of humiliation wash over her” (William, 1983c, p. 53) and she flees to the safety of the girls’ bathroom. Crying in Elizabeth’s arms, Robin laments, “‘How could I have been so totally stupid? Why would somebody who looks like Bruce Patman go out with somebody like me! . . . I’m fat and ugly. I may just be the fattest and ugliest girl in California!’” (William, 1983c, pp. 55, 56). In her sorrow, Robin captures the literary ethic to which Gilbert and Tayor argue the adolescent romance adheres: like the “ugly” female character who is “ridiculed,” Robin is publically mocked, called “Tubby” and “the Queen Mary” in a scene that draws attention to the feature the narrative classifies outside the boundaries of acceptable romantic femininity: her weight. Following the debacle at the dance, Robin is “blackballed” from the sorority during a secret vote and ultimately barred from entry, a move that, when combined with the humiliation she suffered at the dance, inspires her

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 65 make-over. Like Bruce’s public name-calling, Jessica’s explanation of the logic behind Robin’s rejection identifies her weight as her most problematic feature: “We can’t take in everybody—we can’t take in unsuitable people . . . If I told [Robin] once I told her eight hundred and thirty-seven times that blimps were not popular people!” (William, 1983c, p. 83). As if she heard Jessica’s rationale, Robin embarks on a weight-loss plan, causing Elizabeth to notice that her “excess pounds were going rapidly, and the Robin who was emerging seemed like an entirely different girl” (William, 1983c, p. 100). The third person narrative describes Robin’s transformation from overweight and unpopular to good-looking and admired: The old tent dresses had slowly disappeared, replaced with flattering and stylish outfits. The pale face had taken on a healthy glow, and in all a totally new Robin Wilson was dazzling Sweet Valley High. There were many kids, in fact, who swore she’d just moved to town. They’d never noticed her before (William, 1983c, pp. 124–125). Following her makeover, Robin successfully tries out for the high school cheerleading squad and earns the position of co-captain, after which she wins the title of “Miss Sweet Valley High” in a school-wide beauty contest and begins a romantic relationship with a shy male classmate that is recognized in the school newspaper’s lighthearted gossip-column. Robin’s transformation from “tubby” to popular, gorgeous beauty contest winner and girlfriend exemplifies both Christian-Smith’s assertion that “in romance fiction, beauty is the ticket to romantic success, power, and prestige” (1990, p. 43) and Gilbert’s (1993) observation that, absent existing beauty, in order to find love, the romance heroine must be literally made over to conform to conventional standards associated with feminine attractiveness. Although, prior to her makeover, Robin had been friendly with the young man she eventually adopts as her boyfriend, it is only after her diet and makeover that she is given power by being chosen to lead the cheerleading squad; prestige, by being crowned school beauty queen; and romance, as a platonic friendship develops into a romantic relationship. Additionally, the successful makeover turns Robin into what Christian-Smith calls a “legitimate object of the male gaze” (1990, p. 49) and, in the following scene, links this objectification to Robin’s empowerment: On Monday Robin showed up in designer jeans, a rainbow top, and a new hairstyle. Lip gloss and perfect eye makeup created an effect that almost caused Bruce Patman to walk into the gym door (William, 1983c, p. 125). Robin is not just head-turning, she has also become the pied piper of Sweet Valley High boys: she distracts popular heartthrob Bruce Patman, inspires

66 • Reading the Adolescent Romance the boys in the school Chemistry Club to name their “latest formula the Robin Reaction,” and motivates the school football team’s defensive line to run “through the auditorium with a huge placard: Robin has us Throbbin’” (William, 1983c, pp. 138, 139). The story of Lynne Henry, the shy heroine of the series’ twenty-eighth installment, Alone in the Crowd, is similar to Robin’s and, like Robin’s story, concludes with her makeover and subsequent public recognition. A “tall, reclusive junior,” Lynne is more interested in music than in school and although “she knew she could do much better if she really wanted to,” Lynne prefers to “stay in the background,” figuring, “Why should she make an effort when it was so much easier just to be average?” (William, 1986a, pp. 7, 28, 29). When Lynne enters Sweet Valley High’s house rock band The Droids’ songwriting contest, she submits a cassette of an original song anonymously, too shy to claim credit and too afraid of what her crush, the band’s keyboard player, Guy Chesney, might think of her creative efforts. When her song is met with appreciation by The Droids—and particularly by Guy, who seems to fall in love with the mystery singer/songwriter—Lynne decides that she is “sick and tired of looking unkempt” (William, 1986a, p. 106) and embarks on a fashion and beauty makeover. Lynne’s story exemplifies the romance narrative Gilbert describes as typical of popular teen romance in the 1980s: The narratives begin with a romantic/feminine novice, and turn on her metamorphosis—her transformation—into a romantic-feminine convert. The typical novice doesn’t think she needs a boyfriend . . . Or doesn’t attract boyfriends . . . She thinks she is “different” from other girls (1993, p. 74). Like Gilbert’s second and third “types” of romantic heroine, Lynne “doesn’t attract boyfriends” and considers herself not only “different” from her classmates, but also unexceptional and even unlikeable. As she sits alone in the cafeteria, Lynne remembers thinking that “things would get better when she was a little older, when people stopped caring so much about who was pretty, who was in with the ‘right’ crowd, all that” (William, 1986a, pp. 9–10), then resigns herself to her belief that “people didn’t want to be friends with her. They didn’t even notice she existed!” (William, 1986a, p. 10). As in Robin’s story, after Lynne devotes more time to her appearance, she gains confidence and, in an intertextual moment in the novel’s fi nal pages, also earns Robin’s respect and empathy. As her friends on the cheerleading squad discuss Lynne’s transformation, Robin remembers “what it was like to evolve from an ugly duckling to a swan” and her “heart [goes] out to Lynne, and it was obvious that she was proud of the girl as well as empathetic” (William, 1986a, p. 133). Makeover stories like Lynne’s represent what Gilbert, as well as Kuznets and Zarin identify as a common formula in adolescent romance. While Gilbert

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 67 describes this type of story as the “metamorphosis,” Kuznets and Zarin consider it one of “initiation”: A wallflower heroine is initiated into the world of high school dating either by her more worldly well-meaning girl friends or the slightly older, more experienced boy friend. A superficial coating of makeup, a new dress, or the sponsorship of the knowing boy are all it takes to resolve the disabling condition of inexperience (1982, p. 31). Both Gilbert’s and Kuznets and Zarin’s critical assessments emphasize the stereotypically feminine nature of the transformation that “resolve[s] the disabling condition of inexperience.” While Gilbert goes into detail and emphasizes the “feminine body inscription” romance novels deem necessary in preparation for heterosexual relationship, comparing this content to the fashion and beauty content in teen magazines, Kuznets and Zarin’s “coating of makeup” and “new dress” serve similar purposes. In Alone in the Crowd, it is Lynne’s mother, the manager of a pricey health club and spa, who initiates Lynne’s transformation and introduces her to the world of what Gilbert would call “feminine body inscription.” Such preparation for romance is complex, the novel implies; after a day of her mother’s beauty instruction, “Lynne couldn’t believe what she’d been through. Sauna, manicure, exercises, makeup, and skincare lessons” (William, 1986a, p. 115). This Sweet Valley High novel de-mystifies Lynne’s process and, like many popular romance novels from the same time period, “outlines both the process of becoming beautiful and the result, the picture-pretty girl” (ChristianSmith, 1990, p. 48). Lynne’s makeover corresponds with her school-wide recognition as a songwriter and links her new, feminine appearance to her social and romantic success in a way Christian-Smith suggests constructs the romance heroine’s feminine identity and subjectivity and characterizes the gendered discourse of romance literature. Christian-Smith writes: The image of the heroine standing before the mirror with her mascara as the magic wand that promises to transform her into someone beautiful and desirable is a key component in the feminine discourse developed in romance fiction (1990, p. 54). This image is included—and even repeated—in Alone in the Crowd, first, when Lynne tries on her contact lenses and plucks her eyebrows, noting that “the final effect was kind of interesting. Her eyes looked even bigger than usual and farther apart” (William, 1986a, p. 88), and later, after her mother shows her how to use makeup (“I think the eye shadow really brings out the gold in your eyes,” Lynne’s mother observes [William, 1986a, p. 115]) and Lynne assesses her image in the mirror:

68 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Her hair curled softly around her face, and, with makeup and without glasses her eyes seemed enormous. She looked—well, she hated to admit it—pretty good. Not gorgeous, but interesting (William, 1986a, pp. 116–117). In both scenes, the promise of transformation Christian-Smith argues is embodied by the “mascara as the magic wand” is realized and lent gravity by Lynne as well as her classmates. When she returns to school wearing a new outfit and subtle makeup “every single person she ran into had a comment about her ‘new look.’ It made Lynne feel shaky and scared, knowing everyone had noticed her appearance” (William, 1986a, p. 123). Hours later, in the lunchroom, Lynne is unmasked as the mystery singer/songwriter and her fellow students gather around her to praise her accomplishment: She couldn’t even stay in the lunch line, the crowd around her was so persistent. “Lynne! Lynne!” they kept chanting as though she was some kind of star or something. As though she was a Somebody (William, 1986a, pp. 125–126). Just as Robin’s beauty and post-diet and makeover pluck inspire the Sweet Valley High football team’s defensive line to cheer on her behalf, Lynne’s new look inspires her confidence and, after her talent as a songwriter is revealed, she sings before her classmates in the school cafeteria and is greeted with a “burst [of] applause and cheers” (William, 1986a, p. 127). As it outlines what Christian-Smith calls “the process of becoming beautiful,” Alone in the Crowd assumes an instructional tone familiar to readers of the teen fashion and beauty magazines to which Gilbert compares the adolescent romance. When she first attempts to address her appearance, Lynne consults the very magazine texts to which Gilbert compares the romance novel, noting that “each [features] a different suggestion: how to organize your closet, how to tone your thighs, how to highlight your hair, how to make your cheekbones look higher” (William, 1986a, p. 87). When tweezing her eyebrows makes her sneeze, Lynne is comforted by the realization that “the magazines warned her that would happen” (William, 1986a, p. 88). As she assesses her closet with a magazine-trained eye, Lynne remembers the periodicals’ guiding words: “‘Take full advantage of your height and slim figure,’ one article had insisted. ‘Wear bold colors, stripes, patterns—and don’t slouch!’” (William, 1986a, p. 88). This fashion advice is reiterated by Lynne’s mother, a beauty “expert” by trade, who recommends Lynne try on a “red T-shirt dress tied with a wide cotton sash below her waist” (William, 1986a, p. 116). The narrative description of the dress’s flattery suggests the success that results from following expert advice: The dress came down to her knees, a good length for someone of her height, according to Mrs. Henry. Lynne had to admit the overall look

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 69 was superb. She looked curvier than usual in the bright, soft dress. It was as comfortable as her old sweatshirt and jeans, but it made her look so elegant, so sophisticated! (William, 1986a, p. 116) Per the advice of the magazines she consulted, Lynne dons a “bold color” in the form of a “red T-shirt dress;” the “superb” results underscore the validity of the editorial advice. Lynne’s process of transformation—from the early narrative establishment that Lynne had “given up on her appearance” to her realization that “she might not have been blessed at birth in the beauty department, but that didn’t mean she had to aggravate the situation by taking such bad care of herself” (William, 1986a, pp. 26, 72)—construct what Dawn Currie has noted in the content of teen girls’ magazines and calls a “normative adolescent femininity” (1999, p. 248). Currie writes that, while the literal instructions for makeup application and clothing selection may not all be followed by the reader to the letter, they work to “construct a normative adolescent femininity by outlining both what is taken for granted as normal and what is desirable. This type of information is important to readers, whether they use the magazines to ‘check out’ their own experiences or to assess the behaviors and attitudes of others” (1999, p. 248). Similarly, while the potential exists for the reader of Alone in the Crowd to extract fashion and beauty information and advice from the fictional text, the existence of this textual content works, in this installment of the series, to construct and encourage a specific type of feminine comportment and subjectivity. The novel emphasizes Lynne’s misery with her appearance in its first pages, noting “Every time she looked in the mirror, she felt like crying” (William, 1986a, pp. 15–16), punctuating Lynne’s sadness with offers from her mother to “do something with [her] hair” (William, 1986a, p. 28) and describing the gifts of stylish clothing her mother had “persistently bought her each year at Christmas or on her birthday” (William, 1986a, p. 89) that had been pushed to the back of the closet in a way that makes her makeover seem “normal”: inevitable and even desirable. Albeit found in comparatively smaller amount, similarly instructive text appears in Power Play as well. While Alone in the Crowd focuses on the fashion and beauty decisions Lynne makes, using magazine style language to, as Currie writes of magazine beauty messages and instruction, “reinforce a cultural norm . . . feminine beautification” (1999, p. 194), Power Play uses the character of Robin not only to discourage obesity, but also to suggest lack of self-control as its source and strict self-monitoring as its solution. In her fi rst appearance in the novel, Robin laments her weight during a conversation with Elizabeth, blaming her heaviness on her metabolism while munching on a candy bar. Liz holds her tongue, but the narrative issues her unspoken condemnation: “Elizabeth looked at Robin dubiously. She was convinced Robin’s heaviness was due to the way she ate—especially if this was typical” (William, 1983c, p. 7).

70 • Reading the Adolescent Romance While this narrative observation suggests the importance of self-monitoring, the sentence that follows underscores this: “Though Elizabeth and Jessica certainly didn’t have Robin’s figure problems, they still watched their diets carefully” (William, 1983c, p. 7). When Robin makes a solitary effort to lose weight, the narrative compares her old eating habits to her new diet: “Robin’s plate, usually heaped with French fries and double burgers, now held only lettuce leaves, two tomato slices, and a hard boiled egg” (William, 1983c, p. 100). This new diet, combined with her daily five-mile runs, contributes to Robin’s new look and leads Elizabeth to observe to Jessica, “[Robin is] getting popular in a big way since she lost all that weight and did herself over” (William, 1983c, pp. 123–124). As in Alone in the Crowd, in Power Play, Robin’s success is linked to her weight loss and new, fashionable appearance; the detailed description of her metamorphosis suggests both the potential for reader replication of the same processes (a daily lunch of lettuce, two slices of tomato and a hardboiled egg lead to weight loss, while “designer jeans” a “new hairstyle,” “lip gloss and perfect makeup” [Williams, 1983c, p. 125] prove the optimal school outfit) and—as in its reliance on a narrative structure that characterizes social and romantic success in terms of beauty and fashion—takes for granted “the need for beautification” in much the same way Currie argues teen magazines do (1999, p. 194). The series’ inclusion of magazine-like discourse is significant; ChristianSmith argues that what Currie calls the “need for beautification” created in teenage girls’ fashion magazines is suggested in the content of adolescent romance as well, as both publications encourage readers to pay similar attention to appearance and fashion. Christian-Smith notes that young adult popular romance novels’ mention of its heroines’ interest in fashion magazines has been a consistent cosmetic feature of the texts since the midcentury. “Heroines derive their models of feminine beauty from magazines,” Christian-Smith observes (1990, p. 46) and Alone in the Crowd dramatizes this assertion. Christian-Smith argues that romance “heroines’ femininity is constructed during the moments of special recognition that bind together romance, sexuality, and beautification” (1990, p. 48), an assertion that particularizes and supports Gilbert’s argument that the teen romance turns on its heroines’ “romantic femininity,” a particular image of “adolescent femininity [that] tie[s] girls to romantic inscription of their bodies for male approval” (1993, pp. 74, 78). As Christian-Smith and Gilbert agree—and, as Currie observes in teen girls’ fashion magazines—in teen romance construction of its heroines—and of the “girl with a problem” in particular—the route to romantic relationship and personal satisfaction requires the development of a certain brand of femininity characterized by traditional beauty. In addition to conveying the magazine-style advice, the novel emphasizes its utility as it communicates what Dawn Currie identifies as a dominant message in teen girls’ magazines: “feeling good is the result of looking good” (1999, p. 248). Lynne’s mother conveys this message after her daughter’s day

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 71 of beauty instruction, and sighs at how easy it was to affect a cosmetic change in Lynne’s appearance: “I wish it was as easy to make you feel wonderful inside . . . As far as looks go, you look like a different person! But”—she paused meaningfully— “do you feel any better about yourself? That’s what really matters, you know” (William, 1986a, p. 116). While Lynne is initially uncertain, she begins to associate what emerges as new confidence with her new look. When, post-makeover, Lynne answers a phone call from Guy, the personality she refers to as “the ‘new’ Lynne Henry” takes over as she greets him with poise and calm (William, 1986a, p. 119). Just prior to the phone call, the narrative had emphasized the effects of the extra time Lynne has taken with her clothes and the “careful, subtle makeup” she applied. In a single paragraph, the third person narrative assures the reader that the “fi nal effect” of the clothes Lynne chose so carefully “was worth it” and that “she knew she looked good” (William, 1986a, pp. 118, 119). This self-assurance, when considered—as it is in the novel—as a component of Lynne’s fashion and beauty makeover, embodies the “feeling good is the result of looking good” lesson Currie argues teen magazines espouse. Robin’s and Lynne’s makeover stories turn them from unacceptable to typical romance heroines who, like Enid and DeeDee, ultimately succeed in attracting the attention of the boys they admire. While passive “suffering” is the key to attracting a mate in Enid and DeeDee’s stories, corporeal control—in a form that could be considered mild “suffering”—is central to Robin and Lynne’s stories as, Deborah Tolman writes, “the romance narrative codifies the objectification of women into bodies rather than embodied persons” (2000, p. 75). Thus, as Robin learns to control her eating and transforms from a girl who, while munching on a chocolate bar, guesses that she “just wasn’t meant to be slim . . . It’s got something to do with my bones— or is it my metabolism? Anyway, it’s just my sad fate” (William, 1983c, p. 7), to a girl whose cafeteria tray “now held only lettuce leaves, two tomato slices, and a hard boiled egg” (William, 1983c, p. 100), it is the change in her body from obese to slim and therefore acceptable—and not even what would seem to be her new athletic prowess (evidenced by her admission to the cheerleading squad)—that is deemed her triumph. Similarly, Lynne fi nds that she can “see an improvement [in herself], just from wearing the contact lenses and taking pains with her clothing” (William, 1986a, p. 106, my emphasis). Lynne’s new beauty routine takes much more time than her old morning ritual of grabbing an old pair of jeans off the floor and throwing on a sweatshirt; on the day she is to be revealed as the school’s mystery singer/songwriter, she “had taken so long getting dressed that she was already five minutes behind schedule” (William, 1986a, p. 118). As what Tolman might call “objectified bodies” rather than “embodied persons,” Robin

72 • Reading the Adolescent Romance and Lynne attract attention from boys but don’t actively pursue them. The assumption that physical beauty and its maintenance draw young men to the newly objectified body suggests a lesson similar to the rule of passivity and suffering by which Enid and DeeDee abide: après la makeover, girls must focus their energy on the maintenance of its results and wait for the deluge of boys.

The Aspirational Heroine: The Perfect Girl With the establishment of its central characters, twin sisters Elizabeth and Jessica, the “Sweet Valley High” series deviates from the adolescent romance model. Unlike their fictional friends and classmates who, like Jessica’s friend Cara Walker, might be generously described as “pretty and popular in [their] own right” (William, 1983d, p. 21), the Wakefield twins represent what Kutzer terms the “idealized perfect girl” (1986, p. 94) and, as such, bear closer resemblance to the heroine of the adult romance than the protagonist of the adolescent romance. “Blessed with spectacular, all-American good looks,” the identical Wakefield twins have “the same shoulder-length, sun-streaked blond hair, the same sparkling blue-green eyes, the same perfect skin” (William, 1983a, p. 3). Described on the back cover of the first volume of the series as “popular, smart, and gorgeous,” Elizabeth and Jessica resemble the characteristic heroines of the adult romance that Radway describes as “especially alluring” (1984, p. 126) and Kutzer considers “images of the ideal self” more than they do the “attractive . . . but also recognizable girls” that popular the adolescent romance (1986, p. 93). Just as Radway notes the stock language used to describe the gorgeous heroines of adult romance (“They always have ‘glorious tresses’ and ‘sparkling’ or ‘smoldering’ eyes, inevitably ‘fringed by sooty lashes,’” Radway observes [1984, p. 126]), Benfer points out the descriptive language associated with the Wakefield twins that has become a convention of the “Sweet Valley High” series: Each Sweet Valley High installment begins with a litany of the twins’ virtues, which becomes hypnotic because it’s always the same: Their shoulder-length hair is “golden,” “sun-streaked” blond. Their wide-set eyes are “blue-green,” “turquoise,” or “aqua,” and often compared to the color of the ocean. They are five feet six inches tall. Their legs are long. Everything—shoulders, legs, arms—is tan, year-round. Jaws are smooth. Eyelashes are long and black (2003/2004, p. 51). The first novel’s opening passage, in which Jessica “stare[s] at herself in the bedroom mirror” and complains to her sister Elizabeth, is a teasing reference to what Benfer identifies as one of the most dominant tropes of the series:

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 73 “I’m so gross! Just look at me. Everything is totally wrong. To begin with, I’m disgustingly fat . . . I swear I must have the skinniest legs in America. And the bumpiest knees . . . Why couldn’t I at least have had an oval face? It looks like someone stuck a pumpkin on top of my neck. And this hair—a dull yellow mess of split ends. I hate it!” (William, 1983a, pp. 1–2). While Jessica despairs over her “gross” looks, the third person narrative informs us of her “stunning figure without an extra ounce visible anywhere,” her “perfectly shaped bronze leg[s],” and her “silky blond hair” and reveals that “what was actually reflected in the [looking] glass was about the most adorable, most dazzling sixteen-year-old girl imaginable” (William, 1983a, pp. 1, 2). The “Sweet Valley High” novel’s third-person description adheres to Radway’s characterization of such passages in adult romance and even indulges in romantic hyperbole: Jessica (and her sister) is not just “extraordinary,” as Radway suggests adult romance heroines are, she (and her sister) is, as the first page of the second book in the series describes Jessica, “too gorgeous for words” (William, 1983d, p. 1). While these fi rst pages of the fi rst novel in the series establish the stock vocabulary that will be used in subsequent descriptions of the twins, their focus on the discrepancies between how Jessica fears she appears and how she actually looks establish what will become the series’ central motif of characterization. The twins, the novels reiterate, are identical in appearance but opposite in character and, as such, will react to and attempt to influence confl ict in opposing ways. By page four of the fi rst novel, this motif has been articulated: “there was virtually no way to distinguish the beautiful Wakefield twins,” observes the omniscient narrator, “[b]ut beneath the skin, there was a world of difference” (William, 1983a, p. 4). The existence of this “world of difference” allows Elizabeth and Jessica to function as Francine Pascal has stated she intended: representative of the “good and bad sides of one person” (n.a., 2008); however, these “good and bad sides” are distinctly romanticized. Silk Makowski describes the twins in these romantic and hyperbolic terms: Elizabeth “represents the best of every heroine the world has ever known; honest, sincere, devoted to her steady boyfriend,” while Jessica is “a teenage version of the ‘whore with the heart of gold’” (1998, 2006, p. 210). In installment after installment, the series narrative is quick to establish this characterization, noting variously, “A wicked gleam of mischief lurked in the aquamarine depths of Jessica’s eyes, while Elizabeth’s reflected only sincerity” (William, 1983a, p. 4) and “[Elizabeth] was only four minutes older than her twin, but sometimes she felt it was more like four years. Jessica had a habit of attracting trouble the way a magnet attracts metal shavings” (William, 1984a, p. 3). Brenda O. Daly’s description of the twins particularizes their opposing characters:

74 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Elizabeth is a “good girl,” Jessica is “bad” . . . Jessica, like Jezebel, acts out the assertive questioning role, but she lacks any consideration for others in her relentless pursuit of status, privilege, and excitement . . . Elizabeth, editor of [the school newspaper], is too good to be true . . . and she always gives in, gives up, and gives way whenever selfish Jessica insists (1989, p. 55). While Daly criticizes the series’ characterization in terms of its polarity, pointing out that “no integration of opposites . . . is ever achieved” (1989, p. 55), the series depends on this lack of integration to propel its romance plots. Although successive volumes of the series do not focus exclusively on the romantic lives of Elizabeth and Jessica, these opposing characters exert dueling influence on the lives and romances of the various secondary characters at each individual novel’s center. As the “bad” twin, Jessica assumes the role of the “female foil” or “other woman,” a stock character found in more frequently in adult than adolescent romance fiction. Mussell describes the “other woman” of the adult romance as “a beautiful and passionate character who may be sympathetic but [is] rarely admirable” (1984, p. 105). Radway’s description of the “female foil” particularizes the “other woman” Mussell sketches and describes her motivation as the “self-interested pursuit of a comfortable social position. Because she views men as little more than tools for her own aggrandizement, the female foil is perfectly willing to manipulate them by flaunting her sexual availability” (1984, p. 131). In the first chapter of Double Love, Jessica enacts Radway’s description of the female foil when she attempts to redirect the gaze of Todd Wilkins, the good-looking star of the school basketball team who Jessica suspects has designs on Elizabeth. When he telephones the Wakefields and asks to speak to Elizabeth, “[t]he idea that [Todd] would prefer Elizabeth to her infuriate[s] Jessica” (William, 1983a, p. 4). Following a conversation with Todd during which Jessica “heap[s] on the flattery,” purrs into the phone, “hoping to distract him from the real purpose of his call” and ultimately lies, telling Todd that Elizabeth is in the shower, Jessica experiences only “a slight twinge of guilt about sidetracking Todd” that she “quickly brushed away” (William, 1983a, pp. 5, 6). Jessica, who is interested in Todd herself, sees nothing wrong in redirecting his gaze from Elizabeth, especially when a date to an upcoming dance is at stake. Throughout the series, Jessica plays the role of female foil to Elizabeth as well as whichever secondary character is looking for love and social success: in Secrets, Jessica reveals Enid’s secret to the boy who dumps her, in Power Play, she ridicules the overweight Robin, in Wrong Kind of Girl, she turns the cheerleading squad against “Easy” Annie Whitman and in Heart Breaker, she competes with DeeDee for Bill’s affection. Each of these antagonisms is inspired by, in Radway’s terms, Jessica’s “self-interested pursuit of a comfortable social position” (1984, p. 131); thus, she pursues Enid’s boyfriend to

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 75 ensure she is elected queen of a school dance, ridicules Robin and ostracizes Annie to avoid their “contagious” reputations, and pursues Bill in an attempt to ride on his coattails after he is chosen for a Hollywood screen test. While Jessica’s activities are, in Mussell’s terms, “rarely admirable,” she remains, like Mussell’s “other woman,” a sympathetic character. The series engenders this sympathy by establishing clear penalties for Jessica’s behavior and shifting the narrative focalization to the “bad twin” when she is confronted with the consequences of her actions or forced to confess to her misdeed and her punishment is meted out. Although her confessions often dissolve into “an unintelligible babble of how she was so ashamed of herself for being so selfish and awful” (William, 1983a, p. 173), Jessica typically owns up to her misbehavior following dramatic self-flagellation and resolves to suffer penance for her sins, a process of retribution that ironically serves not to humble this passionate character but to re-establish her social dominance. Thus, following a public dunking in the school pool engineered by her sister as revenge for attempting to distract Todd, Jessica agrees with a friend that, even soaked in pool water, she retained her characteristic allure and “really did look kind of sexy. Like Bo Derek in that beach scene in 10” (William, 1983d, p. 2); she endures a forced pairing with class clown Winston Egbert when both are elected king and queen of a school dance and still manages to attract the attention of a good-looking senior she had been eyeing as Winston “trip[s] all over himself in his exuberance” on the dance floor (William, 1983d, p. 118); and, although she suffers a case of poison ivy in the form of “a volcano of swollen, red blisters” following an illicit lake trip with a college boy, she is still granted permission to take an important test she missed after she became stranded in the woods (William, 1984a, p. 110). As the “good girl” in the series, Elizabeth acts as the romantic role model the series’ “average girls” attempt to emulate; her actions in the first novel in the series establish the romantic rules her average friends learn to respect. In Double Love, Elizabeth charts the romantic path of passivity that future secondary characters follow to ensure relationship success. When Jessica leads Elizabeth to believe that Todd prefers her over her sister, Elizabeth is determined to suffer this perceived rejection in silence. Her resignation is described in terms similar to DeeDee Gordon’s who, in the eighth book in the series, considers Jessica her romantic rival. Elizabeth resolves “not to let Jessica know how she felt about Todd,” and, like DeeDee does in Heart Breaker, concedes, “It was obvious which sister Todd preferred. And why not? What girl could possibly compete with the dazzling Jessica Wakefield?” (William, 1983a, p. 12). When she learns that Todd has asked Jessica to the school dance, Elizabeth tries to convince herself that she is pleased at Jessica’s success by “chanting inwardly, I am happy for Jess . . . I am happy for Jess . . . But I’m so miserable I could die!” (William, 1983a, p. 107, ellipses and italics in original), a kind of masochistic pep-talk similar to the one Enid gives herself in the second novel as she prepares to go to a school dance dateless. Determined to

76 • Reading the Adolescent Romance suffer the heartbreak of unrequited love, Elizabeth ignores Todd, even after it appears that he and Jessica are no longer an item. It is only after Todd rescues the twins after they’ve been carjacked and kidnapped by a local drunken drop-out that Elizabeth makes a bold first move and “kiss[es] a surprised Todd squarely on the mouth” (William, 1983a, p. 166). This first novel in the series authorizes a romantic progression that will become the series’ prototype: Elizabeth’s romance with Todd is ultimately affected not by her pursuit of the boy she admires—that Jessica’s attempt to attract Todd’s attention with bold moves proves a failure underscores the “wrongness” of acting aggressively—instead, it emerges after she resolves that “she [is] over Todd for good” and vows to “absolutely stop thinking about him all the time,” a promise that proves hard to keep as, the narrative lets readers know, “she thought about practically nothing else” (William, 1983a, p. 160). That this strategy is a success is proven not only in Double Love, but also in Secrets and Heart Breaker, installments in which the heroine’s passivity is rewarded with romance. As the “good girl” in the series, Elizabeth is “Sweet Valley High”’s “Urheroine.” Described in Secrets as “a person who cared” (William, 1983d, p. 7, emphasis in original), Elizabeth is the model of stability and her relationship with Todd—which proves long term over tens of novels—is the envy of her friends. On a regular basis, secondary characters blurt to Elizabeth, “God, I’d do anything in the world to be you! I’ll bet you’ve never felt self-conscious in your whole life” (William, 1986a, p. 100) or point out, “Everything comes easy for you. You’re bright, pretty, everyone likes you. You don’t know what it’s like to have troubles” (William, 1983c, p. 128). Elizabeth takes these gushing compliments in stride and even offers advice to these confused characters (“‘I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t feel self-conscious sometime! You just can’t let it get to you,’” she counsels a shy classmate [William, 1986a, p. 100]). Her romance with Todd is an ideal as well; he is “ever the obliging boyfriend” and “always seems to know what [Elizabeth] need[s]” (William, 1983b, pp. 142, 76). While Elizabeth’s characterized perfection seems to contradict Kutzer’s argument that the lack of idealized heroines distinguishes the adolescent from the adult romance because, in adolescent romance, “a perfect heroine in a world closely resembling the reader’s may make the reader feel inadequate and inferior” (1986, p. 94), it is “Sweet Valley High”’s inclusion of its secondary “average” girl characters that allow Elizabeth to exist as both ideal and nonthreatening and allows the series to retain its adolescent status. The third-person narrative’s Elizabeth-focalized observations and descriptions of these secondary characters work to maintain this character’s narrative superiority—and perhaps even lend readers a bit of this superiority, as readers are forced to consider the narrative situation through Elizabeth’s eyes—while allowing a more traditionally adolescent heroine to take the literary center stage. While the series features an limitedly omniscient third person narrator, the nature of its focalization—particularly its differing use of Elizabeth and

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 77 Jessica as narrative focalizers—cements the series’ polarizing “good girl”/“bad girl” characterization of its heroines and establishes Elizabeth as the novels’ moral center. “Sweet Valley High”’s manipulation of narrative focalization, which John Stephens argues occurs when “a subject position is . . . constituted as the same as that occupied by a main character from whose perspective events are presented,” achieves an end Stephens considers characteristic of the strategy: it “constructs a false subjectivity and a mimetic selfhood which is actually mimetic of the focalizing selfhood in the text” (1992, pp. 57, 69). In the case of the “Sweet Valley High” series, the narrative encourages its readers to value Elizabeth’s perspective, both by constructing her as the primary narrative focalizer and by referring to her articulated point of view in otherfocalized segments of the text. The series contrasts Elizabeth’s and Jessica’s perspectives—as conveyed through segments of the text featuring each as a narrative focalizer—and, in those installments in which the twins’ differing perspectives are especially central to the plot, typically features a climax that privileges Elizabeth’s perspective and a denouement detailing Jessica’s acceptance of Elizabeth’s point of view. The series alternates between what Stephens considers “omniscient” narration—“the apparent absence of a narrator”— and “focalization,” in which what Stephens calls the “perceptual point of view” is “an activity . . . of a character situated within the text” (1992, pp. 56–57, 27). Both types of focalizing narrative offer opportunities for ideological transmission as, Stephens writes, “the point of noticing who is the text’s focalizer at any moment is tied up with attitude-making and the credence we give as readers to what the text offers” (1992, p. 27). In this way, an omniscient or focused narrative provides us with an opportunity to interact with and judge the veracity of a text that has been constructed to encourage a kind of interpretation. In the “Sweet Valley High” series, the omniscient narration confirms the correctness of Elizabeth’s focalized narrative, subtly underscoring her characterization as the “good twin,” a designation demonstrated and reaffirmed in the dialog and plotlines of the series. Just as the first pages of Double Love distinguish the twins as opposing forces, letting the reader know in its omniscient narrative that while Elizabeth and Jessica may be identical twins, they have opposing personalities, these first pages also establish the character of each twin’s narrative focalization, underscoring the ideology of a text invested in establishing “good” and “bad” characters. Following the paragraph in which the personality differences between the twins are clarified, the first novel employs both omniscient and Jessica-focalized narrative to further establish her as the “wicked” and “mischievous” twin: When the phone in the hallway shrilled, Jessica leaped to answer it, assuming, of course, that it was for her. “Jessica? Liz?” a boy’s voice asked. “Jessica, of course! And who’s this?” she demanded.

78 • Reading the Adolescent Romance “Oh, hi, Jessica. This is Todd. Todd Wilkins. Is Liz home?” He wanted her sister! Jessica’s eyes narrowed dangerously. One of the cutest boys at Sweet Valley High, and he was calling to talk to Elizabeth! Todd Wilkins was currently the basketball team’s hottest star, and Jessica had been admiring him for some time now as she practiced her cheers in the gym alongside him. The idea that he would prefer Elizabeth to her infuriated Jessica, though she was extra careful to conceal this from him (William, 1983a, p. 4). The first line in this excerpt assumes an omniscient point of view, describing Jessica’s behavior and ascribing motivation to it that intimates her character. That Jessica would assume that the ringing phone signaled a call for her and not Elizabeth suggests that she considers herself more popular, more “in-demand” than her sister while her eagerness—she “leaped” to answer the call—suggests her investment in the maintenance of this perspective. While these lines could be narrated by Jessica herself, the use of the past tense is characteristic of the greater third-person narrative and contrasts with the character-focalized narrative that follows, which is narrated from an immediate and reactionary point of view. Following Todd’s introduction and his request for Elizabeth, the narrative switches from omniscient to Jessica-focalized: “He wanted her sister! . . . One of the cutest boys at Sweet Valley High, and he was calling to talk to Elizabeth!” (William, 2983a, p. 4). These exclamations are more subjective in tone than the earlier, omniscient narrative and, although they are delivered from a third-person rather than a first-person perspective, imply Jessica’s private reaction of shock at Todd’s request. That this reaction is both Jessica’s and private is confirmed when the narrative switches back to omniscient: “The idea that he would prefer Elizabeth to her infuriated Jessica, though she was extra careful to conceal this from him” (William, 1983a, p. 4). Here, the narrative ascribes emotion (fury) to Jessica, confirming that the earlier Jessica-focalized narrative response (“He wanted her sister!”) was not one of vicarious pleasure on her sister’s behalf, but one of anger. The following pages alternate between an omniscient and Elizabethfocalized narrative to establish the “good” twin’s character in much the same way the series uses omniscient and Jessica-focalized narrative to describe the “bad” twin. Following Todd’s call, the Jessica-focalized narrative justifies Jessica’s manipulation of Todd: “It wasn’t as if he were Elizabeth’s boyfriend. She probably didn’t even know he existed” (William, 1983a, p. 6). The following omniscient sentence counters Jessica’s perspective, and introduces several pages of omniscient narrative describing Elizabeth’s secret feelings for Todd: “Jessica couldn’t have been more mistaken,” reads the narrative, contradicting Jessica’s assumption that Elizabeth “didn’t even know [Todd] existed” (William, 1983a, p. 6). The omniscient narrative describing Elizabeth’s reaction to Todd’s call emphasizes her disappointment: “Elizabeth’s heart sank” when Jessica deceitfully informs her that Todd had called to wish Jessica good luck

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 79 with her sorority pledge. Assuming “that Todd had preferred Jessica all along, Elizabeth felt as if she’d been grounded by a five-hundred-pound weight” and “As she thought of Todd’s phone call to Jessica, the tight feeling in her chest spread to a pressure behind her eyes” (William, 1983a, pp. 6, 7, 12). This description, which emphasizes Elizabeth’s visceral feelings of disappointment, contradicts Jessica’s assumption that sidetracking Todd “hadn’t really done any harm” (William, 1983a, p. 6) and emphasizes the literal incorrectness while intimating the symbolic “wrongness” of her deception. The chapter concludes on an Elizabeth-focalized note that emphasizes the omniscient narrative’s observation of her intent to suffer what seems to be her unrequited crush in silence: [S]he was determined not to let Jessica know how she felt about Todd. What was the point? It was obvious which sister Todd preferred (William, 1983a, p. 12). This passage reiterates the resolve the omniscient narrative establishes in previous pages as it notes that Elizabeth “didn’t let Jessica see her disappointment” at Todd’s request to speak with Jessica on the phone and that she didn’t “want to reveal her true feelings about Todd” (William, 1983a, pp. 6, 7). When the narrative switches from omniscient to Elizabeth-focalized, the verb tense shifts and the sentences (“What was the point? It was obvious which sister Todd preferred”) assume the same type of reactionary immediacy the Jessicafocalized narrative assumed in earlier pages. While Jessica’s focalized narrative is angry and even jealous in tone, Elizabeth’s is selfless and resigned. Critics of the “Sweet Valley High” series have noted the ways in which the novels’ central twins personify two distinct and opposing gender stereotypes familiar to readers of young adult as well as adult romance. Christian-Smith observes that, just as adult romance features an ideal heroine and her romantic foil, adolescent romance novels often introduce conflict between a “good girl” and a “bad girl” character. This “good girl” character is, writes ChristianSmith, “the quintessential ‘girl next door,’—meek, kind, and pure of heart;” the “bad girl” character is, in contrast, “assertive with boys, and has beauty, poise, and self-confidence. She knows what she wants and how to go about realizing her desires” (1990, p. 81). As I do, above, Christian-Smith draws from Mussell’s conception of “the other woman” in adult romance, suggesting that the adolescent “bad girl” represents a modification of “the category of ‘the other woman’” (Christian-Smith, 1990, p. 81). As the series’ representative “good girl” and “bad girl,” Meredith Rogers Cherland writes, Jessica and Elizabeth “embody the characters of sinner and saint respectively, and their presentation as ‘opposite’ personalities shadows the plot’s own machinations with opposite gender meanings” (1994, p. 96). Both Cherland and ChristianSmith are critical of these diametric portrayals and, in her analysis of the series, Cherland (1994) cites Christian-Smith, suggesting that the characters

80 • Reading the Adolescent Romance of Elizabeth and Jessica represent narrow and extreme images of womanhood offered to series readers. In contrast, Willinsky and Hunniford acknowledge the “different sorts of independence” the twins enact, noting that “Clearly some forms of independence can be a dangerous thing in growing up, as Jessica demonstrates. Yet used with the sort of discretion which Elizabeth does, it can be mildly engaging” (1993, p. 102). The characters’ independence does not lie at the heart of Cherland’s and Christian-Smith’s critiques; instead, this independence becomes a gloss on what Cherland and Christian-Smith have argued are immanently familiar, narrow and stifling models of femininity reified in the “Sweet Valley High” and other romance series. Willinsky and Hunniford’s argument that Jessica, as the series’ “bad girl,” demonstrates that “some forms of independence can be a dangerous thing in growing up” (1993, p. 102) inadvertently underscores what Christian-Smith argues is the ideological meaning attached to the stock characters of the “good girl” and the “bad girl.” Christian-Smith writes: What gives this opposition [between “good girl” and “bad girl”] its meaning is the distinction between the heroine and the other girl in terms of their motivations for romance and the methods used to attract a boy . . . These codings [of characters as “good girls” and “bad girls”] represent the fundamental characteristics that determine which characters are presented to readers as positive models of femininity (1990, p. 85). The “good girl,” Christian-Smith argues, may be temporarily thwarted by the “bad girl”; however, that the romance novel’s “good girl” ultimately emerges as a romantic victor—a victory characterized by her successful attainment of a romantic relationship—positions this character as what Christian-Smith calls a “positive model of femininity.” The “Sweet Valley High” novels exemplify this argument in volume after volume. As the series’ “bad girl,” Jessica “makes her intentions obvious and vigorously pursue[s] her goals through any means available” (Christian-Smith, 1990, p. 86). While this behavior results in brief victories for Jessica—she secures dates to high school dances and wins beauty contests and popularity contests—Elizabeth observes wistfully that “her sister hadn’t yet experienced such a deep and caring relationship with any of her many boyfriends” (William, 1984b, p. 9). This lack of experience, ChristianSmith argues, is the “bad girl”’s “ultimate penalty” (1990, p. 86). The “good girl,” who is characterized by her “forbearance in the face of romantic difficulties” (Christian-Smith, 1990, p. 86), is, like Elizabeth, rewarded with the romance novel’s ultimate prize: a “deep and caring relationship.” Although Elizabeth and Jessica are positioned at opposing ends of “Sweet Valley High”’s continuum of femininity, the series does little to articulate and validate the space outside this continuum or in between these poles. In fact, the series encourages its secondary characters to eschew their positions “in

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 81 the middle” or “on the fringes” in favor of a model of femininity embodied by Elizabeth. Thus, characters with “bad girl” pasts (like Enid) are applauded for abandoning their formerly wild child existences and characters who, like Lynne and Robin, are “on the outside looking in” (coincidentally, this phrase is the title of Lynne’s contest-winning song)—sloppy or overweight and thus rendered unfeminine—are encouraged to make physical changes so that they might enter the feminine arena occupied by Elizabeth and Jessica and then work to position themselves on the side of the “good girls.” By framing its central heroines in terms of what Cherland calls “binary oppositions” and then encouraging its secondary characters to align with one or the other side, “it seem[s] clear . . . that one could not be both Jessica and Elizabeth” (1994, p. 172). Benfer’s assessment of the twins further articulates this critique: [I]t seems liberating to have your sympathies split between two very different heroines. But eventually it becomes clear that the twins thing reinforces the principle lesson of the novels: personalities are fi xed, and you are either one kind of girl or the other; there is no room for ambiguity. Thus you can either be sincere or manipulative; earnest or playful; dependable or flighty; a hard worker or a party girl (2003/2004, p. 48). This “either-or” lesson is one found not just in “Sweet Valley High,” but in most traditional adolescent romance novels. These novels, like the “Sweet Valley High” series, “hinge on the counterpoint between the ‘good girl’ and ‘other girl’” and characterize romantic femininity as a “tug of war between conventional femininity and more assertive modes” (Christian-Smith, 1990, pp. 134, 113). The romance plots of the “Sweet Valley High” novels are built on just this “tug of war” and, in a notable volume, suggest both the inevitability and the necessity of this struggle. Dear Sister, the seventh book in the series, begins after Elizabeth wakes from a coma following a motorcycle accident and head injury. Although she emerges from the hospital physically fine, Elizabeth’s personality seems transformed: she ignores her steady boyfriend and fl irts outrageously with her other male classmates, begins to dress more provocatively, and shuns homework and chores. Left to pick up Elizabeth’s slack, Jessica fumes, “Why, she’s doing at least a hundred and thirty-seven things that I usually do . . . At least, things I sometimes do. Once in a while” (William, 1984c, p. 44). As Elizabeth’s acts more and more out of character and Jessica finds herself taking on responsibilities typically assumed by her sister, she is convinced that the girls have switched places: Elizabeth had somehow turned into her, Jessica! She was even out-Jessicaing her. It couldn’t happen. It must not be allowed to happen (William, 1984c, p. 46).

82 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Jessica’s vehemence (“it must not be allowed to happen”) is understandable given the strict binary the sisters represent. When she asks herself, “‘If she’s Jessica . . . then who am I?’” (William, 1984c, p. 46), Jessica’s agony reinforces what Benfer asserts is the “principle lesson of the novels:” “you are either one kind of girl or the other” (2003/2004, p. 48). Benfer’s observation can be extended to form a semiotic argument: if one is either “one kind of girl or the other,” if neither girl exists, no girls exist; thus, the “good girl” requires the “bad girl” to affi rm the differences between the two that characterize their existences.

The Romantic Hero: The Objectified Male With a few exceptions, the “Sweet Valley High” series depicts the progression of romance from the heroine’s perspective and casts the male romantic partner as the good girl’s prize, rewarding the girl who has either demonstrated enough patience or effectively made herself over with the attentions of an eligible male and the promise of heterosexual relationship. These eligible male characters are presented in objectified terms that underscore the desirability of the heterosexual romance relationship critics argue is the quest object of the romance novel. In contrast to the adult romance, in which, Radway, Modleski and Ann Barr Snitow observe, heroes are depicted as cruel and cold bastions of masculinity who only gradually reveal their softer sides, in the Sweet Valley novels, the heroes are physically strong and even imposing but with gentle temperaments. It is this gentleness that distinguishes the desirable hero from his heroic foil, the romance series’ equivalent of ChristianSmith’s “bad girl.” As Snitow has written about the Harlequin romance, in the “Sweet Valley High” series, “the usual relationship is reversed: woman is subject, man, object” (1979, p. 144); this “reversed” relationship is realized in the series’ frequent physical and affective descriptions of the female heroines’ male objects of desire. While the series’ presentation of its male heroes as objects of the female gaze would seem to flip the discourse of the male gaze in a way that empowers its heroines somewhat, the series presents its female heroines in equivalent terms in a way that does little to defy their traditional objectification. Similarly, while the series’ investment in the promotion of strong but gentle heroes would seem to contradict the messages critics argue are present in adult romances and that, Modelski writes, are meant to “dispel” the “serious doubts women have about men” and provide “explanations for the contempt men show towards women” (1992, p. 26), in the Sweet Valley novels, as, Christian-Smith writes, in the adolescent romance in general, because the “heroine’s sexuality is presented as expressive and responsive to boys” (1990, p. 34), the gentle and undemanding boyfriends work to effectively circumscribe sexuality and authorize the limitations that constitute acceptable sexual practice.

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 83 The “Sweet Valley High” series describes its male heroes in terms that emphasize their physicality and suggest their objectification. Double Love’s description of Todd Wilkins, the object of both Elizabeth and Jessica’s affections, makes note of his athleticism and toned body: he is “the basketball team’s hottest star,” is “tall [and] lean [with] gorgeous brown eyes” and the mere sight of “his sky-blue shirt open at the throat to reveal a glimpse of tanned, muscular chest” sets “Elizabeth’s pulse . . . off at a gallop” (Williams, 1983a, pp. 4, 6, 7). In Secrets, when Enid reconnects with her old friend George, she is surprised at his transformation from boy to young man and openly admires his muscular physique: he is “at least a foot taller” and described as “a tower of tanned muscle topped by a gorgeous white smile and the sexiest eyes Enid had ever been hypnotized by” (William, 1983d, p. 94). Ken Matthews, the captain of the school football team and one of Jessica’s frequent dates, is “tall, blue-eyed and gorgeous” and, when Jessica spies him coming out of the locker room, “sweaty from football practice,” she notices that “his jersey clung to his broad chest in dark, wet patches” and “thought he looked very sexy” (William, 1984a, p. 81). These detailed assessments of their physiques stand alone as introductions to the series’ male heroes; outside mentions of physicality and athletic prowess, these heroes remain what Snitow terms “unknowable others” (1979, p. 144). Passages like these, writes Snitow of similar content in Harlequin romance novels, represent a kind of “phallic worship” (1979, p. 144). In these worshipful excerpts, “male is good, male is exciting, without further points of reference” (Snitow, 1979, p. 144). Thus, even though he remains Elizabeth’s steady boyfriend for over twenty volumes and, as such, occupies a consistent place in the series, Todd’s interests (besides basketball) and passions (besides Elizabeth) remain a mystery. The same is true of Enid’s boyfriend, George: although we learn of the dubious past the pair had shared, George’s aspirations and avocation (he is a student at the local Sweet Valley College)—with the exception of a brief interest in flying—are never revealed. These descriptive passages are notably character-focalized, a fact that emphasizes the female ownership of the gaze that assesses the series’ heroes and would seem to disrupt what, following Laura Mulvey’s critical writing about fi lm, has been dubbed “the male gaze.” The “pleasure in looking” Mulvey describes and terms “the male gaze” has, according to her, “been split between active/ male and passive/female;” “the determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly” (1975, p. 11). Just as, Mulvey has argued, the appearance of the female form in fi lm is “coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that [it] can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (1975, p. 11), in the Sweet Valley novels, description of the male form is coded for strong visual and erotic impact. The series’ description of Ken Matthews (above) is almost stereotypically erotic, with its emphasis on the way his sweaty shirt “clings” to his muscular chest. Similarly, the descriptions of Todd and George, which focus on the way their physiques are evident—in Todd’s case, in peep-show form as viewers are only allowed

84 • Reading the Adolescent Romance the “glimpse” of his “tanned, muscular chest” an open shirt collar allows— suggest the body to be discovered beneath their clothes. As in fi lm, in which, Mulvey writes, “the spectator identifies with the male main protagonist . . . so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look” (1975, p. 12), by using a female characterfocalized narrative to describe the series’ male heroes, “Sweet Valley High” encourages the reader to identify with the female protagonist and transfers “the power” of the female protagonist that her gaze implies to the reader. The male cinematic gaze, Mulvey writes, is a “voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanism” employed to “circumvent” the “psychic threat implied by the female” (1975, p. 17); if the female remains the object of the male gaze, her passivity is ensured. The female-focalized narratives that encourage a female gaze on the male form in “Sweet Valley High” provide readers with the pretense of such activity; however, because, as Mulvey writes, “according to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification” (1975, p. 12), the active female remains an illusion. In the “Sweet Valley High” series, this illusion is revealed in the narrative text that surrounds and tempers its heroines’ character-focalized observations. That the series’ character-focalized descriptions of its heroes not only include objectifying language but also describe the visceral effects of the male body on the female observer, the “female gaze,” in the “Sweet Valley High” series, ultimately confirms the active/male and passive/female characterization Mulvey argues is present in fi lm and critics argue is pervasive in the romance novel. The descriptions of Todd, George and Ken (above) are notably appended by commentary that describes the impact the mere suggestion of their muscular bodies has on the female spectator. Elizabeth’s heart “gallops” when she glimpses Todd’s muscular chest and when Enid looks “into [George’s] clear gray eyes,” she is struck dumb, and “anything brilliant she might have said simply fizzled away” (William, 1983d, p. 96). When George holds out his hand to Enid, “she step[s] forward as if in a trance” and, when the two prepare to leave for a school dance, she discovers she has forgotten to put on her shoes (William, 1983d, pp. 94, 97). While the erotic description of the sweaty Ken Matthews is Jessica-focalized, the sentence that follows—“Jessica thought he looked very sexy” (William, 1984a, p. 81)—is an omnisciently focalized sentence that emphasizes Jessica’s reaction. While the initial descriptions of the male heroes as “erotic objects” seem to coincide with the “scopophilic instinct (pleasure in looking at another person as an erotic object)” Mulvey argues is a component of the male cinematic gaze (1975, p. 17), the resulting physical disturbances—Elizabeth’s heart palpitations, Enid’s trance-state—suggest a repercussive effect. That this effect halts with the initial female observer, and that it seems to “bounce back” from the otherwise unaffected male object and call attention to the body of the heroine is analogous to the fetishization of the female figure Mulvey describes as a

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 85 fi lmic response to feminine threat (1975). Mulvey’s observation—“as soon as fetishistic representation of the female image threatens to break the spell of illusion, and the erotic image on the screen appears directly (without mediation) to the spectator, the fact of fetishization, concealing as it does castration fear, freezes the look, fi xates the spectator and prevents him from achieving any distance from the image in front of him” (1975, p. 18)—can be applied to the scenes of illusory female gaze in “Sweet Valley High.” Here, as the “fetishistic representation” of the male hero “threatens to break the spell of illusion”—in this case, the illusion of the female gaze—the narrative forces our attention from the fetishized body of the hero to the embodied response of the female focalizer, a move that thrusts the heroine’s body before the spectator/ reader and affirms the male gaze on the female character. Although the descriptive passages of the series’ eligible males are rendered in character-focalized terms that emphasize their physical desirability, that the female heroines of the series are often described in the same manner challenges the reversal of the male gaze that the masculine description seems to refute. Throughout the series, not only is the female characters’ clothing “minutely observed,” as Snitow writes it is in adult romance novels (1979, p. 144), their physical beauty is described in corporeal terms. Often these descriptions of the feminine body and its adornment are combined, as in a scene in Double Love in which Jessica meets her date for a school dance wearing a “blue dress with . . . delicate straps and [a] full skirt [that] showed off her slim body and gorgeous legs” (William, 1983a, p. 122) and in a scene in Secrets in which Elizabeth notices that Enid’s “pale mauve off-the-shoulder dress . . . showed off her slender figure to perfection” (William, 1983d, p. 105). Just as the series’ descriptions of its male heroes’ affecting physiques are character focalized, the descriptions of its heroines are similarly wrought. Interestingly, the descriptions of the female characters and their arresting figures are rendered from the points of view of either the character herself or her female friends. Thus, it is Elizabeth who notes the flattering fit of Enid’s dress and Jessica herself who assesses her appearance as “nothing less than sensational” (William, 1983a, p. 122). These female characters’ gazes are distinctly non-sexual; that is, although the female-on-female gaze is admiring, it is not physiologically affective. Instead, these descriptions seem to imply an unarticulated but anticipated gaze, that of a male observer whose physical reactions confirm the female characters’ focalized assessments. Consequently, following Jessica’s estimation of her own “sensational” appearance, the omniscient narrative notes that, at the dance, “her beautiful tanned legs caught every boy’s eyes” (William, 1983a, p. 124). Similarly, following Elizabeth’s appraisal of Enid, she “notice[s] a number of people staring” at her friend (William, 1983d, p. 109). This “anticipated gaze” is more evident when the focalizing character seems to be passing judgment on the observed character, as in the Jessica-focalized passage describing secondary character Annie Whitman “wearing a minidress short enough to make her a girl watcher’s

86 • Reading the Adolescent Romance delight” (William, 1984e, p. 131), or in a later, Elizabeth-focalized passage describing the same character, this time “catching everybody’s attention in a slinky outfit with a skirt that had a slit almost to the top of her thigh” (William, 1984f, p. 46). While the series narrative ensures that readers are privy to its heroines’ peer- and self -assessment, it makes clear the potential repercussions associated with such studied attractiveness, cleverly blaming the female for the male’s misbehavior. Their carefully considered outfits might attract admiring stares—as Jessica’s and Enid’s flattering dresses do, above—however, an overly alluring appearance can stimulate young men and inspire out-of-control behavior. After Jessica sneaks off to a college party sporting a red bikini under a brief halter top described as a “scrap of lacy white cloth” she selects because it “look[s] really sexy with my red shorts”—and after Elizabeth warns Jessica against dressing so provocatively for a date with her college man (“‘I wouldn’t want to look too sexy around Scott if I were you,’ Elizabeth warned darkly” [William, 1984a, p. 4])—she finds herself in an aggressive clinch with her date who “descend[s] upon her like an invading army, tugging insistently at her bikini straps while . . . devour[ing] her neck” (William, 1984a, p. 23). When Jessica tries to resist his advances, Scott laughs: “Go ahead, Jessie, baby. Tell them. Tell them how you lied to them so you could sneak up here with me. Tell them how you just happened to be in a deserted boathouse, practically naked, when I came along and tried to take advantage of you.” He shook his head. “Sorry, baby, it just doesn’t wash” (William, 1984a, p. 26, emphasis in original). His overtures and aggression are depicted as natural responses to her “practically naked” condition; “play with fire and you’re going to get burned,” Scott says to Jessica, an aphorism that suggests an inevitable cause-and-effect (William, 1984a, p. 27). This incident is not the only of such events in the series; Willinsky and Hunniford describe a similar struggle that takes place in Double Love, after Jessica accepts a date from a local bad boy attracted by her swinging hips as she walks down the street: Such slight swinging is met by more than Jessica can handle in sexual advances from [her date] and ends in a bar-room brawl with police action. The lesson is clear. The highly-studied beauty which the young woman is encouraged to turn to and cultivate is a danger; it speaks to another part of the world which is so easily out of the woman’s personal control. This power to attract attention is, in effect, to risk physical abuse (Willinsky and Hunniford, 1993, p. 101). Willinsky and Hunniford’s observation underscores the differences between the series’ presentation, description and even objectification of its male and

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 87 female characters. The series assesses its heroes and heroines with a frankly appraising—and female focalized—eye, a move that ironically privileges the male gaze as it undermines the expressed female one. In “Sweet Valley High,” the female gaze is known, articulated and understood; the male gaze is assumed but, as it is rarely articulated and understood only in terms of the risk associated with the male reaction, is rendered distinctly more powerful. The “power to attract attention” Willinsky and Hunniford attribute to the attractive female characters of “Sweet Valley High” ultimately and ironically emphasizes their powerlessness when scrutinized under the male gaze. Conversely, the young men of “Sweet Valley High” seem to grow stronger under scrutiny; their attractive physiques and handsome faces provoke physical reactions among female admirers and intimate the heroes’ physical power. These characters can turn their literal power against their female admirers, as Scott does as he tries to take advantage of Jessica and she notes that the “muscles she’s admired on the beach felt knotted and menacing now” (William, 1984a, p. 23) or use this power to defend them, as Todd does when he beats up a young man who has car-jacked the Wakefield twins and issues “a fury of hard, short jabs to the middle” that send the man “jackknifing to his knees, clutching at his stomach and gasping for breath” (William, 1983a, p. 165). The series emphasizes its male characters’ potency, equating their sexual attractiveness with physical power in a way that challenges the objectification of the characters implied by their female focalized descriptions. It is this emphasis on the heroes’ physical power that disarms the potential power of the female gaze the female-focalized narrative seems to radically suggest. In Sweet Valley, no desirable male is merely good-looking, he must also be powerfully built or athletic, as are Todd, “the basketball team’s hottest star,” (William, 1983a, p. 4) or Ken, the captain of the football team. The potential and sometimes realized strength of the male heroes—and male heroic foils—of the “Sweet Valley High” series functions as the means by which, Christian-Smith writes of teen romance in general, these heroes emerge as “definers of girls’ sexuality” (1990, p. 40). Christian-Smith argues that in the teen romance, female characters’ sexuality is defined “in relation to that of her boyfriend. Boys initiate all sexual encounters” (1990, p. 41). “The linking of biological reproduction with sexuality renders heroines’ sexuality as dangerous,” Christian-Smith continues: The resistances of heroines to boys’ sexual overtures tends to defuse the danger of their sexuality and cement that sexuality into patterns the very opposite of boys’: passive, controlled, and nongenital in nature (1990, p. 41). As a result, Christian-Smith concludes, “sex . . . becomes the domain of masculinity” (1990, p. 41). In the Sweet Valley novels, this “domain of masculinity” is articulated in terms of its threatening potential. Just as Christian-Smith

88 • Reading the Adolescent Romance observes that “boys initiate all sexual encounters,” in the “Sweet Valley High” series, the potential for the heroes not only to initiate such encounters, but to dominate them, is a consistent threat, coiled within firm biceps. Bruce Patman, who emerges as the series’ ultimate heroic foil, exemplifies this threat. His sexual desire is encoded in terms of his physicality and strength; when he kisses Jessica, “his arms crush her against him [and] his mouth demand[s] what his body want[s] to take” (William, 1983b, p. 31). When, in a later volume, Elizabeth resists his advances, Bruce “sieze[s] her wrists,” rendering her “helpless” and threatens her: “I’ve got real strong hands, Liz,” he said. “From tennis, see? Now, you listen to me. You give me what I want, or I’ll tell this whole thing all over school” (William, 1984c, p. 146). Bruce’s “demanding” mouth and restraining hands are synecdochial of his sexuality which, in the above examples, is, to paraphrase Christian-Smith, the “opposite” of girls’ “passive, controlled and nongenital” sexuality. In the throes of male-instigated passion, boys’ admirable muscles become “knotted and menacing,” as Scott’s do when he tries to take advantage of Jessica (William, 1984a, p. 23). That the very features the girls of Sweet Valley admire in the boys—physicality and strength—have the potential to become weapons suggests that a certain foreshadowing is attached to the series’ description of their frank admiration and responses: Elizabeth’s racing heart, Enid’s sudden muteness, and even Jessica’s “shiver” at the “sight of Bruce’s own lean, firm frame” (William, 1983b, p. 23) can be seen not only as sexual responses, but also as fear responses. While, as Radway writes, in adult romance novels heroes are characterized by “the terrorizing effect of [their] exemplary masculinity” that is “always tempered by the presence of a small feature that introduces an important element of softness into the overall picture” (1984, p. 128), in the “Sweet Valley High” series, masculinity is always potentially terrorizing; it is this potential for terror that renders the heroes so attractive. Whether this terrorizing potential is enacted or reserved distinguishes the series’ romantic heroes from their heroic foils. Todd, Elizabeth’s steady boyfriend, is the epitome of such reservation and emerges as the series’ ultimate romantic hero. Elizabeth compares him to “a selection of rich, dark leather watchbands,” noting that “they had the warm, masculine quality she associated with Todd” (William, 1983c, p. 91). While Todd may indeed be warm and masculine, the comparison is reminiscent of the watchband’s other function: to secure or even bind. It is this security that characterizes Todd and the other secondary male characters who emerge as romantic heroes and represent what Gilbert calls “domesticated male sexuality” (1993, p. 72). In the “Sweet Valley High” series, domesticated sexuality is indicated through the hero’s kiss; unlike the kisses of roués described as “demanding,” the hero’s kiss is always, like Todd’s, “firm, but so gentle” (William, 1983d, p. 86). This phrase—“firm

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 89 but gentle”—becomes a conceptual trope in the series and describes the relationship-sealing kiss with which most of the series installments culminate: When he and Enid reunite, George draws her “into a gentle, tentative kiss” (William, 1983d, p. 97) and when Bill cements his love for DeeDee in volume 8, he kisses her with a “passionate tenderness” (William, 1984d, p. 100). As, Christian-Smith writes, “the kiss becomes the dominant form of sexual expression” in traditional teen romance novels (1990, p. 32) as well as in “Sweet Valley High,” the description of the romance-sealing kiss—particularly as it represents the sexual agency and potential power of the romantic hero—is especially important. “Firmness” and “gentleness” here indicate restraint and consideration, characteristics of the ideal Sweet Valley hero. Radway’s description of the adult romance’s ideal heroes coincides with “Sweet Valley High”’s characterization of the same. Just as Radway describes the adult romance hero as “spectacularly masculine” but “intensively and exclusively interested in [the heroine] and her needs” (1984, p. 149), the ideal hero in the “Sweet Valley High” series is powerfully masculine but tender and attentive. Such idealized heroes, Radway writes, “confirm the validity of the reader’s desire for tender nurture . . . [and] confirms her longing to be protected, provided for, and sexually desired” (1984, p. 149). Sweet Valley’s ideal heroes serve a similar function by affirming the heroine’s wish for a managed sexual relationship characterized by desire and restraint, a romantic conclusion that, in its idealization, also attests to the desirability of distinctly nongenital romantic relations.

The Series Structure and the Suggestion of the Impossibility of Romance Noting that most definitions of the romance as a novel of “wish-fulfi llment” “concentrate attention on the ending of the romance” in which the heroine’s “desire to have it all” is realized, Radford notes modern contestations to this formula that deal “not only with the desire to have it all . . . but with the impossibility of having it all” (1992, pp. 16, 17). While individual installments of the “Sweet Valley High” series do conclude with that volume’s heroine’s attainment of romance and recognition (the “all” these adolescent heroines desire), the series’ soap-opera structure suggests the “impossibility” Radford describes. This soap-opera structure in indicated in the series’ text and paratext and is realized in a consistent way. Following the resolution of the series’ individual novel’s central conflict, several paragraphs or pages are inserted that foreshadow the conflict the following novel will address in a way that intimates that “happily ever after” is a short-lived fantasy. The final page of Double Love serves as a premier example of this technique. After saying a “long good night fi lled with kisses and sweet words, and still more kisses,” Elizabeth welcomes her friend Enid, whom she has invited to spend the night

90 • Reading the Adolescent Romance (William, 1983a, p. 182). Enid arrives in tears and when Elizabeth inquires as to her emotional state, Enid confesses: “Liz, I don’t know what do to. Something terrible has happened. I can’t even tell you, it’s so awful. But I know Ronnie is going to hate me, and I could just die! I’m afraid I’m going to lose everything” (William, 1983a, p. 182). Following that pronouncement, bolded and italicized paratext advertises the series’ second installment: What is the dark mystery in Enid’s past, and how does Jessica use it to her own advantage? Find out in Sweet Valley High #2, SECRETS (William, 1983a, p. 182). While the novel’s conclusion and the promotional paratext do not imply direct threats to the relationship Elizabeth and Todd established in that volume, they do suggest the dissolution of another relationship: Enid’s partnership with Ronnie. Successive volumes suggest even Elizabeth and Todd’s relationship is in peril; when Todd confides his intent to purchase a motorcycle at the conclusion of volume 5, the paratext reads: Will Todd’s motorcycle drive them apart? Find out in Sweet Valley High #6, DANGEROUS LOVE (William, 1984a, p. 117). These consistent threats to the happiness of paired couples in the Sweet Valley universe expand the series’ romance’s reach. Although individual installments are invested in the establishment of heterosexual couples, the series’ greater narrative arc emphasizes the fragility and potential impermanence of these unions. This series convention articulates a theme Kutzer argues is implied in traditional and stand-alone teen romance novels and that distinguishes the adolescent romance from its adult counterpart. Teen romances are . . . concerned with developing love, but nearly all of them imply that the one, true love is some years in the future and, as we shall see, not necessarily passionate. Teen romances are concerned with the beginnings of the romantic search, not with the fi nal triumph (1986, p. 91). While individual teen romance novels might imply that the romance relationships developed between their pages are not permanent, the “Sweet Valley High” series expresses this in its narrative arc, in which the romantic relationships of several of the series’ central figures are born and die. The novel’s

A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California • 91 treatment of Enid and George’s relationship, which begins in volume 2 and ends in volume 20 of the series serves as an example of this theme. Although Enid introduces George as her “Prince Charming” in volume 2 of the series, by volume 20, Enid “seem[s] all too aware that things were not quite right” (William, 1985a, p. 79) and, although George reflects that Enid had “been the best friend he’d ever had,” Enid doesn’t realize that George has fallen in “love, real love” with another girl (William, 1985a, pp. 3, 4). An airplane accident that leaves Enid temporarily disabled complicates George’s plans to end the relationship and seems to stymie Enid’s healing. Eventually, Enid confesses to Elizabeth, “I was trying to hang on to George because I was scared. I knew he wasn’t happy with me any more, but I couldn’t bear to admit that I might be losing him” (William, 1985a, p. 147). Although she recognizes her friend’s grief, Elizabeth “[has] a feeling . . . that everything is going to be just fine for Enid. And I haven’t the tiniest doubt that it won’t be long before she gets over George!” (William, 1985a, p. 148). The girls’ attitudes confirm the application of Kutzer’s argument to “Sweet Valley High”: The series, like most teen romance, is not invested in the depiction of the “final triumph”: marriage and sexual relations. If teen romance in general and “Sweet Valley High” in particular characterize adolescent romance as impermanent and even, in comparison to adult romance, juvenile, what does this mean for the critical consideration of the adolescent romance? Willinsky and Hunniford, Cherland and even Benfer note the different function adolescent romance serves in the lives of its readers and offer that while the novels may not be invested, as Radway argues adult romances are, in vicarious adventure, teen romance novels are “the training bras of literature; books that teach young girls about how to be older girls before they get there” (Benfer, 2003/2004, p. 48). As such, Willinsky and Hunniford write, “the romance stages the best-case scenario, fi lling in the hard-to-imagine script” and “provide the art that life would gladly imitate” (1993, p. 94). Thus, the nature of this “hard-to-imagine” script, particularly as, Willinsky and Hunniford continue, “readers will have to realize that they have already been written out of the story, as it works a narrow ideal of physical beauty and material circumstance” (1993, p. 95), remains an important subject of analysis. “Sweet Valley High” relies upon a familiar and traditional romance script that, critics of adolescent romance have argued, delineates narrow roles for women both within and outside of heterosexual relationship; however, that the series’ script emphasizes the temporary nature of romance suggests a modicum of subversion. As Enid opines following her breakup with George, “Just because you crash once doesn’t mean you’ll never soar again” (William, 1985a, p. 148), the series offers that the romantic future might be more satisfying than the romantic past or present.

Chapter Four The Readers’ Text(s): Reading and Re-Reading “Sweet Valley High”

While critical considerations of the “Sweet Valley High” series in terms of its reflection of historicity and its manipulations of generic conventions illuminate the literary and cultural positioning of the novels, the series must also be understood in the terms of its audience, the adolescent and pre-adolescent readers who purchased volume after volume and whose opinions of the series were in sharp contrast with their elders’. In the first years of its publication, professional discussions of the Sweet Valley series and its ilk suggested that these readers had been duped by marketers and “fallen prey to formula romances” (Huntwork, 1990, p. 137). Librarians considered the series literary “competition . . . something else kids would rather do than read a good book” (Sutton, 1985, p. 29) and asked, “what, if anything, can be done to broaden the reading habits of formula fans?” (Huntwork, 1990, p. 137). “[T]rying to defend literary merit in the teen romance is as ludicrous as extolling the virtue of a steady diet of junkfood to hospital dieticians,” wrote one librarian in School Library Journal (Fong, 1990, p. 38), summarizing the adult critique of the novels. This disdain for such popular novels, particularly as they are devoured by child and adolescent subjects, still lingers, and reflects what Catherine Sheldrick Ross calls the “persist[ent]” worry “that reading popular fiction is harmful because it wastes time and instills ‘false views of life’ in impressionable readers” (2009, p. 633). Indeed, this concern is the subtext not only of much contemporary criticism of popular children’s fiction but also much of the reader-response critique of popular romance. The weight of the historical and contemporary attitudes regarding popular reading habits have undoubtedly affected this contemporary reconsideration of “Sweet Valley High;” by spotlighting the remembered experiences and interpretations of the series’ initial readers and considering the contemporary re-readings of the series popularized in blogs and online magazines, we can attempt if not 93

94 • Reading the Adolescent Romance to overcome, then to challenge the historical and critical ideologies that have informed the primarily negative popular, professional and academic assessments of the series.

Listening to Readers: Considering Positionality and Methodology Janice Radway argues that to understand popular romance and romance reading, researchers must consider the popular text as seen through the eyes of its readers. “If we wish to explain why romances are selling so well,” writes Radway, “we must fi rst know what a romance is for the woman who buys and reads it” (1984, p. 11). To this end, Radway has described her ethnographic survey of female romance readers as a way of “represent[ing] schematically the geography of the genre as it is surveyed, articulated, and described by the women themselves” (1984, p. 13). John Willinsky and R. Mark Hunniford examined romance and its readers in a similar way and, citing Radway as inspiration, described what they termed the “self-directed literacy of the young reader” as it was expressed through avid romance reading (1993, p. 87). Both Radway and the team of Willinsky and Hunniford approached their analyses of romance and romance reading from, in part, an ethnographic perspective, and the critical work resulting from these investigations demonstrated the distance between the romance texts and readers that served as the subjects of inquiry and the researchers. As such, both works evince a critical distance between researcher and reading subject and, in the case of Willinsky and Hunniford, an anxiety around the reading subject and her text. This anxiety is not unusual in critical and professional considerations of children’s and adolescent literature. As Linda K. Christian-Smith observes in the introduction to her edited collection of essays describing adolescent reading, popular fiction is often considered in troublingly conflicting terms as points of both “ideological closure and . . . utopian possibility” (1993a, p. 1). The threat that such “ideological closure” will further embed readers of such novels in structures of inequality and sexism that critical analyses like Christian-Smith’s, Radway’s, and Willinsky and Hunniford’s uncover in the texts is one that rightly disturbs feminist critics. At the same time, however, understanding, for example, popular romance novels in purely these terms seems to disempower the reader who finds resonance in the stories. Valerie Walkerdine addresses this dilemma as she revisits her work in girls’ studies, asking, “How can we also understand the place of popular culture in the lives of people whose lives do not appear as romantic rebels or continually resisting audiences?” (1997, p. 22). That is, how can critics make sense of their critiques of popular culture in terms that recognize the audience? Of her examination of girls’ comics, Walkerdine writes, acknowledging her position as both reader and critic:

The Readers’ Text(s) • 95 I wanted to look at why these comics might work, since they clearly contained stories that still fascinated me and they sold to a market of predominantly working-class girls. The idea was that such comics were the worst, most offensive and stereotyped literature around. If that was the case, there was either something severely wrong with me or wrong with the explanation (1997, p. 46). While in previous chapters I have outlined the ways in which the “Sweet Valley High” series “worked” as a reflection of then-dominant political and social mores and as the series conferred ideologies familiar to readers of romance novels, here, I want to consider these observations in concert with readers’ responses to the text. My intent is to counter Willinsky and Hunniford’s concern with and articulation of “the danger” they associate with younger readers’ claims that popular romance novels “were not simply a private pleasure but would play a role in the public sphere of their lives” (1993, p. 93). To this end, I consider the role the “Sweet Valley High” series played in my own life as an adolescent reader, as well as in the lives of others who identified themselves as readers of the series. In 2003, as a component of my dissertation research, I sought out members of what I considered to be the first generation of “Sweet Valley High” readers with the intention of recording their memories and interpretations of the series. I was interested then in how the iterative nature of the series installments may have influenced their memories of the series—in terms of the novels’ content and themes—and hypothesized that the novels’ consistent structure and repetition would underlie any commonalities among their readings. Because the series has not only endured but transformed with time—the initial “Sweet Valley High” series inspired literary spin-offs that described the novels’ central twin heroines’ adventures in middle school, elementary school, college and on various sports teams, informed the creation of a television show that aired for four seasons beginning in September 1994 and concluding in October 1997 (IMDb, 1990–2010, “Sweet Valley High 1994 Episode List”), and spawned the creation of numerous related products including the “Sweet Valley High Board Game”— I was interested in speaking with readers who had encountered the series during its “first wave” of singular popularity, which I date from the series inception in 1983 through 1986, when the first volume of the first spin-off series, “Sweet Valley Twins,” was published. Following a call for participants that specified age in an effort to draw from a population of readers who would have been in the series’ target demographic at the time of its publication, I interviewed twelve respondents1 and analyzed their responses to the point of “saturation,” or iteration, considering the scope of responses complete at the point at which participants’ reports failed to reveal new or unique data. 1

With the exception of Ellie and Kristin, the names of these respondents have been changed to protect their privacy.

96 • Reading the Adolescent Romance That the participants were asked to remember a series published and likely read over ten years in the past is somewhat problematic, as time has likely muted or even reorganized memory. Furthermore, what the participants remembered from the series is likely not only to differ from what might be their contemporary readings of the novels, but also to reflect a view of the series or the reading experience articulated through a veil of nostalgia. Deborah Stevenson writes of the impossibility of what she calls “recovery” of noncanonical childhood texts, observing that “reading as the original readers is always a problem. The challenge of returning to the past is one that scholars face, and fail, constantly . . . one cannot un-know what one knows” (1997, pp. 116–117). That is, while one might have remembered affection for a novel read while young, the adult re-reading of the same text can result in a re-interpretation and questioning of the past. While such novels might be remembered by adults who remember reading them as children, that they are recalled as what Stevenson terms a “sentimental canon” depends “upon a text’s ability to call up a connection with childhood” (1997, p. 119). Contemporary attempts to resurrect the Nancy Drew series stand as a premier example of the phenomenon Stevenson describes. Carolyn Heilbrun’s essay for the 1995 collection of essays, Rediscovering Nancy Drew, describes the tendency for erstwhile readers of Carolyn Keene’s series to “perk up at [Nancy Drew’s] name, stand up and salute as it were” (1995, p. 12). “At the same time,” Heilbrun continues, “nobody can remember a thing about the plots of the books, nor do they have any of the facts about her in good order . . . In short, they remember a sensation of pleasure, rather than any of the particular components of that pleasure” (1995, p. 12). There is value in these memories of pleasure, however, even in the misremembered details. While some of these false memories might indeed be products of romanticized conceptions of the youthful self, they can also reveal the different meanings that youthful self—as a self understood as distinctly different from the adult self—drew from a text that might be read more critically in adulthood. Contemporary and historic research related to memory and reading has the potential to inform the analysis of the “Sweet Valley High” readers’ memories of the series. In the literature review that introduces their study of students’ long-term retention of a novel, Nicola Stanhope, Gillian Cohen and Martin Conway note: Research into memory for short written texts and stories (e.g. Thorndyke, 1977) has produced highly consistent results in spite of large differences in the nature of the material investigated. One of the principal findings shows that propositions which are centrally important to a written text or story (i.e. those relating to the main themes or events) are retained better than more peripheral, less important propositions: the so-called “levels effect” (Calvo and Carrieras, 1991; Thorndyke, 1977; Yekovich and Thorndyke, 1981) (1993, p. 240).

The Readers’ Text(s) • 97 Thus, while we cannot expect the “Sweet Valley High” readers’ memories of the series to be granular and detailed accounts of specific plots, the readers’ recollections are likely to be thematically consistent. David E. Copeland, Gabriel A. Radvansky and Kerri A. Goodwin’s subsequent research related to literary recollection is particularly relevant to this attempt to catalog memories of “Sweet Valley High.” Copeland, Radvansky and Goodwin cite the “primacy effect” in their discussion of readers’ memories, a theory that “earlier-encountered information is better remembered . . . because this information is better rehearsed due to a lack of proactive interference (e.g., Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968) or because subsequent events are more likely to cause a person to remember prior events” (2009, p. 324). The iterative nature of the series’ individual installments’ introductions—in which the charms of the Wakefield twins are cataloged—as well as the cumulative nature of the series will likely inform the content of the readers’ recollections. While the structure of the series might have helped “embed” the novels’ content in readers’ memories, that these memories are autobiographical complicates an assumption of truthfulness. The studies referenced above documented students’ reading of assigned texts; that these novels and passages were not self-selected by the study participants eases the social burdens associated with the recollection autobiographical memory, a form of memory associated with identity. As Marya Schechtman has written, “our knowledge of what we have done is . . . at the same time knowledge of who we are and what we are like. Memory of what we have done and felt and experienced is one of the most important sources of self-knowledge we have” (1994, “Memory,” para. 2). If reading is, as Roger Chartier has suggested, “a secret act of the intimate, private heart and thus a reflection of individuality” (Reeser and Spalding, 2002, p. 664), readers’ self-disclosures related to both the content and type of their reading as well as their interpretations of the same texts can be considered revelations of identity. It is because of this that we are in danger, as Heilbrun writes of readers’ recollections and interpretations of the “Nancy Drew” series, of “damag[ing] the original Nancy Drew books, just as the revisions have damaged them, looking for things they do not and cannot offer, while failing to see and praise their real qualities” (Heilbrun, 1995, p. 19). In an attempt to offset this potential, I present my story of engagement with “Sweet Valley High,” in which I address both my youthful attraction to the series and my growing interest in it as a phenomenon.

My Story When I began thinking about my own history with “Sweet Valley High,” I imagined that it was distinct, individual and tied to my personal reading habits and experiences. In other words, I imagined that my “Sweet Valley High” reading was as Chartier described reading in general: an act of my “intimate,

98 • Reading the Adolescent Romance private heart.” When I interviewed my twin sister, Ellie, for this project, I realized that her experience with the series and my own were unique in some ways and characteristic in others. Because we are twins, our relationship to the series featuring twin characters proved slightly different than the relationships the singleton readers I spoke with described. Like the readers with whom I spoke, Ellie and I were drawn to the series in part because its premise involved twins. While, for singleton readers, the twinship of “Sweet Valley High”’s main characters might have seemed like a somewhat fanciful trope, for Ellie and me, the twin characters seemed potentially sympathetic. When asked what inspired her to create identical twin characters, Francine Pascal has remarked upon her “fascination with twins” (n.a., 2008, “About the Author”), a fascination Ellie and I have observed is prevalent among nontwins. As the sometime objects of others’ interests in twin relationships, I think Ellie and I hoped that the series would both affirm our relationship and demystify it for other readers and, to some degree, we found that it did both. The conclusion of the first novel exemplifies the series’ treatment of Elizabeth and Jessica’s relationship: Elizabeth hugged [Jessica]. No matter what happened between them, this mirror image, this other half of herself, would always be connected to her in some strange and powerful way. And that relationship would be different and separate from any other she would ever have in her life (William, 1983a, p. 175). At once pleased that our twinly relationship was considered “strange and powerful” and “different and separate from any other,” I think Ellie and I were also a bit wary of the romantic description of the Wakefield sister’s magical “connection.” While we were both aware that the real Pattee sisters bore little resemblance to the fictional Wakefield twins, Ellie’s comment that “the fact that it was twins and they were in high school and were so successful” was an appealing aspect of the series as well as her confession that “[she] liked the characters [and] wished that they were us” describes our investment in the novels. When I think about our history with the novels, I recall the ways in which our literal interactions with the texts were always already in the context of our twin relationship. Just as we had, from a young age, developed elaborate rules and rituals around the daily opportunities for temporary “status” afforded us equally (with no age-based rules for distinguishing privilege, we had an intricate system for, for example, determining who would sit in the front seat of the car that involved being the first to yell, “Front!” as soon as a car trip was announced. The twin who had not claimed initial front seat status then yelled “Front on the way back!” so that she might also have an opportunity to ride in the front seat. This negotiation involved parsing all car trips in terms of outgoing and incoming travel; the sister who claimed “Front on the way back” could only ride in the front seat if the destination of that leg of the trip was our home),

The Readers’ Text(s) • 99 we also developed a system for buying and first-reading rights to the “Sweet Valley High” novels we procured: The twin who purchased the latest installment of the series was the twin who could read it first. This system was ripe for manipulation; often the twin who purchased the volume would put it aside to read “later,” and thus exercise her power to forestall the other twin’s reading. Because our experience with the series was so tied to our twinship, both Ellie and I encode our memories of reading the novels in both singular and dual terms; we use both “we” and “I” when describing our memories of the books. Interestingly, our memories of our first encounters with “Sweet Valley High” are dissimilar in detail but thematically congruent. Where Ellie remembers our mother pointing out the new series about twin girls to us on a routine trip to the bookstore, I remember our mother pointing out an article about the series in a People magazine while we were waiting at the dentist’s office. Our mother recalls neither of these episodes, but has reported thinking that at the time—the series was first published when we were ten years old and in the fifth grade—the novels were too sophisticated for us. Too sophisticated or not, both Ellie and I remember associating our reading of “Sweet Valley High”—novels about characters in high school—with what we considered our pre-teen maturity. Reading the novels announced that we—at ten years old—were old enough to read about, understand, and even sympathize with the plights of much older high school students. The lives of the “Sweet Valley High” characters were broadly familiar; it was easy to recognize the fi xtures of high school life we had glimpsed in movies or on television or—in real life— had spied on the occasional field trip to the high school planetarium. Even the characters’ romances seemed unthreatening and manageably chaste. “Sweet Valley High” made adolescent life look easy; it was just like fi fth grade only with more freedom and without the indignities associated with recess and walking everywhere in single fi le lines. Reading the novels made Ellie and me feel older, more mature; that we could understand and sympathize with such sophisticated characters must mean that we, ourselves, were sophisticated. As elementary and even junior high school readers of “Sweet Valley High,” both Ellie and I imagined that our teenage lives would grow to resemble the lives of the Wakefield twins. As Ellie said, “I think you’re kind of shooting for a Jessica Wakefield and Elizabeth Wakefield existence, where all your problems get solved and you have a very close all together family and you have a boyfriend and girlfriends and you enjoy things and people like you. I knew we were different from them, but I didn’t think that it wouldn’t be nice to be them.” Although neither of us were popular in junior high school, I nursed the same type of fantasy Lynne Henry entertains in Alone in the Crowd and imagined, as Lynne does, that “things would get better” when I was older and that, in spite of my glasses and braces, “when people stopped caring so much about who was pretty, who was in with the ‘right’ crowd” (William, 1986a, pp. 9–10), once I entered high school, I would be recognized for being the cool person I always hoped I was. When Ellie and I entered high school,

100 • Reading the Adolescent Romance however, it became clear that our lives as twins in a Washington DC suburb would be very different from the fictional lives of the Wakefield twins in sunny California. Ellie and I were just one of several sets of twins in our large (approximately 2,800- student) high school, and were certainly not among the popular crowd. There were two sets of twins who were somewhat notorious in our high school, primarily because they were popular and athletic and good-looking. Ellie and I, on the other hand, were less than popular, distinctly un-athletic, and somewhat anonymous in the halls of our own West Springfield High School. Both of us imagined that certain of our peers may have been living the kind of life we associated with the glamorous life depicted in the “Sweet Valley” series. The following excerpt from the transcript of our conversation exemplifies our common assumption: ELLIE:

AMY: ELLIE:

AMY:

I thought that there were people that were having the same experiences that Elizabeth and Jessica were having, they just weren’t us. You know what I mean? Girls that I did not know in high school, I pictured their lives to be, like when I was reading SVH, I was reading what their lives were like, but not what my life was like. So, in a way, SVH was real for other people. Yeah, I pictured Stacy—Stacy who took the SAT class with us?— that girl, or like [lists three girls we knew in high school]. They were living those books. I thought that if they read those books, they’d be like, “Oh, Lila is so and so. This person is totally Winston.” But, you know, I didn’t have that. I always imagined Elizabeth Wakefield to be a lot like [name of girl we went to high school with]. In appearance. [slightly bitchy, here] Maybe not in temperament.

Although our lives might not have compared to the exciting lives of the Sweet Valley twins, both Ellie and I remain hesitant to insist on the patent unreality of the series. In fact, both of us had actively related the characters in the books to certain members of an equally distant “popular crowd” of students at school. As Ellie intimates, above, I agree: As readers, as pre-teens eager to become teenagers, we longed for the kind of fantastic future the series promised us. When our future failed to mirror the fictional successes of the Wakefield twins, we refused to abandon the myth and figured that someone else was living that dream. Although we both associated our early adoption of the series with our preternatural maturity, ironically, as Ellie and I grew older and approached the age of the fictional Wakefield twins, we found the novels became somehow more difficult to understand. Both of us cite the same reason for ceasing reading: Ellie explains, “I think we just kind of outgrew them. When we were in high school, and our high school was so different from their high school, they just didn’t apply . . . You know, we stopped buying them because it was too much,

The Readers’ Text(s) • 101 they just seemed to go on forever.” As Ellie and I both remember, the seeming inevitability and eternity of the series made the maintenance of the “Sweet Valley High” habit more of a burden than a pleasure. Where we had initially argued over who would buy the next installment of the series and thus be the first to read the new novel, we later resorted to attempted “cons” to get the other one of us to pay for the next series volume, in a half-hearted attempt to maintain our collection. Additionally, the novels had lost their symbolic value and their appeal as predictors of our possible futures. Once we became high school students, the appeal of the Wakefield lifestyle seemed questionable; in our experience, pep rallies were torturous, popular kids were often mean and the would-be “hunks” on the football team seemed like bullies. Looking back on the series and our experiences with “Sweet Valley High,” Ellie and I both wonder at our devotion to the novels. Ellie, who, like me, has re-read some of the novels as an adult, says, “Now, when I read them, I’m like, how could I ever have wanted to be like any of these people?” While I agree with this sentiment, I still feel a twinge of jealousy when I read about the twins’ incredible popularity, their stunning beauty, and can even admit (albeit with embarrassment) to a certain pride I take in maintaining a size 6 (the same size as the Wakefield twins). When Ellie asks, “Like, how could I have ever thought that my life could be anything like their lives, and why would I want it to be?” she is addressing two distinct issues that likely informed our critical reading. Obviously, both of us—and probably many other readers—did believe in that fantasy future of beauty and popularity “Sweet Valley High” offered; even if we didn’t live that fantasy, we still imagined that others were, that it was true for someone else. The question of why either of us would want to relate or aspire to the Sweet Valley dream is more complicated. The series is like a role-playing game—an aspirational model not unlike a Barbie doll—that provides a detailed (down to hair color and clothing size) model of feminine success and, with that specificity, seems to prove its attainability. If we were blonde, if we were identical, if we lived in California, it’s possible that the sum of these agreements might lead to a future not unlike the one outlined in the “Sweet Valley High” novels. Like Barbie, who has few commercial competitors or doll equals and, as a result, has come to represent a very specific and somewhat controversial model for womanhood and femininity, the “Sweet Valley High” series, which, at the time of our reading, stood alone among problem novels with specifically drawn, quirky characters, to whom we might relate but not aspire, was vague yet perfect enough to inspire our youthful dreams.

The “Sweet Valley High” Experience The experience with the series that Ellie and I recall has proven remarkably similar to those reported by other erstwhile fans of Pascal’s novels. The readers

102 • Reading the Adolescent Romance I spoke with considered their Sweet Valley reading indicative of what to them seemed like prematurity, they described the novels in terms of the fantasies of adolescent life they inspired and detailed the disinterest in the novels that grew as they aged. While some might argue that the similarities among reader responses and experiences supports a singular and deterministically meaningful model of reading, these reported similarities—when considered in terms of the respondents’ generational similarities and positioning—are less indicative of a solely text-structured act of reading and more suggestive of a sociocultural model of reading in which the text (or, in this case, a series of texts) takes on a symbolic value and in which the reader’s situation and experiences shape her experience of the text. The distinct differences between the Sweet Valley readers’ remembered interpretations of the novels and the interpretations offered by adult critics of the series and the opposing meanings and values the same groups associated with the novels support this philosophy of reading as an activity situated within what Stanley Fish (1980) has called “interpretive communities.” Examining the readers’ texts—the meanings and interpretations the readers recall associating with the “Sweet Valley High” series—allows the readers a type of interpretive power the adult critics of the same novels assume and—in part, by virtue of the publication of their interpretations—are publically granted. Terry Eagleton’s summary of Fish’s theory of reader response and interpretive communities foregrounds this readerly wielding of power: According to Eagleton, in Fish’s terms, “the true writer is the reader: dissatisfied with mere Iserian co-partnership in the literary enterprise, the readers have now overthrown the bosses and installed themselves in power” (2008, p. 74). Whether the fact that the “Sweet Valley High” series has been so differently received by its young readers and its adult critics supports Fish’s somewhat radical theory of an un-fi xed text, the meaning of which lies not in the language of the text itself but in readers’ individual readings of the same, is not the question of this examination; however, Fish’s work—as well as the work of competing reader-response critics like Hans Robert Jauss—provides us with a mechanism for considering and authorizing alternate interpretations of literature. Fish’s suggestion that interpretation is the product of the reader’s situation within an “interpretive community” and Jauss’s (1970) argument that a reader’s interpretation is, in part, shaped by the reader’s “horizon of expectations” are competing claims that ultimately inform the following consideration of “Sweet Valley High” from the reader’s perspective. It is not my intention to equalize the critical work of Fish and Jauss—it is likely that neither would be completely comfortable with the comparison—however, as both critics grant power to the reader and recognize the extra-textual structures and experiences that shape the reader’s reception of a text and, furthermore, as my discussions with “Sweet Valley High” demonstrate some of the tenets of the critics’ arguments, these critical theories will fi nd themselves in dialogue with each other and with the popular text.

The Readers’ Text(s) • 103 Spying on Sweet Valley: The First Encounter Young readers are not often granted the authority to construct literary canons; the reading material they support and popularize among their demographic cohort forms a “paracanon” of material that, when it doesn’t coincide with that material authorized by adult teachers, parents, and awards-granters, Anne Lundin writes, “subverts the canon in its otherworldly way and hovers about, disturbing the peace” (2004, p. 110). Arguing that “the ways in which readers attribute value and meaning to a text are shaped by the social, cultural, and political background they bring to their reading” (2004, p. 111), Lundin notes the difference in aesthetic and even moral values implied by readers’ adherences to the traditional literary canon or self-created paracanon. Literary allegiance, in this context, becomes a product of historical and social context as well as an expression of readerly experience and taste. Interestingly, these expressions of literary experience and taste become points of evaluation and authority that, Lundin writes, “intensify the larger division between excluded and included social groups” (2004, p. 110). In Lundin’s estimation, the “included” social group is that which confi rms the canonical status quo, while the “excluded” social group opposes it. The literal and symbolic power differential between young people and adults almost always resigns young people’s popular reading choices to paracanonical status and confirms their identity as a secondary (or “excluded,” in terms of the power structure) social group. Because, as Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer observe, young people are defined “almost exclusively by [their] limitations . . . children are [considered] less knowledgeable, less resilient, less resistant to influence than adults are” (2004, p. 88), young people’s expressed tastes are considered similarly less informed and more likely the result of media or marketing manipulation. Thus, as Jack Zipes has observed, “children’s opinions, judgments, notions, desires, needs, conceptions, views and tastes are probably the last consideration when critics are reviewing and evaluating a book produced for an audience of young readers” (2001, p. 62). These critics’ arguments and observations explain the dramatic difference between adult and young reader reception of the “Sweet Valley High” novels. Although they are considered, as Nodelman and Reimer write, “less knowledgeable” than adult critics and evaluators of young people’s texts, young readers’ literary opinions and allegiances cannot be discounted. In the case of the success of the “Sweet Valley High” novels, a series that comprises the remembered paracanon of many readers, readers’ evaluations, readings and interpretations of the series reveal the often different (from adults), but equally valid, meanings the readers attached to the texts. If, as Lundin (citing Jauss) argues, “the search for meaning in a text is shaped by” what Jauss has termed a “horizon of expectations,” and “this framework of sociocultural contexts, both contemporary and historical, creates the interpretive communities that receive texts” (2004, p. 112), it is

104 • Reading the Adolescent Romance understandable that young readers’ interpretations of texts would differ from adult assessments of the same. These “horizons of expectations” are shaped, Jauss writes, by a reader’s own historical reading and understanding of texts and met or exceeded as the reader compares the new text to his or her expectations. “The way in which a literary work satisfies, surpasses, disappoints, or disproves the expectations of its first readers in the historical moment of its appearance obviously gives a criterion for the determination of its aesthetic value,” Jauss proposes (1970, pp. 14–15). Fish makes a similar argument, positing that “interpretive communities” of readers who might share a literary “horizon of expectations”—and who certainly share what Fish calls “strategies” for interpreting and valuing texts—not only exist but do battle over interpretation as each group argues that the strategies it employs in the value and interpretation of literary works are superior and “correct.” In the case of the “Sweet Valley High” series, “the way in which [the] literary work satisfie[d], surpasse[d], disappoint[ed] or disprove[d] the expectations of its first readers” distinguished two critical bodies and thus two interpretive communities: adult evaluators of the series and young fans of the texts. Here, I am interested in the young fans of the series and, following Jauss’s claim that “the reconstruction of the horizon of expectations, on the basis of which a work in the past was created and received, enables us to find the questions to which the text originally answered and thereby to discover how the reader of that day viewed and understood such a work” (1970, p. 19), I attempt to “reconstruct” this population’s “horizon of expectations” and describe an interpretive community of “Sweet Valley High” readers. The “Sweet Valley High” readers with whom I spoke were, unlike the adult critics of the series, among what would seem to be the youthful target audience for the novels. These readers discovered the novels in Scholastic Book Club advertisements distributed at school, spied friends reading the novels, encountered them on prominent display in the young adult section of bookstores, or found them shelved among similar novels for young people at libraries. Jauss’s argument that “every work has its specific, historically and sociologically determined audience, that every writer is dependent upon the milieu, views and ideology of his readers, and that literary success requires a book which ‘expresses what the group expects, a book which presents the group with its own portrait’” (1970, p. 16) is of particular relevance here. Created for and marketed directly to young people (and, notably, criticized for its direct marketing to young people), in Jauss’s terms, the “Sweet Valley High” series failed to meet the critical expectations of its adult readers because these adults were not part of the series’ “specific, historically and sociologically determined audience.” While I consider Jauss’s argument to be overly deterministic, how the first “Sweet Valley High” readers might have used the novels as touchstones that allowed them to imagine themselves as part of the series’ reading audience and how their reading behaviors and the meanings they associated with the novels situated them within a dispersed interpretive

The Readers’ Text(s) • 105 community of readers who found similar resonance in the texts, suggests, at the least, a dialogic relationship between series and reader shaped in part by the readers’ and the series’ sociocultural contexts. The readers’ descriptions of their first encounters with the books—which included discussion of what attracted them to the series—describe both their horizons of expectations and their alignment with what Jauss might argue is the series’ determined audience. The readers I spoke with considered themselves somewhat unique among their peers as “Sweet Valley High” readers; they associated the novels with an audience older than they were and, like Ellie and me, considered their selection and reading of the series evidence of their preternatural maturity. The novels’ covers featured images of girls who appeared years older than the readers, the title of the series indicated the books’ fictional situation within a high school milieu of which the readers were not then a part: The series seemed to telegraph its address to an audience older than the readers’ reported ages of 8–12 years old and implied to the young “Sweet Valley High” readers that they might be trespassing on “adult” grounds. That many of the readers reported being introduced to the series by older friends or family members or by friends whom they considered especially mature furthers this readerly association of the novels with young adulthood. If the anticipated audience of the series were older (young adult) readers who, in Jauss’s terms, were situated within a common milieu and shared views and ideology, the younger readers’ adoption of the series suggests a literal disconnect between the audience the novels seemed to announce and the readers themselves. The “Sweet Valley High” readers’ awareness of the age and experiential difference between themselves and the older demographic they considered the series’ target audience contributed to the anticipation and eagerness with which the readers greeted the series. Reading a series that so obviously telegraphed its address to an older demographic made the “Sweet Valley High” readers I spoke with feel more mature and sophisticated than their same-age peers. Whether the readers were truly rebellious in their reading selection is a point of contention. While the thematic similarities among the readers’ recollections of their first encounters with the series suggest their place in an interpretive community that, as Fish would argue of all interpretive communities, is not dictated by an outside text but shaped by the readers’ own strategies for interpretation, critics of the “Sweet Valley High” series and the mass market romance novels that appeared beside them on bookstore shelves suggested that young readers were being manipulated by marketing campaigns that urged these rebellious readings. Arguing that “mass market paperback publishers give teens what they ‘want’ as determined by market research, rather than what they ‘need’ based on their problems as reflected by social statistics,” Pamela Pollack decried the cover images of teen popular romance novels, asking “What happened to the scruffy youth of yesteryear?” and describing the models who graced the covers of teen romances as “nineteen-year-olds who

106 • Reading the Adolescent Romance are a thirteen-year-old’s ideal image of a sixteen-year-old” (1981, p. 28). This description can certainly be applied to the “Sweet Valley High” novels, the covers of which featured realistic but romantic paintings of the series’ gorgeous and sophisticated-looking older teen characters. Pollack’s argument disparages a tendency Patrick Jones, Michele Gorman and Tricia Suellentrop suggest characterizes adolescents in general. Citing Teenage Research Unlimited’s Peter Zollo and what they deem the “aspirational nature of youth,” Jones, Gorman and Suellentrop observe that “the kids who are ages 9–11 want to think of themselves as teens” (2004, p. 45). Publishers play up to this tendency, Pollack suggests, placing aspirational teen figures on the covers of mass market novels to entice younger readers and meant to reflect the way not-quite-teen readers want to imagine themselves. Kyung-Sook Cho and Stephen Krashen’s observation that the “Sweet Valley High” novels were written at a sixth-grade reading level and were accessible even to readers struggling to learn English (1994, p. 664), would seem to support Pollack’s argument that the “Sweet Valley High” series “dresses up” its juvenile content in an adolescent wrapper and undermines the Sweet Valley readers’ claims of rebellious reading. It would be easy, in light of the argument in the previous paragraph, to dismiss the readers of the series as dupes; however, that the readers described using the series to confirm the maturity they felt but that was not necessarily acknowledged in their worlds outside the text allows the readers more agency and, as we consider the readers’ use—rather than their purchase—of the texts, further suggests that the series served a symbolic function in the readers’ lives. Many of the readers reported that their “Sweet Valley” reading was only reluctantly sanctioned by the adults in their worlds, an observation that underscores this public dissociation between the readers and the older audience the series presumably addressed. Like Ellie and me, who were aware that our mother might have considered the novels “too old” for us as ten-yearold readers, Alissa, who remembered seeing her older babysitters reading the series, confessed that she hadn’t been permitted to read the novels until she turned ten. “Ten for me kind of felt like a big age, like this milestone I had reached,” Alissa told me, “And so reading [Sweet Valley High] was part of it . . . [the novels were] kind of a symbol of being older.” Jordan, who guesses that she began reading the series at age 8 and in the fifth grade, says that she thinks the fact that the series “seemed a little older in reading . . . was something that attracted” her to the novels. Kristin, too, who began reading the series in fifth grade, remembered thinking that “her mother didn’t really think [she] should be reading them,” perhaps because “she thought they had mature themes.” In the face of these adult judgments of the series’ “maturity,” reading the Sweet Valley novels became a public way for readers to both assert their independence and associate themselves with the older audience for whom they (and their parents) imagined the books might be written. The responses of the readers suggest that they viewed their selection of the “Sweet Valley High” novels as a way of asserting both identity and

The Readers’ Text(s) • 107 independence. Margaret J. Finders has argued that literacy practices serve this function; in her ethnography of junior high girls’ reading practices, Finders observes that their “literacies served as a visible rite of passage, as a cultural practice to mark oneself as in control, as powerful” (1997, p. 19). Young people’s reading, Finders continues, serves as “declarations of cultural masculine and feminine identification . . . Literacy [is] a tangible means by which to document [readers’] social allegiances, claim status and challenge authority” (1997, pp. 23, 24). What young people choose to read in public represents, in part, the identity the reader wants to convey. The “Sweet Valley High” readers, who considered the novels directed at an older audience, used the books in much the same way Finders describes: to assert their “mature” status and, in some cases to challenge authority. Seldom, if ever, found on school-sanctioned lists of required reading, the “Sweet Valley High” novels were part of what Finders calls the “literate underlife,” reading practices that exist in opposition to the literacy practices sanctioned in school and that “refuse in some way to accept the official view, practices designed and enacted to challenge and disrupt the official expectations” (1997, p. 24). Ellie’s memory of using volumes of the series to fulfi ll a regular book report requirement demonstrates one way in which the Sweet Valley novels were considered part of this underlife. “I did do one too many book reports on the series,” Ellie remembers, “and [my teacher] told me not to use that series any more . . . I think she wanted me to read more challenging books. Even in sixth grade, it wasn’t that the text was hard . . . we knew the words and stuff.” Although she continued to share and discuss the novels with her friends in her sixth grade class, her teacher’s comment made it clear the books in the series did not comprise “book reportable” reading. Elizabeth, too, remembers a teacher criticizing her for reading the series: During an eighth grade class discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird, Elizabeth’s English teacher, who, she guesses, “must have known I read those books because he used it as an example . . . said Francine Pascal wasn’t a real person, it was just a pseudonym for a group of writers . . . I just remembered, I remember being in class and being embarrassed.” As the stories of their initial engagement with “Sweet Valley High” coalesce, an image of a distinct though dispersed interpretive community of Sweet Valley readers begins to emerge. These readers assigned a value to the novels in the series based on their commercial packaging and appearance, their sophisticated subject matter and the readerly sophistication the novels seemed to confer, and in opposition to parents and teachers who considered the series either too mature or paraliterary. Their different—from adult critics, parents and teachers—evaluation of the series demonstrates Jauss’s theory of the social and situated nature of reading and reception. Jauss’s argument that a “new literary work is received and judged against the background of other art forms as well as the background of everyday experience of life” (1970, p. 34) is exemplified in differences between the young readers’ and adult critics’ valuation of the series in terms of its sophistication. Where the young

108 • Reading the Adolescent Romance readers of the series considered the novels sophisticated because they had seen older teens reading them or had been warned by parents that the series was “mature,” adult critics of the novels, troubled by the novels’ direct market to teens, considered the novels “skillfully marketed junk food” that belonged “to the same fantasy consumer world [as Barbie]” (Huntwork, 1990, p. 138), judgments that acknowledged little agency or critical ability among the young readers. Adult critics of the Sweet Valley novels and their ilk, concerned that the content allowed “only one of two responses—you can either reject them or comply with them” (Jefferson, 1982, p. 614), failed to consider the symbolic value the novels might hold for readers, particularly as the act of reading the novels accorded maturity and independence among readers. It is at this point of reception and valuation that the “Sweet Valley High” readers I spoke with begin to distinguish themselves as an interpretive community; their readings of the series and the meanings and uses they made of Pascal’s text (a description of which forms the following section), as they articulate what Fish calls the critical strategies that distinguishes one interpretive community from another, further distinguish the contingent.

Living in Sweet Valley: Reading the Series Drawing from Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s Contingencies of Value and applying Smith’s argument to children’s literature, Ann Haugland notes that “the uses that literary critics or librarians or teachers choose to make of books are considered their proper uses, and the quite different ways that readers actually might include books in their lives are considered inappropriate or secondary or even destructive” (1994, p. 54). Ellie’s and Elizabeth’s stories of their teachers’ public censure of the novels, as well as Alissa’s and Kristin’s confessions of parental disapproval and reluctant sanctioning of the series demonstrate some of the contingent values in place around the “Sweet Valley High” series; according to Ellie’s and Elizabeth’s teachers, the Sweet Valley novels were unsuitable for classroom report or use while, according to Alissa’s and Kristin’s mothers, the “underage” reading of Pascal’s series was inappropriate and possibly even dangerous. In spite of—and perhaps even because of—these authoritative pronouncements, the four readers were not dissuaded from the texts and continued, like the other readers I spoke with, to read and value the series, exemplifying Chartier’s proposition that “there are situations and needs for reading that are not based merely on a reading competency that is valued by the social market, but are very profoundly rooted in individual or community experience” (Reeser and Spalding, 2002, p. 668). The situations and needs for reading the Sweet Valley readers describe here articulate the nature of a reading experience divorced from what Chartier calls “reading competency” and distinct from the adult readings and interpretations of the series referred to here and in the previous chapter. While the readers

The Readers’ Text(s) • 109 do cite the series’ romantic and soap-operatic content as components of the pleasure they associated with their readings, it is their use of the novels—as pleasure and “escapist” reading and as informants and facilitators of social fantasy—that extend our understanding of their pleasure reading practice to encompass the unacknowledged components of literacy that are characterized and informed by the social world outside the text—what Jauss would call the “background of everyday experience of life” (1970, p. 34). For the Sweet Valley readers, the novels served not only as a visible symbol of their self-proclaimed maturity and independence, but also as a means of solo escape. The readers characterized their series reading as “escapist,” identifying the aspects of the texts that seemed distant from their own lives and even fantastic as elements of the novels that facilitated this readerly escape. Citing the amnesia plot that carried over from volume 6 to volume 7, Brittany notes that the “things that wouldn’t have really happened in real life . . . were so fascinating for me to read. Because they wouldn’t have happened in my life . . . there was a chance, a little chance for escape.” Ellie, too, finds that the escape the series offered was a function of the recognizable difference between the fictional lives of the characters and our own lives as readers: The lives of the Wakefield twins “were so not our lives that [the novels became] escapist reading.” Similarly, when Alissa claims that she “enjoyed the descriptions . . . the escapism of it,” she points out the elements of the novels that differed from her own experience: [The series characters] have this, the perfect house, the perfect father, the perfect mother, and they have really cool things that they could do. I think they, you know, they could go to the beach, they could go the mall, you know, hang out. Alissa’s memory of the freedom the fictional twins enjoyed to go—on their own—to the beach, the mall or just “hang out” with friends contrasts with the comparative lack of freedom and independence allowed girls in her fifthgrade demographic. Unlike the Sweet Valley twins, who seemed to have a wealth of, in Alissa’s terms, “really cool things that they could do,” the series’ readers’ lives were constrained by rules and restrictions accorded others of their younger age. Reading “Sweet Valley High” allowed the readers to escape their comparatively restricted situations and enter a world seemingly unbound by the rules that held them in place. In spite of the differences between their lives and the lives of the “Sweet Valley High” characters that the readers recognized and even described as “fantastic,” the readers noted enough congruence between the fictional situation of the texts and their understanding of the older adolescent world to consider aspects of the novels realistic. As such, they used the books to inform their fantasies about adolescent life, casting themselves in the role of future high school heroine. Alissa reports, “When I was in fourth grade reading

110 • Reading the Adolescent Romance these books, I thought, ‘Oh, this is what high school is going to be like.’” Lauren confesses, “I think I thought that when I entered high school, it would be like ‘Sweet Valley High’ was saying, with the cars, the boyfriends, the cheerleaders, and stuff.” Elizabeth, too, admits that the novels “defi nitely painted a picture [of high school]”: I definitely had an idea of what I thought high school was going to be like. Based on the Sweet Valley books. . . . Where there was all the football games, and dances, never seemed to go to class, a lot more social stuff, a lot of dating, a lot of serious dating. While the majority of the readers—including Ellie and myself—considered the “Sweet Valley High” novels a titillating glimpse into a possible future world, Kristin expressed concern about the novels’ predictions. Kristin judges that, as a young reader, she “took the series too seriously . . . Like it was some kind of anthropological, sociological study of high school” and worried that the novels would prove realistic. With no “older siblings or anybody else who [she] could talk to about high school,” Kristin worried that “this is what [high school was going to be] like” and, citing some of “Sweet Valley High”’s villains, was anxious that “there [were] going to be girls who are just like this.” With the exception of Kristin, the “Sweet Valley High” readers found the series’ descriptions of high school life glamorous and, like Brittany, read the novels in part “to get an idea of what [their lives] would be like . . . in high school.” Most of the readers looked to a specific character, Elizabeth Wakefield (the “good” twin), for fantastic inspiration and imagined their future selves as variants of Elizabeth. The readers valued the fictional character’s social and academic success and imagined themselves in equivalent terms. Citing her intellect as a point of identification, Jen names Elizabeth her favorite character because “I saw myself in her. Like, the, never wanting to hurt anybody, always wanting to be helpful, being friends with a wide variety of people. She was smart [and] she was beautiful.” Alissa, too, reveals, “I kind of wanted to be like [Elizabeth], I wanted to be the writer for the paper, the smart one.” Admitting that there was “something exciting about Jessica,” Elizabeth guesses that she “probably identified with Elizabeth more. Partly because of the name and partly [because she] did well and school and was the good girl, sort of.” Similarly, Lauren claims to have identified with Elizabeth “because she was studious, and um, um, quiet, and thought about her, I guess the consequences of her actions.” When the readers compare themselves to Elizabeth, they cite the respect Elizabeth’s intelligence won her at school, noting ruefully this element of fantasy. Alissa, who describes her younger self as a “kind of science-y, geeky nerd” who was “on the outs” and often picked on by her classmates, found a heroine in the series character who was rewarded for her studiousness. Similarly, Jen, who said she “saw herself” in Elizabeth, describes her younger self as a “goody-two-shoes [who] follow[ed] the rules.” In Elizabeth, the readers

The Readers’ Text(s) • 111 found a heroine who, unlike many of them, was acknowledged socially for her academic achievement; the readers, who considered themselves successful in the classroom, fantasized about being recognized beyond the role, as Lauren admits she played, of the “teacher’s pet.” When the “Sweet Valley High” readers discuss their experiences reading and re-reading the series, it becomes clear that they used the novels as fodder for their own aspirational fantasies, imagining themselves in the older adolescent and high school worlds they felt ready to enter. Meredith Rogers Cherland describes a similar phenomenon in her ethnographic investigation of sixthgrade girls’ reading. Cherland, who lists the “Sweet Valley High” series among her informants’ favorite reading material, concludes that the girls “read series books for the same reason that they would watch each other: to look both for cues as to acceptable ways to behave, and for examples of ways to be in the world” (1994, p. 170). Cherland argues that her readers did not use the novels purely as instructional texts, but instead, “admired [the characters] for exercising agency when and where they could, and . . . imagine[d] themselves exercising agency in a similar fashion. They thus fantasized about the texts they read in order to fulfi ll their own desires” (1994, p. 171). The “Sweet Valley High” readers used the novels in a similar way: to populate and particularize their fantasies about older adolescent life. Their descriptions of these fantasies suggest that, as Walkerdine has argued about girls’ comics, the novels were structured to encourage these particular fantasies. Walkerdine distinguishes such fantasy texts from realistic fictions, arguing that the fantastic text is “an ensemble of textual devices for engaging the reader in the fantasy. Because the fantasies created in the text play upon wishes already present in the lives of young children, the resolutions offered will relate to their own wishes or desires” (1984, pp. 168–169). For the young readers of “Sweet Valley High,” the situations described in the series were already somewhat fantastic; in Walkerdine’s terms, the high school situation of the series’ characters was “removed from the everyday” lives of the readers. The “Sweet Valley High” readers, who imagined themselves mature enough to enter the worlds of the series’ older characters, found, in the novels, a fantastic version of the lives they imagined they would live as older adolescents. Like Cherland’s readers, who imagined themselves “exercising agency in a . . . fashion” similar to the characters in the novels they read, the “Sweet Valley High” readers imagined themselves making the same social and romantic choices as the characters, enjoying the same successes and overcoming similar challenges. The “Sweet Valley High” readers’ descriptions of their reading reveal the series as an informant of their fantasies of adolescent life; however, the novels and the fantasies they inspired serve, as romance novels do for the adult readers Radway interviewed, a compensatory and mildly preparatory function. Cherland’s hypothesis that, like Radway’s readers, her sixth-grade informants’ reading was “a ‘compensatory’ activity, insofar as, by identifying with the characters they were reading about, and by fantasizing and dreaming, the

112 • Reading the Adolescent Romance girls could feel more powerful than they were allowed to feel in the real world” (1994, p. 173), is borne out in the “Sweet Valley High” readers’ descriptions of reading. Lauren’s description sets the tone for the other readers’ comments: I guess that in some way . . . when I was reading the books, I was projecting—I don’t know if that’s the right word—but, in my head, I was . . . not identifying, not relating to, you’re sort of imagining yourself as the Wakefield twins. They’re blonde and pretty and they had this little Fiat that they drove and everything was charming, and they had their boyfriends, you know, were popular in school. And I guess when I was reading those, I was thinking about myself in terms of those two girls. Like, “Oh, wow, what if I could be like that.” They really sort of appealed to me, I don’t want to say as a role model, but just somebody who I would say, I would like to be like them. Lauren is careful to point out that she did not consider the Sweet Valley heroines role models, but that she did imagine herself as one or the other twin and perhaps even structured her internal self in terms of the fictional sisters. Lauren’s note that the twin characters “really sort of appealed to me . . . I would like to be them” echoes Ellie’s observation that, while she knew she and I were different from the Wakefield twins, she “didn’t think that it wouldn’t be nice to be them.” The contrast between what seemed to be the life of freedom and movement the Wakefield twins enjoyed (“they had this little Fiat that they drove”) and the life the readers were living as late elementary school and early junior high school students was significant; to imagine oneself not as a grade school student but as a Wakefield twin seemed liberating. Lauren cited this difference between her life and the exotic lives of the characters depicted in “Sweet Valley High” as an attractive element of the series; like Radway’s and Cherland’s readers, she considered Pascal’s novels compensation for what she calls “all the boring hum-drum stuff going on in fifth grade.” The Sweet Valley readers’ characterization of their series reading as escapist, informational and even aspirational would likely trouble critics like Willinsky and Hunniford and Christian-Smith, who considers “the tension between the escapist and primer qualities” of adolescent romance novels to be a “striking aspect” of the literature (1993a, p. 5). Willinsky and Hunniford, comparing young readers’ readings of romance novels with those of the adult readers Radway describes in Reading the Romance, allow that while young romance readers, like Radway’s adult readers, “[found] themselves in books,” they also appear on the verge of a total surrender on a number of fronts; are, in effect, taking more from the books than the adults, more than many of us in education would want to ask (1993, p. 93). By using romance novels to construct scripts they imagined following in their later adolescent lives, the readers Willinsky and Hunniford spoke with

The Readers’ Text(s) • 113 considered the novels as “guide[s] for the perplexed and anxious, for those looking for a bright, scintillating preview into the immediate future” (1993, p. 94). Christian-Smith, following work with a group of female students who might today be considered “reluctant” readers and “at-risk,” notes more magnanimously that romance reading brought tensions between traditional and assertive femininity to the fore for readers, but offers that when “the girls substituted the romance novels for other instructional texts,” the readers’ “empowerment turned back upon them” (1990, p. 116). Both Christian-Smith and the team of Willinsky and Hunniford read their readers’ responses and behaviors literally and consider them predictive. Willinsky and Hunniford’s analysis of young readers’ responses to popular romance novels and their subsequent comparison of their collected responses to the responses of adult romance readers Radway reported emphasize what the critics of teen romance novels consider the essential differences between the two cohorts’ ways of reading: The adult reader of the romance has reconciled herself to who she has become; she does not ask to be the heroine of the romances, only to share vicariously in her adventures. This need for identification, Radway argues, is the result of her discontent with who she has become. The younger reader believes it possible to become the heroine of the romance, because she is living in a state of emergence and expectation. That much understood, she asks only to be told how to act and handle it once she gets there (Willinsky and Hunniford, 1993, p. 95). Willinsky and Hunniford—and, to a lesser but significant extent, ChristianSmith—allow that adults might read romance as fantasy texts and as a means of “escape,” but maintain that young readers, by virtue of their age, are unable to engage in similar reading practices. Unable to recognize or effectively “use” the romances in a compensatory fashion, as Radway’s adult readers seemed to, adolescent readers interpret the text as instruction. While my discussion with the “Sweet Valley High” readers confirmed Willinsky and Hunniford’s claim that the readers did consider the texts to be “realistic” depictions of high school life and thus instructive, I find their predictive model troublesome, particularly in light of the conversations with readers that reveal their awareness of the series’ more fantastic elements. Willinsky and Hunniford consider what Christian-Smith calls the “primer” function of romance novels part of a “dangerous game” of willing “self-deception”; the scripts romance novels offer readers, the critics argue, are “closed” and work to reify a “narrow ideal of physical beauty and material circumstance” (Christian-Smith, 1990, pp. 103, 95). The Sweet Valley readers’ uncanny ability to recite what Amy Benfer calls the “hypnotic” “litany of the twins’ virtues” that appears in the first pages of every series installment would seem to exemplify Willinsky and Hunniford’s claim, particularly as the

114 • Reading the Adolescent Romance twins’ description reflects “what we thought perfect, undiluted teenage girlhood should look like in the eighties” (Benfer, 2003/2004, p. 47). The Sweet Valley readers describe this “perfect” girlhood: MONICA: BRITTANY: ALISSA:

KRISTIN: ELLIE:

Well, they’re 5’6”, and they both wear a size 6 and they have peaches-and-cream skin [laughter]. The blond hair, the perfect outfits. They were, what, a size 4? A size 6. 5’8”, 5’6” or whatever. Elizabeth . . . was supposed to be the good one. Like her sister, she’s 5’6”, has blue eyes like the ocean, she wears a size 6, blonde hair, that necklace. Perfect size 6 and they had California tans. Elizabeth and Jessica were stunning blonde beauties who were 5’6” with perfect size 6 figures whose eyes would sparkle the blue-green of the Pacific Ocean.

Given the novels’ use of repetitive and stock phrasing to describe the twins’ appearance and temperaments, it is not surprising that the readers were able to recall not just the characters’ height, but also their clothing size. This recitation might evince a problematic influence, as, Beth Younger writes, passages like these “reinforce female objectification” by normalizing particular and often unattainable feminine body types and encouraging readers “to examine characters from the perspective of a judgmental voyeur” (2003, p. 47). The “Sweet Valley High” novels define and describe a series-specific beauty ideal and, by positioning the novels’ twin heroines as the epitomes of that ideal and by comparing all of the series’ secondary characters to the sisters, reinforce the superiority of that ideal. The specificity of the series’ repeated description of the twins—in terms that are both recognizable and reproducible—suggest the application of this series standard to the real world. While the “Sweet Valley High” readers describe the twins’ stunning appearances and enviable measurements in the language of the text, they support these “recitations” with descriptions of the novels’ cover images and discussion of character in a way that intimates the readers’ consideration of these details as functionally symbolic and neither realistic nor directive. Using their knowledge of the twins’ opposing characters the readers described the symbol system they discerned from the novels’ cover images: ALISSA:

KRISTIN: LAUREN:

Elizabeth’s hair is always pulled back and Jessica’s is always teased out, more up front, because she’s the more daring girl. And she was, kind of, she has no morals. [On the cover] Elizabeth’s hair was all, more done-up and Jessica’s hair was more wild. Elizabeth would be the responsible, smart and sensitive, and humble one . . . I would sort of get the impression from the

The Readers’ Text(s) • 115 cover of the books that she would make herself attractive, but in a natural, simple way. Her hair would be in barrettes or something like that and she would be wearing something simple. Jessica would be the opposite of that, not very interested in school, flirty, um, and also flighty. Um, and, really into making herself glamorous and attractive, and all that, and wearing makeup. The readers’ understanding of the characters’ appearance as symbolic suggests a reading of the series that builds upon and incorporates literary tropes of “good” and “evil” characters found in fantastic fiction and fairy tales. In the case of Pascal’s series, “good” is rendered in terms associated with naturalness and control, while “evil” is calculatedly out of control. The series text—in addition to the novels’ cover images—supports this characterization, as in the following passage from Dangerous Love in which Jessica compares her studied attractiveness to Elizabeth’s: Her hair tied back with a blue ribbon, dressed in jeans, blue oxford shirt, and dark blue blazer, Elizabeth looked as fresh and attractive as could be. But then, Jessica reflected, Elizabeth didn’t bother with much makeup, using only a tiny hint of blush and mascara (William, 1984b, p. 3). Unlike the wilder Jessica, who, Lauren reports, is “really into making herself glamorous . . . and wearing makeup,” Elizabeth, with her hair tied back and only a “hint of blush and mascara” is conservatively attractive. Described two pages later as “the most honest and straightforward person [Jessica] knew” (William, 1984b, p. 5), Elizabeth’s no-nonsense, natural beauty is an embodiment of her “honest and straightforward” character. The Sweet Valley readers’ seemingly contradictory understanding of the series as both fantastic and realistic is a function of their comprehension of the novels as representative of the romance, a genre which has been defined in terms of its fantastic and realistic elements. The Sweet Valley readers understood the novels in much the same way as Radway’s adult readers understood them; Radway observes: A romance is fantasy, [the readers] believe, because it portrays people who are happier and better than real individuals and because events occur as the women wish they would in day-to-day existence . . . The fact that the story is fantastic, however, does not compromise the accuracy of the portrayal of the physical environment within which the idealized characters move (1984, p. 109). Like Radway’s readers, the “Sweet Valley High” readers viewed the series’ characters—and the Wakefield twins in particular—as fantasy figures in a

116 • Reading the Adolescent Romance recognizable universe they imagined they would one day inhabit. The readers identified with Elizabeth’s intelligence and studiousness and imagined their futures would be characterized by similar success. Wanting to, as Brittany remembers, “get a little inside peek into that world of being a little bit older than I was,” the readers found their wishes for recognition, romance and popularity vicariously fulfi lled as the character with whom they identified the most won accolades and respect. Mary Huntwork, citing the work of Mary Anne Moffitt, notes that while child readers “accept fantasy-as-truth in their reading . . . adolescents read . . . [romance] novels as understood fantasy” (1990, p. 139). If the generic romance is, in Frye’s estimation, “the nearest of all forms to the wish-fulfi llment dream” (1957, p. 186), the Sweet Valley readers’ responses reveal an understanding of this formal function, particularly as they reflect the readers’ use of the text to both escape and to imagine their own futures. This use of a popular text does not, as Willinsky and Hunniford and Christian-Smith imply, necessarily mean that a reader has succumbed to the ideology of the text. Instead, as Jerome Bruner has written, the readers’ interpretations and uses of the popular narrative reflect their understanding of genre as both “a property of a text or as a way of comprehending narrative” (1994, p. 27). Bruner writes: While genres, thus, may indeed be loose but conventional ways of representing human plights, they are also ways of telling that predispose us to use our minds and sensibilities in particular ways. In a word, while they may be representations of social ontology, they are also invitations to a particular style of epistemology (1994, p. 28). The thematic similarities among the responses of the Sweet Valley readers points to this epistemological function of the generic text; the readers’ descriptions of their gradual disengagement with the series demonstrate that the “invitation” to epistemology can be turned down as easily as it may be accepted.

Leaving Sweet Valley: Abandoning the Series A discussion of the Sweet Valley readers’ eventual abandonment of the series concludes this articulation of what Stephanie Foote would call the series’ “social life.” Arguing that series books are “not just products (though they certainly are that, too) but texts, and because of this, open to all sorts of reading and uses,” Foote asserts that both the material book and the text it conveys (or, as Fish would argue, the text readers construct) exhibit a social life, the directions of which “can help us think how girlhood is constructed and experienced by and for different kinds of girls” (2007, p. 522). An account of a text’s social life

The Readers’ Text(s) • 117 would include not just the story of its creation and consumption, but would also consider what Foote calls its “abandonment.” Arguing that although series texts might be “designed and marketed according to a shrewd corporate strategy,” discussion of this strategy—of the text’s formulation—only accounts for a portion of the social life of the text. This limited discussion cannot account for all—and may account for none—of the ways real girls will think about . . . or read the texts once in possession of them. That strategy also cannot account for when and why girls will abandon some texts, or for what and how texts will seem to fail them (Foote, 2007, p. 522). The Sweet Valley readers’ explanations for abandoning the series many of them read for over a year distinguishes the series’ social life while illuminating the contingent nature of the value they placed on the texts. The readers’ descriptions of the novels they left behind are distinct and different from their descriptions of the once-beloved series and work to articulate a re-aligned interpretive community the readers—now ex-readers—comprise. While their initial descriptions of the series revealed the interpretive strategies they employed as they constructed the valued texts, the readers’ descriptions of their cessation demonstrate what Fish would call the “instability” of interpretive strategy. Thus, as their old ways of understanding the series are “forgotten or supplanted, or complicated or dropped from favor” (Fish, 1980, p. 172), the readers make the decision to leave the series behind. As the Sweet Valley readers describe their changing thinking about the series, they reference elements of the novels they identified as initial attractors, offering re-cast interpretations of the features they had valued and in which they had found meaning and questioning the fantasies the series had inspired. This re-valuation process demonstrates Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s claim that [E]valuation of a work is . . . a continuous process, operating through a wide variety of individual activities and social and institutional practices (1990, p. 181). Consequently, as what Smith would call the “social and/or institutional contexts” that inform evaluation began to shift, the readers’ judgment of the series began to shift as well. The readers’ reconsideration of the series and their subsequent devaluation of the texts demonstrates one of the ways that literacy practices “are situated in and constitutive of social networks and identities” (Moje et. al., 2008, p. 131). The readers’ evaluative shifts reflect their situation within new social networks and adoption of the values of the adult literary culture encouraged in secondary school, in which, Ann Haugland writes,

118 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Good literature is considered good because it meets the aesthetic standards and ref lects the values of the people—literary critics, educators, and librarians—who have the authority to make those decisions (1994, p. 55). As they re-examined the series through the interpretive lens authorized by this new regime, the Sweet Valley readers began to reconsider the symbolic and literary value of the novels. From this new perspective, the “Sweet Valley High” novels no longer seemed to boast the sheen of sophistication; the short novels with their pastel covers and adolescent titles seemed juvenile in comparison to the thicker classics authorized in the classroom and the popular adult fiction increasingly selected by their peers. The novels’ serial structure—an element of the series that had once brought comfort to readers and facilitated their easy escape into the world of the series—was losing its attraction, particularly as the readers began to consider the fictional world of the text less ideal and more dubious. As the Sweet Valley readers reached junior high and high school age and began to align themselves with the older demographic they had dreamed of joining, they began to consider their “Sweet Valley High” reading symbolic of their now-cast-away immaturity. This new thinking reflects a shift in the readers’ positions as evaluators as well as their re-situation within a larger textual culture that values adult rather than young adult texts, a world in which, Beverly Lyon Clark writes, we “indulge in considerable nostalgia for childhood, [but] nonetheless disparage what we consider childish” (2003, p. 11). Jen’s memory of her growing disinterest in the series is characteristic: She remembers “thinking at the end when I was reading them that I really should be reading something more mature, or maybe I’m getting too old for these . . . I do remember thinking that maybe I should stop reading it, I should be more, more mature.” Here, Jen associates being “more mature” with abandoning “Sweet Valley High,” an association of text with identity other readers echoed. More than one reader describes this process as “aging out” of the series and many of them note the comparative allure of adult novels over the “Sweet Valley High” series in much the same way they had initially judged the Sweet Valley novels preferable to what they considered more “childish” children’s literature. While Brittany notes that her interest in adult books eventually trumped her desire to maintain her series reading, Elizabeth recalls that her departure from Sweet Valley occurred around the same period of time that she began to read Stephen King novels. “I think it was, um, not more enjoyable, but a different type of novel, that I was starting to enjoy,” Elizabeth says. Similarly, Alissa remembers thinking, “I’m tired of this, I want to read big stuff. I read Les Miserables when I was 13 . . . I just kind of wanted to read the adult books.” Both Elizabeth and Alissa note titles that are particularly and recognizably “adult”: As the readers began to recognize a larger literary context, they also began to recognize the comparative value of adult versus

The Readers’ Text(s) • 119 adolescent literary titles. Just as the young readers had seen their Sweet Valley reading as indicative of their maturity, they were now considering recognizably adult titles to be more appropriate evidence of their sophistication. Alissa’s desire to read “big stuff” and Jen’s association of the “Sweet Valley High” novels with immaturity confirms the relationship between literacy practice and identity suggested by their initial selection and reading of the series. Elizabeth Birr Moje et. al.’s investigation of adolescent literacy behavior concludes with an observation that the Sweet Valley readers’ descriptions of literary engagement and abandonment exemplify. Moje et. al. write: Reading and writing certain texts . . . served as a way of enacting identities: that is, enacting the sense of self students felt was demanded or appropriate for a particular time, space or relationship (2008, p. 138). Jen’s judgment that she should stop reading “Sweet Valley High” and “be more . . . mature” demonstrates her association of the Sweet Valley novels with a particular (and youthful) identity; as she imagined a “more mature” self might now be, in Moje et. al.’s words, “demanded or appropriate,” she wondered if reading other texts might not be a way to enact this maturity. Elizabeth’s and Alissa’s association of the work of Stephen King and of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable with “mature” reading similarly illustrates the ways in which these readers used texts to enact identity by, as Finders writes, using literacy “to control, moderate, and measure their growth into adulthood” (1997, p. 19). Betty Carter has observed, “As teenagers move into adult society, they begin to expand their reading community and join the wider world of adult readers” (2003, p. 1389). While the Sweet Valley readers I spoke with were not necessarily moving into “adult society” (most of them ceased reading the series in early adolescence), the broad understanding that, as Carter writes, entry into the “wider world” of adult texts seems to signify entrée into “adult society” explains readers’ desire to read adult novels as a way of enacting a more “adult-like” identity. Just as they had used “Sweet Valley High” to “document an official passage into adolescence” (Finders, 1997, p. 79), the readers used adult novels to document passage into adulthood. The readers’ associations of “adult” texts with mature identities reflects not just the influence of the social networks in which their recreational reading is situated (and in which, notably, their interest in the “Sweet Valley High” series was piqued), but also the influence of the secondary school canon that, John Guillory writes, unlike the elementary school canon— which includes “a range of children’s and adolescent’s works useful for disseminating basic literacy because of their relative verbal simplicity” (1990, p. 242)—functions “as a social institution which reproduces the stratified structure of the social order” by “producing distinctive forms of linguistic knowledge” (1990, p. 243). Within the “stratified structure of the social order” of higher education, few—if any—popular and adolescent texts are

120 • Reading the Adolescent Romance considered valuable forms or informants of what Guillory calls “linguistic knowledge”; these works are relegated to the often devalued sphere of “children’s literature” and considered in comparison to the “adult” novels spoken of and promoted in academic and popular arenas. As Ellie and Elizabeth discovered after being chastised by their teachers for reading “Sweet Valley High,” and as the Sweet Valley readers learned as they advanced through secondary school, within the social network of secondary education (a network that arguably intersects with the social networks of students outside of school), adult texts represent the lingua franca. As the Sweet Valley readers began to reconsider the social value of the novels, they began to consider the series’ literary structure in more critical terms, applying evaluative criteria more closely associated with adult and professional reading than with their earlier desire for effortless literary escape. Although they had initially considered the novels’ serial structure attractive and their perpetuity reassuring—Monica remembers, “I could go to the library, and check all the regular shelves, and I’d dig through them for ages, looking for something good to read, but I always knew there would be another Sweet Valley, so I’d have something to read”—after numerous months of reading, the Sweet Valley readers began to discern a formula they had either overlooked or had not noticed before. Catherine Sheldrick Ross’s description and analysis of young people’s series fiction reading explains this increased awareness of literary structure in terms of the place series fiction occupies in readers’ literacy histories. Arguing that series reading represents “an important transitional stage for many readers,” Ross considers series novels valuable as they “provide the clearest initiation into the rules of reading because they are so highly patterned” (1997, para. 8, 24). Once this initiation is complete, “the simplified formula that makes series book reading so appropriate for beginners also limits its continued appeal” and, Ross concludes, readers “move on” to more challenging works (1997, para. 25). The Sweet Valley readers describe the process Ross identifies; although they initially took the novels’ repetitive formula “for granted,” they came to resent this feature of the Sweet Valley series as the comforting predictability began to grate rather than delight. While the strength of each book’s concluding “hook” prompted Elizabeth to read “up into the 100s,” she reports that the novels “kind of got repetitive after a while,” an observation that led to her Sweet Valley reading cessation. Brittany and Jordan echo this sentiment; Brittany notes, “it . . . got to be a lot of the same, over and over again” and Jordan, who considers her growing disinterest in the series a function of her awareness of the series’ “writing style” offers: [I]t seemed like the same thing was happening over and over, and I wasn’t getting anything new. And the characters, you get tired of the characters. I think at first you get very attached to the characters, so you do want to read more, and then there’s a point when you want more, want more characters and stuff going on.

The Readers’ Text(s) • 121 The readers’ observation of the series’ repetitive content suggests an awareness of formula that Lauren articulates. Claiming to have stopped reading “because [she] realized that there was a formula to the books,” Lauren concludes, “[W]hen I picked up on the formula, I guess I got mad at the author [and stopped reading the books].” The readers who had initially described the novels as an escape found that their awareness of the series’ formula got in the way of their ability to sink into the world of the text, a function of their Sweet Valley reading all of them had valued. As the readers’ opinions of the novels’ serial structure and use of formulaic literary devices changed, so did their opinions and interpretations of the books’ content. While they had initially considered the “Sweet Valley High” novels valuable as they offered a peek into the glamorous world of older adolescents, as the readers grew older, they began to question the veracity of these depictions of teen life, a process that reflects the situated nature of their critique. The readers’ new evaluations of the series demonstrate Smith’s argument that “different aspects of a text—including such aspects as we call its ‘meaning(s)’—will become more visible and more significant for us in accord with our different interests and perspectives, and the value of the text will vary for us accordingly” (1990, p. 185), particularly as the readers emphasize the difference between their initial and eventual readings of the novels. Both Brittany and Alissa note that as young readers, they considered the novels realistic. As a “fourth grade [reader],” Brittany suggests, the novels “might have seemed realistic, like this is what a high school in America is like,” but offers that now she “can’t imagine very many people have that fairy tale.” Alissa concurs: “When I was in fourth grade reading these books, I thought, ‘Oh, this is what high school is going to be like,’” but continues: My high school wasn’t a very fun place. We didn’t have the beautiful, wonderful facilities that were written about in the [“Sweet Valley High” novels]. . . . I think I realized that, I stopped reading it very young. I think I read a lot of the series, to, like, book 60 or something, and I started to realize this is pure fantasy, this is not at all a reflection of real life. Lauren’s description of her process of reconceptualization is similar: [W]hen I got [to high school], I, maybe, in the far reaches of my brain, if I thought of impressions formed in fourth or fifth grade, I may have thought it was going to be like [Sweet Valley High]. But when I got there, I realized that my impressions like that, those things, were shallow. Most of the readers found that their high school experiences were very different from those they had read about in the Sweet Valley series and had considered realistic and even predictive. Proven incorrect, the series outlived its utility for the readers who had considered the novels potentially predictive

122 • Reading the Adolescent Romance and epistemological; from their new vantage points, the series lost some of its value. As the differences between the fictional world described in “Sweet Valley High” and the readers’ own world became more apparent and they began to question the novels’ veracity, the Sweet Valley readers also began to question the fantasy world depicted in the novels and their investment in it as a predictive model. Ellie’s comment (extended from the conversation depicted above) about the series encapsulates this sentiment: [N]ow when I read them, I’m like, how could I ever have wanted to be like any of these people . . . All their beach parties and bonfires and crap. Like, how could I have ever thought that my life could be anything like their lives, and why would I want it to be? Because, like, [the twins] weren’t really equals. They didn’t share friends. And one of them was always taking advantage of the other one. Lauren, too, found that her impressions of the Sweet Valley characters and the social success they seemed to represent changed considerably when she entered high school: I thought the cheerleaders were just—Ugh!—and, um, the popular boys were kind of, um, um, not very interesting, um, to talk to, and didn’t really have much to say. And I just found the whole thing to be, not a waste of time, but I couldn’t wait to leave. I thought it would be exciting and new and kind of fun and when I got there; after a few months, I was like, OK, I’m ready to go now. This is boring. This is boring, and then it became, the fantasy that sort of “Sweet Valley High” had put into my brain, became transferred to college. So then it became, OK, when I get to college, I’ll have these experiences that everybody talks about and that sort of thing. Kristin describes her cessation in terms of coming to a point where she “just didn’t care,” offering that “there [were] enough stupid things in regular high school, I didn’t need to read about some other high school, with other stupid things.” With the new awareness of what she might call the stupidity of high school, Kristin, who was wary of the series’ content and worried that the novels, with what she saw was their emphasis on social conflict, would prove predictive, came to find the novels meaningless. These changes in their valuation of the series and the fantasy it espoused that Kristin, Lauren and Ellie describe reflect what Pam Gilbert calls a change in discursive orientation: [T]he recognition of certain narrative conventions in stories is dependent upon the discursive orientation of the reader: readers take up reading positions in relation to texts which allow them to produce

The Readers’ Text(s) • 123 conventional cultural meanings. But the range of reading positions readers can take up—the different ways they can make meaning from texts—is of course a result of their different discursive histories (1992, “Discursive Theory,” para. 4). As young people in late elementary school and early middle school or junior high, the Sweet Valley readers read the series in what Gilbert might call a “conventional cultural” way; they understood and accepted the series narrative as, if not realistic then truthful, because the situations the series described “connect[ed] so seemingly ‘naturally’ with many other cultural practices in their lives” (Gilbert, 1992, “Gendered Stories,” para. 8). Although none of the readers had been to high school, the high school milieu described in “Sweet Valley High” resembled that reflected in other popular cultural products— television shows, movies, and novels—furthermore, the social hierarchy Pascal’s novels described was similarly familiar. Because the romance and social ideologies the novels conveyed were analogous to those found in similar youthfriendly media to which the readers had been variously exposed—in Gilbert’s terms, the Sweet Valley readers were “already positioned within discourses that make [the series’] cultural semiotic plausible and indeed attractive”—it was easy for the readers to “take up an apparently dominant reading position” offered by the series (Gilbert, 1992, “Gendered Stories,” para. 8). Thus, when the readers began reading “Sweet Valley High,” their understanding of the series as a predictor of a potential and successful future was supported by their exposure to other similarly themed media. As they approached the age of the series’ characters, the readers recognized the Sweet Valley future that had at first seemed so attractive and attainable as more complex and even less desirable than they had imagined. When asked if they would recommend “Sweet Valley High” to young people today, the readers were conflicted; their responses reflect their adult awareness of the novels as more fantastic than realistic and their contemporary valuation of the series in these terms. Although she notes that “a criticism of these books might be that they would warp your idea of society and what you are going to encounter in the real world,” Lauren maintains that she still doesn’t think that the novels were “so bad that you shouldn’t read [them].” Arguing that reading “Sweet Valley High” is better than “not reading anything at all,” Monica judges that the novels are “pretty harmless, as far as fiction goes. And the plotlines are pretty decent . . . They try to touch some serious topics, they certainly don’t deal with them as well as some other books out there, but they at least bring up the kinds of things kids are concerned about or interested in.” Brittany, too, stresses the importance of reading in general and offers that, while she would recommend the novels to young readers, she “would recommend . . . other things, to get a variety, than just ‘Sweet Valley High,’” if only to “balance out the sugary themes of the books.” Both Ellie and Kristin express contemporary opposition to the series. Ellie is vehemently opposed to

124 • Reading the Adolescent Romance recommending the series, “because they’re so unrealistic!” When I mention how much we both enjoyed reading the novels, she suggests that our enjoyment stemmed from our youthful ignorance: “If only we had known that we were going to be . . . seriously let down in high school,” Ellie laments. Kristin’s refusal to recommend the novels strikes a tone similar to Ellie’s: I don’t think it was a realistic portrayal of high school. I guess maybe it could be. For some people. But not the best experience to have. I would hope the child would not have the same experience that the characters have. I don’t think the characters are very, I don’t think they have, in my opinion, a lot of redeeming value. All of the readers’ comments touch on the series’ lack of realism, a judgment they make as adults looking back on reading the novels and one they seem to recognize is a contemporary rather than a historical assessment of the series. The readers’ ambivalent assessment of the series demonstrates what Smith would call the “appropriability” of judgment, a term she defi nes as “how readily [others] can use [one’s] judgments for themselves” (1990, p. 184). Because, Smith writes, judgmental appropriability “always depends on the extent to which [other people] share one’s particular perspective, which is itself always a function of one’s relevant characteristics” of gender, age, economic class and regional background (1990, p. 184), a comparison of the Sweet Valley readers’ past and present assessments of the series brings the influence of age and the power it confers to the fore. Lauren’s, Monica’s, and Brittany’s contemporary recommendations are cautious and conditional: Lauren and Brittany both offer that the “Sweet Valley High” series is valuable as a component of a larger reading diet while Monica suggests that the novels are worthwhile if only as they encourage the practice of reading. The differences between the readers’ circumspect adult valuation of the series, when considered in comparison to their youthful enjoyment of the novels, emphasize the relative value we bestow on adult versus adolescent critical pronouncements, even those we acknowledge as our own. When the readers were asked if they would recommend the novels for a fictional contemporary reader, they found themselves hypothetically occupying a position of power they been at the mercy of as young people; when passing adult judgment on the series, the readers were forced to consider their reading pasts and presents. Of her younger self, Alissa (who claims she would recommend the novels to contemporary readers) comments: I think when I was younger, I didn’t have the ability to realize that [the series was] fiction, that [they were] not representative of anything that can happen, and, that bothers me a little. Because I feel like I let myself get led by them. Like, “Oh my God, middle school is going to be like middle school in ‘Sweet Valley Twins’!” When I got there, I felt kind of silly because it really wasn’t.

The Readers’ Text(s) • 125 Kristin’s comment is somewhat similar. Judging that the series might be “fun now when you’re not taking it so seriously,” Kristin wonders maybe when I read them, I took them too seriously, and that’s why I had such problems with the characters in the book and the situations they were in. Now, you know, it seems, it’s just kind of funny. But back then, I took it much more seriously. Judith Armstrong’s essay on adult re-reading of childhood favorites describes the process of re-evaluation with which Kristin and Alissa struggled as complex and emotionally charged: Rereading calls into question our images of ourselves as children, and that is not a comfortable feeling. We may be forgiven our confusion if what began as pleasurable nostalgia turns almost at once into a reassessment of the child we once were and of the adult we have comes, for one can be in love with the comforting memory of that distant self absorbed in a good book only until the same book . . . is opened and reread. Then we find ourselves traveling in a country that is more alien than familiar, more alarming than consoling (2003, p. 250). Armstrong offers her own re-reading of a childhood favorite, Eleanor Graham’s The Children Who Lived in a Barn, as an example of this process and, noting “What subtle conditioning did I swallow hook, line, and sinker,” fi nds herself “dismayed by that gullible child [she had been]” rather than forgiving (2003, pp. 252, 253). Armstrong concludes by acknowledging that her child and adult readings represent “versions of a truth” (2003, 254) in much the same way the Sweet Valley readers responses chronicle the development of such truthful variations.

Returning to the Scene: Re-reading “Sweet Valley High” Contemporary re-readings of the “Sweet Valley High” novels serve to extend the series’ social life even further and engage with the critical process of rereading the children’s book and re-thinking childhood reading that Armstrong describes (above). The growth of what Elizabeth Bird (2007) calls the “kidlitosphere,” the universe of weblogs devoted to the discussion of children’s and young adult literature, in conjunction with the increased Internet presence of fan and anti-fan communities, has contributed to what is emerging as a popular phenomenon: the contemporary public and adult reconsideration of young adult novels in general and “Sweet Valley High” in particular. While young readers have and continue to blog responses to and author fan fiction about “Sweet Valley High” and other Sweet Valley series, I am interested in

126 • Reading the Adolescent Romance examining the responses and readings of the adult readers who, like the readers I spoke with above, were “first wave” readers of Pascal’s series and who have only recently decided to revisit the series. Two blogs devoted to the discussion of the “Sweet Valley High” series, “The Dairi Burger” (named after the Wakefield twins’ favorite after school hang-out) and “Shannon’s Sweet Valley High Blog” (both of which were noted in a recent online article in Entertainment Weekly), and “Forever Young Adult,” a blog devoted to the discussion of young adult literature, serve as the primary texts for consideration here. These blogs operate as places where, Catherine Garcia writes, “nostalgia and snark collide” (2010). The authors of these blogs are critical of Pascal’s series and emerge as what Jonathan Gray calls “anti-fans,” who, like fans of a media or text, “use texts to perform and construct their identities and can enjoy an active, participatory engagement with the text, both individually and as a community” (2005, p. 854). In agreement with Gray’s arguments that Hate or dislike of a text can be just as powerful as can a strong and admiring, affective relationship with a text, and they can produce just as much activity, identification, meaning, and “effects” or serve just as powerfully to unite and sustain a community or subculture (Gray, 2005, p. 841) and, that “by reading through . . . antifan discussion, one encounters an at times starkly different dimension of the text than is witnessed when we study the fan’s text” (Gray, 2005, p. 841), I am interested in how the “anti-fan” readings of “Sweet Valley High” illuminate the text in agreement with or in opposition to the Sweet Valley readers’ readings. Furthermore, I am interested in the way these anti-fan blogs tacitly identify a particular child reader and work to re-read the series on her behalf. Blogs have a short but rich history as media. Writing of the “blog phenomenon” and its relationship to the book publishing industry, Meredith Nelson traces blogging activity to its inception among “early 1990s Internet enthusiasts” who “began keeping weblogs with links to new items on the World Wide Web and readers’ comments about the items” (2006, p. 4). When, at the turn of the twenty-first century, “blog software had been developed that allowed people with no knowledge of computer programming to create a blog,” Nelson writes, “blog creation exploded” (2006, p. 4). Bird, the author of the children’s literature blog “A Fuse #8 Production,” comments, “this new technology offers a remarkable way to talk about children’s literature while adequately supplementing already existing media” (2007, p. 306). While many of the participants in the electronic arena Bird calls the “kidlitosphere” have coalesced to form the “Society of Bloggers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature,” an organization that, according to its mission, strives to provide an avenue to good books and useful literary resources; to support authors and publishers by connecting them with readers and

The Readers’ Text(s) • 127 book reviewers; and to continue the growth of the society of bloggers in children’s and young adult literature (Society of Bloggers, 2009–2010), not all children’s and young adult literature bloggers are interested in providing “avenues” to good books and resources. Some, like “Shannon’s Sweet Valley High Blog” and “The Dairi Burger,” are invested in “calling the characters (and authors) [of children’s and young adult literature] out for all their inconsistencies and unrealistic depictions of teen life in a very loving form of snark” (Garcia, 2010, para. 1). Criticized at its publication for just these “inconsistencies and unrealistic depictions of teen life,” “Sweet Valley High” has emerged as a prominent subject of such “snarky” literary blogging. With their public re-readings and responses to the series, the anti-fan bloggers reveal their investment in reconstructing their identities as Sweet Valley readers. These readers, who confess to having enjoyed the series as young people but find, on re-reading, that the novels are more unsettling than comforting, ask the same questions Anne Booth Thompson asks about her mid-century reading of Janet Lambert: “Why, I wonder now, did I feel so passionately about the characters in the first place? Why did I love these books so much when their weaknesses are now so readily apparent to me?” (2005, pp. 372–273). As they interrogate the series in these terms, the Sweet Valley bloggers position themselves within an interpretive community that, per Fish (1980), constructs a text distinctly different from the text authored by the series’ fans. The Sweet Valley text the bloggers construct is, in contrast to the harmlessly pleasurable and escapist text the readers recall, an ideological hammer that, as Robin Hardwick, the author of “The Dairi Burger” writes, gives readers “a false and misguided view of high school life” (n.d., “About”). Just as fans of a text—and, arguably, the readers of “Sweet Valley High”—use these texts to “perform and construct their identities,” anti-fans are engaged in a process of identity construction as well (Gray, 2005, p. 854). Dedicated to identifying the series’ weaknesses and exposing the novels’ ideologies, the bloggers form and create online communities of readers characterized by their opposition to the text.

Developing a Critical Re-reading Identity Although their contemporary critiques privilege their adult re-readings of the series, the Sweet Valley bloggers acknowledge and articulate one of children’s literature criticism’s most problematic subjects: the child reader. As they identify themselves as current and erstwhile readers of “Sweet Valley High,” the bloggers reconfigure what Peter Hunt (1984) calls “childist” criticism (in which adult readers attempt to read from a child’s point of view) and attempt to read from the dual positions of adult and remembered child. While Perry Nodelman, in his criticism of Hunt’s “childist” approach, concludes that “the

128 • Reading the Adolescent Romance best we can do in that line is to read as what we imagine children to be—that is, in terms of our adult assumptions” (1992, p. 34), the Sweet Valley bloggers read the series in terms of what they remember themselves as children and their own reactions as child readers, a critical position that might be considered both personal and limitedly childist. While the authors fail to, in Nodelman’s terms, “escape the imperialist tendencies at the heart of human discourse” (1992, p. 34) and, in their critique, often discredit and disdain their own child readings of the novels, these readings can be considered a meta-critique of what Nodelman calls the “other” status childhood continues to occupy. Garcia quotes young-adult-literature blogger Nikki Boisture, author of “Are You There, Youth? It’s Me, Nikki,” who offers this rationale for re-reading: I think adolescence is a period of life that is just no fun at all, and if we can’t just completely lobotomize ourselves of those memories then we might as well make fun of it . . . Sometimes when I snark a book, I’m not just snarking the books, but who I was when I read it. It’s a cathartic way of dealing with my unhappy adolescence (2010, para. 7). Effectively blaming the series for its hand in contributing to what Boisture calls an “unhappy adolescence,” the Sweet Valley bloggers criticize the images of perfection the series espoused—images the bloggers admit inspired their younger selves—and, in distinctly anti-New Historicist terms, take apart these images in contemporary terms. According to her blog’s “Welcome” message, Shannon Rumberger, author of “Shannon’s Sweet Valley High Blog,” began re-reading “Sweet Valley High” “[a]fter receiving the first two Sweet Valley books from a friend for Christmas” and becoming “re-obsessed with the series” she had read when she was between 10 and 13 years old (Rumberger, 2009a,). To date, Rumberger has blogged responses to all of the novels in the original “Sweet Valley High” series (including single-volume “super editions” and “magna editions”) as well as those in the “Sweet Valley High (SVH): Senior Year” series. When she began re-reading the series, Rumberger reports that she was “saddened to find that the books don’t hold the same magic for my adult self that they did for my adolescent self,” noting that viewing the characters of Elizabeth and Jessica through adult eyes has led her to conclude that “Jessica is a crazy person and Elizabeth is obnoxiously sweet” (2009, “Welcome”). In email correspondence, Rumberger compares her adult critique of the series to her adolescent reception of the novels, echoing some of the observations made by the erstwhile Sweet Valley readers: When you’re twelve and reading about a high school as perfect as Sweet Valley High is supposed to be with characters like Elizabeth and Jessica, you can’t help but think of the whole thing as sort of, well, magical. Whatever the plot of any given book, the gist was that the Wakefield twins were

The Readers’ Text(s) • 129 popular, beautiful and smart, and they almost always got to do whatever they wanted because parents rarely appeared in the books. As a preteen, I read those books and couldn’t wait for the awesomeness of high school. When I began re-reading the series as an adult in my late twenties, I had already been through high school and it was nothing like SVH had led me to believe it would be. Because I was reading them from that perspective, I could tell how ridiculous and unrealistic the SVH plots actually were. Of course, almost twenty extra years of life experience also helped me come to that conclusion (S. Rumberger, personal communication, April 26, 2010). Like the Sweet Valley readers, Rumberger found her fantasies about high school life informed by the “Sweet Valley High” novels and, as she looked back, noted the differences between the Sweet Valley experience and her own. While the Sweet Valley readers dismissed the text at this point, Rumberger— and the other bloggers—holds the series morally and ethically accountable for its lack of realism and, as she criticizes the series in these terms, seems to critique not only the world that birthed such fantasies but also the younger self who entertained them. While Robin Hardwick’s “Dairi Burger” acknowledges and discusses other adolescent series fiction, her “Sweet Valley High” critiques are the most prominent. Unlike Rumberger, who has solicited readers to suggest what series she should consider for her next evaluative project, Hardwick offers readers the opportunity to participate in the critical re-reading activity, dedicating a page of the site (entitled “It’s Always Sunny in Sweet Valley”) to listing inconsistencies across novels and identifying patently unrealistic elements of the series (Hardwick begins the list with what she calls “the obvious”: “The gals have been sixteen for about 15 years, and have seen there [sic] share of Christmases, Halloweens, and summer vacations.”), and has created a page on which readers can post what she calls “The Best SVH Books Never Written,” alternative texts that provide often ludicrous backstories for secondary characters or suggest alternate endings to series installments. Hardwick’s reason for creating “The Dairi Burger” is similar to Rumberger’s; on the site’s “About” page, Hardwick writes with typical hyperbole: My goal is to reread the entire [Sweet Valley High] series to relive my tween years, and also to get really angry at how SVH gave me a false and misguided view of high school life. And life in general. In fact, I blame all my insecurities, problems and worries on these books (n.d., “About”). Like Rumberger, Hardwick criticizes the series for what she recognizes is its patent lack of realism; however, she also notes that re-reading the series is, in part, a nostalgic endeavor, as it allows her to “relive [her] tween years.” Erin Curtis, who reviews and comments on contemporary young adult literature for the blog “Forever Young Adult,” cites the 2009 announcement

130 • Reading the Adolescent Romance that critically acclaimed screenwriter Diablo Cody would be authoring a fi lm version of the “Sweet Valley High” series as her impetus for re-visiting the novels. Curtis, who writes in email that she initially read the novels as an early adolescent aged 8 through 13, writes in her blog introduction to her Sweet Valley project: fueled on the sweet memories of Jess and Liz, their red Spider Fiat, their respective best friends/frenemies Lila and Enid, stupid lame Todd, sanctimonious big brother Stephen, and 1Bruce1, I was REALLY EXCITED to get started on these (2009a). Unlike Rumberger’s and Hardwick’s introductions, Curtis’s is both admiringly nostalgic and critical; calling upon the “sweet memories” of the series heroines, Curtis pronounces what seems like contemporary judgment on “stupid lame Todd,” “sanctimonious” Stephen Wakefield, and refers to series bad boy Bruce Patman’s vanity license plate (which reads “1Bruce1”). Via email, Curtis elaborates on the differences between her childhood and adult readings of the series, statements that echo Rumberger’s and Hardwick’s: Upon rereading, I’m struck by how sexist, racist and heteronormative these books really are—they are the whitest of white bread. They are the Fox News of books. Of course, it was the 80s, and I am not suggesting that all books must reach some sort of enlightened state to be acceptable, but it really was and is striking how strongly that image of “the perfect community with the perfect people” is pushed . . . As a child, of course, I did not realize any of this—they were just fun books with a clever marketing scheme of churning out a new story every month (E. Curtis, personal communication, May 24, 2010). Like Rumberger and Hardwick, Curtis characterizes her child reading of “Sweet Valley High” as less critical, blaming, in part, the 1980s zeitgeist the series evoked and the time period in which her initial reading was embedded. The similarities among the bloggers’ statements of critical position suggest their situation within an interpretive community that both acknowledges their earlier positions within a differently positioned community characterized, in the bloggers’ terms, by surface-level acceptance of the series, and that defi nes itself in part in opposition to the original community. Comments left by readers of each author’s blog enlarge the interpretive community beyond just these three writers. Responses to Rumberger’s “Welcome” post include: [I’m] having a great time reading the re-caps of the books and re-living the memories. I used to have such a large collection of them in my teen

The Readers’ Text(s) • 131 years and I now wish that I had kept them to look at again. It’s amazing that when I was younger I never realised how little diversity there was at that school, everyonw [sic] was white! I’m 23 now and I haven’t read Sweet Valley since I was about 16, but I read everything from SV kids to university plus the unicorn club and the newer Jr High & Elizabeth series. I was addicted! And it’s just funny to look back on it with an adult perpective [sic] and realize that, yes, Elizabeth was actually pretty freaking self-obsessed in a neurotic “wants to be nice” way and Jessica was definitely a crazy person. LOL. Responses to Hardwick’s “About” page further describe the community’s critical perspective: I read just about every SVH and SVU book when I was in second, third, and fourth grade, and looking back on it, I can’t believe how ridiculous the books are. They really do ruin lives! I had forgotton [sic] how normalized sociopathy was in these books. The whole crew was awful, manipulative, spoiled brats! Also, it never occurred [sic] to me that my fucked up body image and ridiculous notions of needing a boyfriend which took most of my 20s to get over, were largely encouraged by this tripe. I just ATE IT UP. Groan. Finally, responses to Curtis’ initial post further characterize the community: I loved all those books. The descriptions were always precisely the same, down to the identical necklaces the girls wore as gifts when they turned 16. And Lila drove a lime green Triumph! Which I always thought sounded weird, since Lila was supposed to be so rich and classy. ugh, i love these books so much. i actually recently reread them all. and then read all of the sweet valley university ones, yes i know, i am awesome. jessica is really terrible at first but she is definitely the better twin by the end of the series, especially considering she had like 6 boyfriends who died, and she was a junior in high school for at least ten years. While the responses to Curtis’ post are distinctly more complimentary (the two readers, above, confess to “loving” the series), they are also somewhat critical, as they acknowledge what Hardwick might call the inconsistencies in the series (e.g. “Jessica . . . had like 6 boyfriends who died, and she was a junior in high school for at least ten years”). All of the readers seem united in their disdain for the series, a position that, as Gray writes, “unites and sustains” their community.

132 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Re-reading the Novels Rumberger and Curtis articulate similar strategies for re-reading and interpreting the series as each of their responses to the novels calls attention to features each critic has identified as characteristic. Rumberger’s analyses distinguish what she calls “The Moral of the Story,” “The Big Deal” (here, the “big deal” is a major social event—a school dance, a sports games—during which the novel’s climax is achieved) and “Best Outfit.” These brief descriptions are followed by a lengthy and editorialized synopsis of each series installment, followed by selected quotes from the novel (upon which Rumberger comments), and, finally, discrete notes in the category “Jessica and the Number 137” (in which Rumberger notes the number of times Jessica refers to the number). Curtis, who suggests that readers participate in a drinking game during re-reading, points out “The first page on which the twins are described as ‘blonde, blue-eyed, All-American good looks’ or equivalent,” “The main plot,” “Sub-plot not in the least bit related to the main plot,” “Improbable high school moment” and “Most offensive portion.” It is notable that Curtis, like Rumberger, suggests that readers pay attention to the number of times Jessica mentions the number 37, a number, Curtis argues, “you guys, seriously, she [mentions this] a lot.” Hardwick’s summaries and responses to each novel are more narrative, but do address many of the same features Curtis and Rumberger acknowledge. Within these categories of critique, the bloggers’ decidedly feminist perspective emerges; they are united in their dislike for Elizabeth and Jessica and identify them as distinct character types, critique the beauty standards they argue the series upholds and point out common features they identify as unrealistic. The bloggers’ analyses of volume 4, Power Play, and their descriptions of this installment’s primary conflict evince this distinct critical perspective. According to Rumberger, the “moral” of this volume—which describes secondary character Robin Wilson’s attempt to join Sweet Valley High’s elite sorority; the sorority’s refusal of membership on the grounds that Robin’s weight would reflect poorly on the slender members of the sisterhood; and Robin’s subsequent weight loss, makeover, and popularity—is: You can go from fat and ugly to skinny and hot, become co-captain of the cheerleading squad, learn to be a bitch, win Miss Sweet Valley High and snub a sorority. And you can do it all in 150 pages (Rumberger, 2009c). Curtis and Hardwick describe the plot in similar terms; Curtis describes Power Play as the installment “in which Robin Wilson gets even . . . and I develop an eating disorder” (Curtis, 2009b), while Hardwick distinguishes the novel as “The one where Robin Wilson loses 100 pounds and joins the cheerleading squad in a timespan of a week, or #4, Power Play” (Hardwick, 2007b). Each entry reflects the critics’ unease with what Hardwick calls “so many horrible

The Readers’ Text(s) • 133 messages sent to young impressionable minds” (2007b,). Of these “horrible messages,” Curtis cites Robin’s transformation from overweight and unpopular to thin and lovable as the novel’s “Most Offensive Portion”: I don’t even know where to begin. From the author’s own description of Robin as “a girl who would be pretty, if she weren’t so fat” to everyone’s treatment of her, to the fact that Class Clown Wilson Egbert finds himself too good to date Robin (actually, that part was offensive but rang true. Thank you, every sitcom in which a fat schlub has a hot wife!), to the fact that Robin Wilson loses the pound equivalent of three toddlers and then suddenly becomes popular and wins the Miss Sweet Valley High pageant, much to the chagrin of Jessica. Just . . . fuck this entire book, honestly. Whoever pitched this idea to the Francine Pascal cabal ought to be taken out and shot (2009b). While Rumberger notes that, “we all love a good story about retribution and revenge,” she does criticize Robin’s character development, pointing out When she’s fat she seems mentally challenged (“Omigod, Jessica is my best friend!”). Then she gets thin and acts like a zombie for a while. When she gets over it, she talks about her old self like she’s a totally different person (2009c). These critiques of the novel’s transformation story—particularly as, the bloggers agree, the novel upholds a beauty standard Hardwick describes as “thin is in”—reflect a third-wave feminist perspective that takes for granted the second-wave tenet that “females of all ages [can] be valued in society for more than our sex appeal” (Baumgardner and Richards, 2004, p. 61). This critique of the “beauty culture” the Sweet Valley novels seem to encourage is present throughout the blogs’ treatments of the series’ central heroines. As Curtis identifies the pages in which the twins are described as “beautiful, blonde and blue-eyed” and notes that the series’ stock description is typically found within the first pages of each novel, she calls readers’ attention to the series’ emphasis on the twins’ appearance. In her summary of volume 2, Secrets, Hardwick addresses the series author Francine Pascal directly, writing God Francine, we GET IT! The twins are beautiful. You don’t have to make all the characters mention it all the time. If I hear one more thing about “perfectly toned legs” or sea-green eyes, I will scream. Funny, but today’s standards, the twins are LARD ASSES. Size six? Omg!!! Not size zero? Seriously (2007a). Similarly, Rumberger admits to “feeling like throwing up already” while reading the first pages of the first book in the series, Double Love, which begins

134 • Reading the Adolescent Romance with Jessica staring in the mirror, complaining about how fat and ugly she is. This affords the narrator the opportunity to tell us that Jessica and Elizabeth are, in fact, the most spectacular looking identical twins in the whole world (2009b). Rumberger’s and Hardwick’s descriptions of their visceral reactions to the novels’ stock description of the twins embody what Benfer considers the raison d’être of the trope; referring to the stock language as a “catalogue of Wakefield perfection,” Benfer argues, “it goes without saying that it’s a catalog meant to cause immediate panic in anyone who does not fit the ideal” (2003/2004, p. 51). Curtis agrees, noting in an email, as a child I felt very ugly for having brown hair (not even shiny brown hair like Lila’s!) and freckles and boring green eyes. I wish I could say that at age 30 I have matured enough to realize that the Wakefield twins are not actually the standard against which all other’s relative attractiveness must be judged, but I haven’t quite gotten over it yet (personal communication, May 24, 2010). Perhaps in response and in resistance to the Wakefield standard, the bloggers advance a campaign against the central characters, arguing that even Elizabeth, the “good twin” and reader favorite, is a problematic model. Both Rumberger and Curtis are in agreement that Jessica is, in Rumberger’s words “a crazy person.” Curtis writes: Jessica Wakefield is totally a serial killer in the making. I’m serious!! She’s like the Trinity killer, only even more unhinged. Wild mood swings, strange obsession with the number 37, lying and manipulating to get her way . . . I would not be surprised to see her on America’s Most Wanted, people! You’ll be able to recognize her, cause of her all-American good looks, sun-streaked blonde hair, and perfect size six figure (2009b). In her reading of Double Love, Rumberger quotes from the novel, using excerpts to support her argument that “something is wrong with Jessica’s mental state” and citing “mood swings, trickery, bursts of anger, narcissism, possessiveness, manic depression, and a vengeful mind” (2009b). Hardwick, too, expresses concern about Jessica’ mental health and, in a review of volume 5, All Night Long, diagnoses the character with “histrionic personality disorder,” listing the diagnostic criteria and inviting readers to agree. The bloggers are similarly disappointed in Elizabeth, whom Rumberger describes as “loyal to an insane sister who spreads lies about her, steals the boy she likes and lets rumors that she’d been arrested go uncontested” (2009b) and whom Hardwick calls, in turns, “a total grandma” and a “total doormat.” The blogs’ readers are in agreement, as the following comments from “Forever Young Adult” indicate:

The Readers’ Text(s) • 135 i always though [sic] “liz” was a self-righteous douchebag, and todd [Elizabeth’s boyfriend] was the least interesting person on the planet. I love that you hate Enid and Elizabeth as much as I do and that you’ve discovered Jessica’s latent serial killer tendencies! The Sweet Valley bloggers read the Wakefield twins in hyperbolic terms, a critical technique that allows them—and their readers—an opportunity to re-write their earlier interpretations of the novels and, particularly as they diagnose Jessica, compensate for their youthful receptions of the series. As Rumberger acknowledges that the series “hinges on the twins being perfect and everyone else not quite measuring up” (personal communication, April 26, 2010) and Curtis acknowledges that she “hasn’t quite gotten over” the comparative reading the novels seemed to encourage, the bloggers’ (and their readers’) re-casting of the series’ heroines emerges as a strategy for reading against the novels in a way they were unable or unwilling to do in the past. The blogs’ feminist critiques of “Sweet Valley High” resemble the moral/ethical critiques Gray associates with anti-fandom and with a particular audience positioning that resembles the adult gaze on children’s literature. Arguing that fans’ critiques of and responses to media texts have moral/ethical, rational-realist and aesthetic dimensions, and that “audience and fan research and theory suggests that reception involves conflating all three dimensions and consuming them as one,” Gray suggests that the phenomenon of anti-fandom “may prove the three to be always potentially distinct . . . The text, long considered the basic unit of aesthetics, may at times be solely or predominantly a moral unit instead” (2005, p. 844). Gray notes that the responses of many anti-fan viewers reflect a “worr[y] about other people’s reception” in a way that points to the general concern for relative levels of media literacy and for the state of the public and textual spheres that often subsume viewers as they watch and discuss television. It is almost as if, above and beyond the level of personal interaction with a text, many viewers are constantly obsessed with the “massness” of the medium and, hence, a good deal of what the text means to them is a reflection of what they believe it will mean to others and what effects it will have on others (2005, p. 851). Gray’s observations, drawn from his analyses of the performances of antifan viewers of particular television programs, are relevant to the Sweet Valley blogger phenomenon as well. Like the anti-fans Gray describes, the Sweet Valley bloggers’ responses represent an attempt to un-do the messages they argue the texts espouse and that they admit to acknowledging and even accepting as young people.

136 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Loving and Hating “Sweet Valley High” When I sent my sister a draft of “My Story” for her comments and suggestions, she advised deleting a detail that, in light of the comments made by the “Sweet Valley High” readers and the anti-fans, emerges as representative of an aspect of the series with which the former and contemporary readers of the novels continue to wrestle. Pointing out my admission to the (probably misguided) pride I take in maintaining the same clothing size as the Wakefield twins, Ellie worried that this passage might be misinterpreted by readers, who she imagined would engage in the same comparative reading practices with my text that critics (and even the anti-fan bloggers) worried adolescent readers would with the Sweet Valley novels. In Ellie’s estimation, comparative readers of “My Story” would consider my admission both bragging and vain, as well as evidence that I had, indeed, been co-opted by the series and its ideologies; “Haters gonna hate,” she said. She continued, however, to note the resonance of the phrase, “perfect size 6,” even if, as Hardwick writes in “The Dairi Burger,” by “today’s standards” the once “perfect” size is reserved for “LARD ASSES” (2007a). Curtis, too, suggests this resonance, writing that she “hasn’t quite gotten over” comparing herself to the beauty standards the Wakefield twins set in the Sweet Valley novels. Indeed, the fact that I haven’t deleted the public announcement of my (perfect?) clothing size would seem to indicate both my thrall to the beauty standards set by the series and my awareness of a particular and value-laden meaning attached to what is arguably an arbitrary number. I choose to believe (I have to believe), however, that, as Radway writes, “Texts do not dictate their meanings to us. Stories do not control what readers remember of them or take away from them to be adapted to the particulars of their own lives” (2002, p. 197). Thus, it is not only “Sweet Valley High” that is suggesting to me (and Ellie and Curtis and even Hardwick) the sanctity of the size 6; it is the greater culture in which the size 6 is situated, the ideologies of which “Sweet Valley High” captures. My relationship—and, arguably, my sister’s, Curtis’ and even Hardwick’s—to the novels and the standards of beauty, romance and popularity the series upheld remains complicated. While I might argue today that the standards of beauty and sexuality the series positioned as both “normal” and “desirable” are, indeed, narrow and limiting, this does not change the fact that, as a young person, I adopted these standards as my own, I wished that my life would more closely resemble the Wakefields’ charmed existences and I enjoyed reading and collecting the novels. Even as an adult and critical reader, I take pleasure in both actively criticizing and more passively absorbing the novels. As Janice Winship (1987) has written of her relationship—as a critic and a reader—with women’s magazines, I, too, associate a “double edge” with Pascal’s series. Winship describes this double edge, writing

The Readers’ Text(s) • 137 Many of the guises of femininity in women’s magazines contribute to the secondary status from which we still desire to free ourselves. At the same time, it is the dress of femininity which is both a source of the pleasure of being a woman—and not a man—and in part the raw material for a feminist vision of the future (1987, p. xiii). Like the women’s magazines Winship describes, the “Sweet Valley High” series advanced a particular “guise of femininity” from which, as I mentioned above, I haven’t entirely freed myself and that, as academic critics of the novels and the series’ anti-fans point out, “contribute[s] to [women’s] secondary status.” At the same time, the series, as it focuses on the female-identified and feminized world of the Wakefield twins and suggests, as Winship argues women’s magazines do, “that this woman’s world of personal life and feminine expressivity is one worth bothering about” (1987, p. 12), is a pleasure to escape to, particularly as the novels, like women’s magazines, “offer . . . imaginative story lines in which women achieve the successes and satisfactions everyday life cannot be expected to deliver” (1987, p. 53). “Sweet Valley High,” as it described the popularity and social successes of its heroines and represented a distinct and idealized feminine adolescence, stood in distinct contrast to my everyday life; this difference—between my lived experience and the fantasy adolescence the novels described—allowed, and continues to allow, the series to function as a fantastic landscape to which I could consistently and easily escape.

Chapter Five The “New” Sweet Valley High

In 1998, the fictional town of Sweet Valley, California was changed forever when, as described in a two-book final installment of the “Sweet Valley High” series set on the night of the twins’ seventeenth birthday, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield endure a damaging earthquake that reduces much of the town— including the Wakefield home—to rubble and kills or injures several friends. While the penultimate novel, Earthquake, describes the tremors and chaos immediately following the quake, the final novel, Aftershock, reorganizes the characters and their situations, effectively setting up the 1999 introduction of the series’ edgy spin-off, “Sweet Valley High (SVH): Senior Year.” Although the primary purpose of these last two novels is to introduce “Senior Year,” these works also offer intertextual and metafictional comment on the original series, poking some fun at “Sweet Valley High”’s archetypal characterization and more unbelievable plotlines and encouraging its readers to re-imagine the series as camp. Although “Sweet Valley High” had attempted to keep up with trends in young adult publishing, the new series is more clearly contemporary; consequently, the content, structure and design of “SVH” depart from the literary traditions established in 1983 with the fi rst “Sweet Valley High” novel and reflect the literary conventions more closely associated with turn of the twenty-first century popular adolescent fiction and what Eliza Dresang (1999) has called “Radical Change.” Narrated from the third-person perspective but punctuated by first-person excerpts intended to be read as the primary characters’ “confessions”—themselves distinguished through the use of fonts that become extensions of characterization—“SVH,” although it continues the series’ focus on the Wakefield twins, introduces a cast of secondary characters decidedly more multicultural than the cast featured in the original series. While certainly not as “grim” as what emerged in the late 1990s as the growing crop of realistic adolescent fiction criticized in the mainstream press, questioned in professional journals and which emerged contemporary to the 139

140 • Reading the Adolescent Romance new series, “SVH” addresses emotionally fraught teen issues related to bullying, parental alcoholism and sexual identity in a manner more realistic than that associated with “Sweet Valley High.” Although these cosmetic changes and expansion of content bring the “SVH” “up to date,” the new series retains its status as a conservative romance.

Saying Good-bye to Sweet Valley The final two volumes of the “Sweet Valley High” series describe the literal destruction of the fictional town of Sweet Valley and the metaphoric destruction of the ethics and aesthetics of the old series as, in the words of the novels’ paratext, the “two-book miniseries takes a look back at cherished memories, while your favorite characters look to the future in SVH: Senior Year” (William, 1998a; William, 1998b). Earthquake, the first of the “two-book miniseries,” was published on the heels of another Sweet Valley High “mini-series,” a four-book series that ended with Last Wish, the novel describing the twin’s seventeenth birthday party and concluding with a cliffhanger following the initial and damaging first waves of the earthquake. The first pages of Earthquake find the twins separated, each waking from a brief period of unconsciousness; Jessica has been in a car accident with her brother Stephen while Elizabeth has been knocked to the ground among the girls’ party guests in their backyard. Jessica (who sobs, “It’s only the first time I’ve driven my brandnew Wrangler, and it’s ruined!” [William, 1998b, p. 5]) notices “the pavement was buckled and twisted into a landscape of craters and rocky lumps” and “a deep black crack [that] had opened up in the roadway, a thick jagged streak that tore through the concrete like a lightning bolt” (William, 1998b, pp. 81, 83). At the Wakefield house, Elizabeth takes stock of a “nightmarish landscape . . . Most of the people she cared about huddled on the patio or lay motionless on the lawn” (William, 1998b, p. 12). As she checks out the damage, Elizabeth assesses her house and “[feels] her knees go weak. The roof had collapsed, and one side of the house looked as if it had been crushed underneath a giant’s heel” (William, 1998b, p. 24). Although the twins and Stephen eventually find their parents and are reunited, others are not so lucky: Annie Whitman’s house (next door) has burned to the ground, as has the Wakefield’s home; and classmates Ronnie Edwards and Olivia Davidson are dead. The town of Sweet Valley described at the end of Earthquake stands in sharp contrast to the town introduced in the series’ first novel as “the little green jewel of a California town” in which “everything was terrific—the gently rolling hills, the quaint downtown area, and the fantastic white sand beach only fifteen minutes away” (William, 1983a, p. 15) While the last two novels do emphasize the emotional and physical tolls the earthquake takes on the “Sweet Valley High” characters, this seriousness is undercut by the novels’ tone, particularly as, in a trope resembling

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 141 the television “clip show,” the characters reminisce about the past in a way that encourages us to view these fictional events (and the texts that conveyed them) as camp. The fi nal novels take advantage of two informants of camp Susan Sontag describes in her influential essay, “Notes on Camp”: the series’ “unintentionality”—the series was not initially created to be read as camp or kitsch—and its (in 1998) now historic situation and premise. Sontag’s argument that “the pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious” (1999, p. 58) has relevance here, as, although Francine Pascal has always maintained that “Sweet Valley High” represents a deliberately soap-operatic fantasy of high school, the author has also made it clear that she has responded to those readers who indicated that the series had resonance in their lives by attempting to weave the discussion of social issues within the series’ fabric (n.a., 1995a). That these discussions now read in somewhat hyperbolic terms (the death of secondary character Regina Morrow following her experimentation with cocaine in On the Edge [1987] is a premier example) is a function of the historical moment in which the series is now embedded. As Sontag writes, “Time has a great deal to do [with what becomes camp] . . . Time can enhance what seems simply dogged or lacking in fantasy now because we are too close to it, because it resembles too closely our own everyday fantasies, the nature of which we don’t perceive” (1999, p. 60). A “doggedly” polemical anti-drug novel born in the era of “Just Say No,” On the Edge becomes camp as our distance from the time period (and, arguably, from the public tragedy that seemed to inspire this novel’s climax) calls further attention to what now seems like a distinctly un-subtle morality play. As the series broadly engages with what can be considered the “everyday fantasies” of adolescence as it was experienced in the 1980s, our growing historical distance from these fantasies allows us to re-imagine them as camp. As Earthquake and Aftershock “look back” at what the novels’ paratext calls “cherished memories,” these novels seem to lampoon the original series, drawing attention to “Sweet Valley High”’s more outlandish plots and fi xing them in the past in a way that suggests that the new series (“SVH: Senior Year”) will serve as a more realistic “check” to the old. The characters who sustain peril in Earthquake are reminded of other brushes with death; as Todd Wilkens, who finds himself trapped in the crumbling Wakefield bathroom with Lila Fowler, faces what seems to be certain death, he recalls a similar incident that took place during a school trip to Snow Mountain (described in a “Super Edition,” Falling for Lucas [1996]): An avalanche had thundered down the ridge, trapping him overnight in a tiny cabin with a woman named Cassandra who’d been beautiful but tiresome. As the snow buried the cabin they’d sensed its oppressive weight overhead and knew it was only a matter of time before the roof collapsed (William, 1998b, p. 167).

142 • Reading the Adolescent Romance As the fire from the Whitman home crosses onto Wakefield property and Lila and Todd are convinced they will be burned alive while trapped in the rubble, Lila is reminded of an incident that occurred in volume 135 of the series, Lila’s New Flame (1997), in which “an arson fire had gutted the west wing of Fowler Crest, including Lila’s own room” and which she learned “had been set by John Pfeifer, the psycho who also tried to blow up the school” (William, 1998b, pp. 134, 135). Similarly, as Elizabeth chokes on smoke and fears for her life and the lives of her friends, she is reminded of “another dark, surreal night” (described in a “Super Thriller,” Killer on Board [1995]) when she had found herself in the clutches of John Marin, “a paroled murderer with a grudge against the twins’ father” and whose “goal was to murder the Wakefield girls, to pay back Ned Wakefield for prosecuting the case that had sent Marin to prison ten years earlier” (William, 1998b, p. 110). These three “cherished memories,” described in an almost dead-pan style and found within at least thirty pages of each other, represent only a fraction of the looks back entertained by Earthquake and emerge as satire of the novels to which they refer. That they are rendered with what Sontag might call “dead seriousness” lends camp value to these memories; like what Sontag calls “genuine Camp,” these examples—as they are cited here and as they represent conflicts depicted in individual installments of the series—“do not mean to be funny” (1999, p. 58). When grouped together and summarized in such pithy prose, the situations to which entire novels were devoted seem, in retrospect, overblown, unlikely and even comical. Earthquake injects humor into its portrayal of Elizabeth and Jessica in a way that, like the novel’s re-caps of previous installments, satirizes the series’ characterization of the twins. Although this novel dispenses with the series’ stock description of the twins’ physical beauty, it does—as the other novels have—distinguish them as personality types, noting that “Elizabeth was usually so levelheaded and sensible” while “Jessica was the twin who got herself into ridiculous and sometimes dangerous situations” (William, 1998b, p. 50). While this descriptive text is reminiscent of a similar passage that appears in Double Love (“A wicked gleam of mischief lurked in the aquamarine depths of Jessica’s eyes, while Elizabeth’s reflected only sincerity” [William, 1983a, p. 4]), Earthquake goes further, citing some of Jessica’s more memorable exploits to demonstrate her impulsiveness: It was Jessica who had joined Bruce Patman’s thrill-seeking group, Club X, determined to prove she could do anything a boy could do. When she accepted the club’s challenge to walk across a high, narrow railroad bridge, she’d nearly been killed by a speeding train. It was Jessica who’d been lured into a strange cult led by a charismatic stranger named Adam Marvel, who would have kidnapped her if Elizabeth and Sam hadn’t arrived in time (William, 1998b, p. 50).

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 143 Here, as in the following description of Jessica’s daring attempt to rescue a fellow earthquake victim, the “seriousness” of the prose lends it a certain campiness. Per Sontag, the passages above and to follow exhibit a “seriousness that fails”—here and below because the passages include what Sontag calls the “proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve” (1999, p. 59). When, in Earthquake, Jessica is called upon to aid a young girl who is clinging to a narrow outcropping in a deep fissure opened by the earthquake, the narrative includes both a jab at Jessica’s characteristic vanity and the series’ own preoccupation with its characters’ wardrobes. Although the text absurdly notes that she is wearing a “brand-new aqua minidress,” Jessica allows herself to be lowered into the fissure, figuring If saving a young girl’s life meant letting a boy she barely knew hold her by the legs as she dangled upside-down in a crevasse while wearing a short dress—well, then that was what Jessica would do. Luckily, the dress was a stretchy fabric that hugged her body like a bathing suit. She hoped it would stay put instead of riding up and collecting around her waist (William, 1998b, pp. 172, 201). The detailed description of Jessica’s aqua minidress—which we later learn is made of a “stretchy fabric that hugged her body like a bathing suit”—exemplifies the series’ earnest, even passionate, devotion to the characters’ clothing choices. Jessica’s worry that her dress would “ride up” to her waist during her attempted rescue is what Sontag might call an example of textual naïveté that, in this context, is rendered as Jessica’s incongruous concern about her clothing considered in terms of her dire predicament. While Jessica’s extreme characterization might be easier to lampoon, Earthquake dismantles the “levelheaded and sensible” Elizabeth as well, placing her in a situation that challenges the loyalty for which she is known. As she works to rally her party guests to help search for earthquake survivors, Elizabeth spies her best friend Enid lying “unmoving, in a puddle of water. Only a few feet from her head, exposed underground wires squirmed like snakes, sending out showers of sparks” (William, 1998b, p. 61). As Elizabeth watches the puddle of water expand, knowing that “within minutes, the water in which Enid lay would engulf the power lines and a deadly shock would shoot into Enid’s unconscious body,” a gust of wind brings burning ash into the Wakefield yard and soon, “Enid [is] surrounded by a circle of fire” (William, 1998b, p. 141). Although a friend tries to convince her that any attempt to save Enid would be considered “suicide,” Elizabeth walks through the ring of fire and carries her best friend to safety. As she is dragging Enid’s limp body across the yard, a live wire strikes Elizabeth, shocking her and rendering her unconscious; among her last conscious thoughts are, “I have to save [Enid]” (William, 1998b, p. 214). Like the passages describing Jessica, above, Elizabeth’s

144 • Reading the Adolescent Romance situation is conveyed with “dead seriousness;” its drawn-out narration—this story is told in alternation with the other storylines the novel follows—only enhances the element of suspense that heightens as Enid’s predicament grows more urgent. Enid’s and Elizabeth’s increasingly deadly circumstances—the unconscious Enid could feasibly die by drowning, electrocution, smoke inhalation, or incineration—epitomize the exaggeration Sontag argues is at the heart of the camp sensibility. Known for her generous nature and her dependability, in Earthquake Elizabeth rises to the most dramatic of occasions in the most dramatic of ways. In contrast to Earthquake, Aftershock presents the twins—and Jessica in particular—transformed, subdued and even damaged and uses their words to mourn the demise of the old series while suggesting the more realistic tone of the new. Jessica, whose attempt to rescue a young girl in Earthquake ultimately fails, leading her to witness the girl’s death, is particularly shattered by the experience. As the twins stand before the ruins of the former Sweet Valley teen hot spot, the Beach Disco, Jessica wails, “Everything I’ve enjoyed is dead! Crushed like the Beach Disco. And you know what, Lizzie? I wish I was dead, too!” (William, 1998a, p. 57). Jessica’s cry is a metaphoric lament over the death of “Sweet Valley High;” the ethics of the old series, embodied in the image of the Beach Disco—a nightclub whose very name suggests its contemporary obsolescence—have been superseded and, in Aftershock, a new Sweet Valley world view emerges. Jessica becomes the vehicle for the expression of the series’ shift in perspective, as her depression leads her to question the principles on which the original series was built: “It’s amazing,” Jessica thought, “that being the star of the cheerleading squad actually meant something to me once . . . I wasted all my time wrapped up in stupid, trivial things, believing I was happy . . . when right around the corner, tragedy was waiting to strike” (William, 1998a, pp. 128–129). Jessica’s words—along with her observation that “Hidden behind the lighthearted life I led, there was always so much sadness . . . How was I ever stupid enough to believe that life was good?” (William, 1998a, p. 142)—foreshadow the literary changes that will come to distinguish “Sweet Valley High” from “SVH.” Re-cast, in Jessica’s statement, as a “stupid” and even shallow depiction of the “lighthearted life,” “Sweet Valley High” becomes an artifact of the past.

Meanwhile, Back in the Real World: Young Adult Literature Since 1983 While Jessica’s 1998 requiem for the Beach Disco works to announce the death of “Sweet Valley High,” her observations that “there was always so much

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 145 sadness” and “right around the corner, tragedy was waiting to strike” (William, 1998a, pp. 142, 129), evince her (and, arguably, the new “SVH” series’) new and more realistic attitude, one that emerges as more characteristic of young adult literature in the late 1990s. Since the 1983 publication of Double Love, the young adult literary and demographic landscape had changed dramatically, as had the larger social and political worlds outside the texts. The scope and content of young adult literature reflected these changes; between 1983 and 1999, adolescent fiction—with a notable exception in the horror genre—retreated from the traditional and romantic, returned to a more realistic mode of expression, became more and differently attentive to issues of race and gender and began to exhibit the influence of “Radical Change,” a departure “from the usual or traditional in literature for or reading behavior of youth” (Dresang and Kotrla, 2009, p. 95). New young adult texts were growing more inclusive, reflecting the realities of the large and increasingly diverse generation of Americans coming of age in the late 1980s and 1990s. This generation—known as the Millennial Generation—is noted for its large size; its establishment represented a youth “boom,” particularly when its size was compared to the smaller Generation X or, “baby bust” generation that preceded it (n.a., 2006). Ethnic and racial diversity is a hallmark of this generation; 61% of this generation identifies itself as “non-Hispanic white,” compared with 63% of Generation X and 73% of Baby Boomers (n.a., 2005). This demographic growth coincided with increased teen spending; market researchers noted a $10 billion increase in adolescent purchasing between 1993 and 1994, the first of such spending increases since 1991 (Zollo, 1995). Publishers—and retailers—viewed this demographic as “a vital target market” and, noting that “the teen book-buying market is fairly large with real growth potential” (Ferguson, 1998, p. 30), increased efforts to reach teens traditionally and electronically, building on known strategies and introducing new forms to market. As it continued publication through 1998, the original “Sweet Valley High” series made cursory attempts to attract this new generation of book-buyers, introducing horror and thriller themed installments, making attempts to address racial and ethnic diversity and expanding the series from print text to multimedia product.

From Romance to Horror Although they remained well read through the early 1990s, by the mid-1980s, the popular adolescent romance novel had been usurped by a new genre: the popular horror novel. Arguing that the young adult horror “phenomenon” emerged in 1985 with the publication of Christopher Pike’s paperback thriller, Slumber Party, followed by R.L. Stine’s novel Twisted and the subsequent establishment of his “Fear Street” series (described by Publishers Weekly as “the first mass market horror series for kids” [Lodge, 1996, p. 24]), Patty Campbell

146 • Reading the Adolescent Romance argued in 1994 that the teenage horror novel had “replaced the romance series of the eighties in the hearts of young readers” (1994, para. 1). Michael Cart, too, compared horror fiction to the romance series, describing the adolescent incarnation of the genre as formula driven, produced according to multipage specification sheets that virtually guarantee predictable plots and cardboard characters. Settings are as blandly white, middle-class, and suburban as those of romance novels and are equally devoid of sex (though gouts of blood are always welcome) (1996, pp. 147–148). In spite of these critiques, by 1996, 41 million copies of Stine’s young adult “Fear Street” series were in print and publishers were scrambling to produce other, similarly toned series for the eager adolescent audience (Lodge, 1996). Patrick Jones writes that the popularity of series like “Fear Street” and the stand-alone thrillers authored by Christopher Pike had much to do with the timing of their publication. Jones writes, “The time was ripe: the romance genre had mutated and become exhausted” (1998, p. 77). Thrillers and teen horror, he continues, worked to fill the literary void left as the romance slowly faded. As when romance dominated the teen market, critics questioned the appropriateness of the adolescent horror novel and decried the assembly-line production and the violent content of popular horror series like the aforementioned “Fear Street.” Citing Grimm’s fairy tales as examples and noting that “violence in stories for the young is nothing new,” Jonathan Yardley (writing for the Washington Post) criticized adolescent horror fiction, calling it “exploitation, pure and simple, designed to shock and titillate with no thought of the consequences” (1993, para. 8). A short article in Time informed readers that “Adolescents now constitute a booming niche market for the peddling of published gore and violence” (Gray, 1993, para. 3), and criticized the contemporary thrillers for relying on “calculated shock tactics [that] seem qualitatively different from the methods of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Treasure Island or even the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe” (Gray, 1993, para. 3, 7). In a similarly critical article for the New York Times, Ken Tucker calls popular horror novels “textbook examples of how not to tell a story,” criticizing the characterization and pacing of the thriller and writing that “young-adult horror authors tend to be too busy accommodating MTV attention spans to create vivid personalities; instead they race from one cheap jolt to the next” (1993, para. 16, para. 13). These popular critiques echo both the content and tone of the previous decade’s attack on adolescent popular romance: They castigate the publishing world for marketing popular products directly to adolescents and argue that the novels are both poorly written and dangerous; unlike the “classic” texts to which Yardley and Gray refer, the contemporary thrillers, Yardley writes, fail to “reveal the consequences of evildoing” (1993, para. 13) and encourage readers, as Gray writes, to either “move upward in

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 147 their tastes, through Stephen King and V. C. Andrews to Hemingway, Joyce and Shakespeare” or “boil the cat in the spaghetti” (1993, para. 9). Embedded within these popular critiques, however, are suggestions that the contemporary horror novels, like the romance novels that preceded them, serve a symbolic purpose and even reflect contemporary mores. Tucker allows that the novels serve a psychological function, writing, “Young-adult horror taps into the worries of early adolescence, fears about moving out of your parents’ home or of working at a part-time job for a mean boss or of enduring a bad date” (1993, para. 11). In her discussion of young adult horror fiction, Silk Makowski cites the generational appeal of “monsters and the supernatural,” arguing that teen horror novels work as “morality play[s],” that “separate the weak from the strong, the virtuous from the dirty, the high-minded from the shallow” (1998, 2006, p. 139). Jones’ book-length defense of R. L. Stine and adolescent horror fiction offers a developmentally informed explanation for the success of the genre. Citing Stephen King’s argument that horror serves an allegorical purpose, Jones writes: [Stine’s readers] are afraid not so much of violence in their schools or gangs, but of this new life they’ve been thrust into without any choice, a life fi lled with challenges, decisions, and responsibility. With responsibilities come anxiety, with anxiety comes the need for release, the need for a monster emerging from the darkness (1998, p. 67). The “monster emerging from the darkness” represents “adolescent sexuality,” Jones continues, an impulse that, as teens coming of age with new awareness of AIDS, took on a monstrous visage. This linkage of sexuality with potential death, combined with an increase in the homicide rate among teens and what Jones describes as the “overdose of violence” to which young people were exposed in the mass media (1998, p. 68) suggests that adolescent horror fiction served a compensatory function similar to that served by the young adult romance fiction of the previous decade. The influence this young adult publishing trend had on the “Sweet Valley High” series is small, but noticeable. In 1987, the series introduced “Super Thrillers” to its catalog of novels. These longer (nearly double the length of an individual series installment) and stand-alone novels functioned as the mystery thriller counterparts to the series’ “Super Editions,” stand-alone novels describing the twins’ adventures during school vacations; “Super Stars,” stand-alone novels providing more detailed back-stories for some of the series’ secondary characters; and “Magna Editions,” stand-alone and multi-volume histories of the Wakefield, Patman, and Fowler families, copies of Elizabeth and Jessica’s “secret diaries,” and installments of a thriller storyline featuring an “evil twin.” The series’ “Super Thrillers” were produced to take advantage of the growing interest in genre texts. Noting the popularity of the re-vamped Nancy Drew series, the “Nancy Drew Files,” which were introduced in the mid-1980s and,

148 • Reading the Adolescent Romance by 1988, boasted sales second only to the “Sweet Valley High” series, Bantam Books (Sweet Valley’s publisher), “sensing that ‘Sweet Valley High’ readers liked murder as well as puppy love,” introduced the “Super Thriller,” “paperbacks in which the twins, Elizabeth and Jessica, solve crimes” (Hirsch, 1988, para. 9). While the first “Super Thrillers” fell well within the mystery genre—in the first thriller, Double Jeopardy (1987), Jessica witnesses a crime; in the second, On the Run (1988), Elizabeth befriends a mysterious young man—later volumes of the “Thrillers” as well as individual volumes of the series—Beware the Wolfman (1994); the “Magna Edition,” The Evil Twin (1993); and the individual titles Tall, Dark and Deadly (1996), Dance of Death (1996), and Kiss of a Killer (1996) are notable examples—reveal the influences of the horror and thriller genres. In these horror-themed Sweet Valley novels, the twins encounter what they believe to be a werewolf during a trip to London (Beware the Wolfman), they fear a vampire is to blame for a series of murders (Tall, Dark and Deadly; Dance of Death; Kiss of a Killer), and battle with a disturbed woman who wants to kill the twins and assume their identities (The Evil Twin).

Expanding the Literary World Both Cart (alone, in From Romance to Realism: 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature [1996], and with Christine Jenkins, in The Heart Has its Reasons: Young Adult Literature with Gay/Lesbian/Queer Content, 1969–2004 [2006]) and youth literary editor Marc Aronson noted that, during the late 1980s and into the 1990s, young adult literature was becoming more welcoming to minority authors and more tolerant of minority and queer narratives. With the late-century expansion of what Aronson calls “true young adult literature” (literature written expressly for young adults), “more and more black, Asian, Hispanic and Native American authors have entered the field” (2002, p. 86). Cart cited the establishment of publishing companies like the Children’s Book Press and Lee and Low, “relatively small houses that specialize in multicultural titles,” as well as mainstream publisher Henry Holt’s creation of the Edge imprint, “which offers a combination of original work done here in the United States . . . and work from abroad” (1996, pp. 131, 132), as further examples of the expansion of the adolescent literary field. The American Library Association’s 1996 establishment of the Pura Belpré award, “presented to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth” (ALA, 2010a) as well as the association’s 1982 official recognition of the Coretta Scott King award, given annually “to African American authors and illustrators for outstanding inspirational and educational contributions” (ALA, 2010b), represent two major contemporary efforts to encourage minority voices in youth literature. Gay/Lesbian/ Bisexual/Trans-gendered/Queer (GLBTQ) literature for young adults found

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 149 new acceptance in the 1990s as well. Aronson, noting the growth of “bookstores, advocacy groups, and even high schools devoted to gays and lesbians,” observes that the field of GLBTQ literature has grown from the problem novel in which the key moment is the revelation of the protagonist’s sexual preference to novels that explore a character’s ambiguous sexual yearnings, as well as nonfiction series that provide role models of successful and creative gays and lesbians (2002, p. 86). Drawing from Rudine Sims Bishop’s model for describing the nature of the literary inclusion of African-American characters in children’s fiction, Cart and Jenkins further describe the evolution of GLBTQ literature. Arguing that GLBTQ content has appeared in young adult literature in the context of “Homosexual Visibility,” “Gay Assimilation,” and “Queer Consciousness/ Community,” Cart and Jenkins (2006) write that, in contrast to earlier decades in which GLBTQ content was presented as a way to provide “homosexual visibility,” in the late 1980s and 1990s, all three types of content were present in adolescent fiction. Increasing tolerance for—and, later in the decade, encouragement of—what had once been considered “other” voices thus came to characterize much of the adolescent literature of the 1990s. Although it failed to address GLBTQ issues, later editions of “Sweet Valley High” made tentative, sporadic efforts to consider race, heterosexism and sexuality. The series introduced characters of color, making their struggles the subject of individual installments, as in 1988’s Out of Reach, in which Chinese-American Jade Wu’s traditional father objects to her participation in a school dance performance, and 1993’s Are We in Love?, in which an AfricanAmerican character, Cheryl Thomas, briefly dates the twins’ brother, Stephen. While Cheryl and Jade remain in the background of subsequent installments of the series, the re-introduction of African-American character Maria Slater—a child actress who first appears in the “Sweet Valley Twins” series, moves away, and then returns in the high school novels—and her subsequent situation among Elizabeth Wakefield’s circle of close friends, diversifies the “Sweet Valley High” cast to a small degree. While the series makes superficial attempts at ethnic diversification, it makes marginally more effort to introduce more contemporary sexual politics to the novels. Joyce A. Litton has pointed out that, although early novels in the Sweet Valley series like Double Love (1983) and When Love Dies (1984) reflect the sexual conservatism of the 1980s, Miss Teen Sweet Valley, published in 1991 and in which Elizabeth and Jessica disagree over the politics of a local beauty pageant, represents “one of the more recent Sweet Valley High titles which purports to deal sensitively with serious topics” and that, like later installments of the series, incorporates “more elements of the problem novel” and even includes “some feminist teen characters” (1994, pp. 26, 27). Don’t Go Home With John, a Sweet Valley installment published one year after Miss Teen Sweet Valley, is more direct in

150 • Reading the Adolescent Romance its address of feminist issues, depicting the attempted rape and recovery of one the series’ primary characters.

Return to Realism and “Radical Change” By the late 1990s, the adolescent horror fiction trend had waned and critics noted a return to realism in adolescent fiction. Although the literary category—as it flourished in the late 1960s and 1970s—had already been known for addressing such “edgy” teen issues as suicide, drug use and sexuality, Cart noted that “the degree of candor with which these issues are being discussed” was, in the late 1990s, new, and that more “editorial latitude [was] being given to the authors for expressing ambiguity, for maturely acknowledging that bleakness is no stranger to many teenage lives today, and for sharing the sad truth that not all endings are happy ones” (1999, p. 248). While certainly not all young adult novels published during this time period adhered to what critics called the “grim” realistic tendencies of award-winning novels like the 1997 National Book Award nominee Brock Cole’s The Facts Speak for Themselves or Robert Cormier’s controversial Tenderness (1997), Sarah Mosle, writing for the New York Times, characterized the latest young adult novels as “bleak” and noted that the “spate of recently published young adult novels . . . have some librarians and parents concerned” (1998, para. 1). Mosle, citing Tenderness, The Facts Speak for Themselves, and Virginia Walter’s Making Up Megaboy (1998) as examples of “bleak” fiction, writes, “As adult adolescence has extended, teen-agers, to judge from these books, are growing prematurely gray, shouldering burdens far beyond their years. When we worry about bleak books, what we’re really worrying about is the readiness of teen-agers to face life’s darkest corners” (1998, para. 10). While Mosle’s discussion of young adult “bleak” books seems anxious in tone, ultimately, the author agrees with Jennifer M. Brown and Cindi Di Marzo’s conclusions that such novels are merely responses to what they call the “changing world” of the adolescent: “[T]he world keeps throwing changes and difficult issues at young people, and authors are writing more and more books to address these themes” (Brown and DiMarzo, 1998, p. 123). The bulk of the “Sweet Valley High” series—even through the 1990s— could never be described as “bleak,” but the last two volumes of the series are arguably more somber offerings. Although the earthquake that rocks the fictional world of Sweet Valley is described in hyperbolic and even campy terms in the volume of the same name, the concluding installment, Aftershock, is decidedly more realistic. Following their harrowing experiences, both Elizabeth and Jessica experience flashbacks and suffer nightmares; although Elizabeth has lost some of her memories of the aftermath of the earthquake, Jessica wishes she could forget the tragedies she witnessed. Jessica, who had, in contrast to her thoughtful sister, been described throughout the series as a

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 151 flirtatious party girl, emerges as the most visibly changed and, at the conclusion of the final novel, She knew she couldn’t be the crazy, wild, carefree girl she’d been all through her junior year of high school . . . The new Jessica had a heavy seriousness weighing down her soul—a seriousness that still made her feel very uncomfortable with herself. It was incredibly difficult, this metamorphosis into someone new, into someone who could handle the terrible sadness that had forever lodged in her heart (William, 1998a, p. 226). While hers is arguably the most dramatic transformation, other series “regulars” emerge in this novel as more realistic and complex characters. Ken, the popular captain of the school football team, discovers, in a portrait painted by his girlfriend who died in the earthquake, “a me that I didn’t know anyone else could see”: the young man “[he] really [is],” and not just “the captain of the football team or . . . the regular, easygoing guy everyone else sees,” but a more contemplative and even sensitive soul (William, 1998a, p. 166). Although the two had separated in the past, Aftershock depicts the end of Elizabeth and Todd’s romance, a relationship that had been idealized through most of the series, in what seems like more certain terms; the finality of their good-byes and Elizabeth’s realization that “not much promise for [their] future together” exists (William, 1998a, p. 222) contrasts with the typically romantic conclusions of prior series installments and adds a further element of realism to the novel. As Brown and Di Marzo write, the world of adolescence was, in the 1990s, changing rapidly. The generation of young people coming of age in the late 1980s and 1990s were among those known as the Net Generation, young people born between 1977 and 1997 who represented the first generation to be raised with the computers and the Internet. Drawing from research completed through the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative and hypothesizing that being raised among the Net Generation distinguishes this generation from the previous in distinct ways, Eliza Dresang and Bowie Kotrla point out that “deep immersion in highly interactive digital media is a frequent and preferred behavior” among Net Generation young people and argue that young people’s “behaviors, interests, and preferences have changed as the technology around them has changed” (2009, p. 102). Dresang has argued that the digital age has not only produced a new generation of electronic and traditional readers, but also contributed to what she calls “Radical Change,” transformations in information presentation and communication that reflect a technological influence. Citing “interactivity, connectivity and access” as features of Radical Change literature for youth, Dresang and Kotrla offer examples of literary innovations that evince Radical Change: Graphics in new forms and formats; words and pictures reaching new levels of synergy; nonlinear or nonsequential organization and format;

152 • Reading the Adolescent Romance multiple layers of meaning from a variety of perspectives; cognitively, emotionally, and/or physically interactive formats; sophisticated presentations; and unresolved storylines (2009, p. 96). These Radical Change characteristics were, by the late 1990s, becoming noticeable in adolescent texts, in their packaging and in publishers’ marketing strategies. Cross-promotions of books and music, increasing Internet sites devoted to the discussion and preview of popular series and authors, and the development of books with graphic covers that make use of what Nanette Stevenson calls the “visual language” of teens, drawn from “MTV, Nintendo, advertising and computers” (1997, p. 139) were among the changes wrought in the adolescent publishing world. The “Sweet Valley High” novels published during the last half of the 1990s reflect some of the aesthetic and structural changes Dresang and Kotrla described as, during the latter half of the decade, a television show based on the series was released and the print series began to depart from its singlevolume episodic structure. In 1994, Saban Entertainment released the “Sweet Valley High” television show to the UPN network and, in 1995, the show earned a Nielsen rating “double that of its nearest competitor” (n.a., 1995b, para. 1). By the show’s third season, it was airing on 104 stations in 80% of the country (n.a., 1996, para. 4). The live action show starred twins Cynthia and Brittney Daniel and aired for four seasons, from 1994–1997. Some, but not all, of the television show’s plots were drawn from the print series; the balance were original stories. During this time, the Daniels posed for covers of the “Sweet Valley High” novels, their photographs replacing the realistic painted images that had become the series’ hallmark. Contests like the “Sweet Valley High Read-Watch-and-Win Sweepstakes,” advertised on the television show as well as on the newly established Sweet Valley High website, highlighted the synergies between the television show and the print series (n.a., 1997). Beginning in 1994 with the “Magna Edition,” A Night to Remember, the print series—perhaps in an effort to encourage an illusion of synergy between its television and print structures—introduced “mini-series” within its larger structure, stretching out plots across several volumes. These mini-series would pepper the rest of the “Sweet Valley High” catalog, ending with the two-part Earthquake/Aftershock finale. The final two 1998 titles introduced readers—via paratextual advertisements—to the new series, “SVH: Senior Year,” and encouraged readers to visit the series’ website “for the scoop on this hot new series.” These final novels, while they continue to feature photographic images of the Daniels—as well as those of other actors who performed in the television series—share a distinctive photo collage cover design and bear the “SVH” logo that will be incorporated into the new “SVH: Senior Year” logo. The series’ cross-format iterations, as well as its changing structure and eventual cover re-design, are examples of what Dresang might call Radical Change, more principles of which would be incorporated within the new series.

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 153 Senior Year: The Same, but Different The last line of the final “Sweet Valley High” novel tightens the series’ conclusive aperture while it signals the different direction the new series—advertised in the italic paratext following the dramatic final pronouncement as well as in a graphic, one-page advertisement among the final pages of the novel— will take as it describes the twins’ senior year in high school. “Sweet Valley would never be the same again,” reads the last line of Aftershock, a declaration followed by an italicized “teaser” for “SVH: Senior Year”: It’s a new beginning with a lot of attitude. Don’t miss SVH Senior Year #1: Can’t Stay Away, coming to bookstores in January 1999. Senior Year: It’s about love. It’s about life. It’s about time (William, 1998a, p. 227, emphases in original). The new series’ pithy tagline—“It’s about love. It’s about life. It’s about time,” a series of statements that will appear on the back covers of the new novels as part of the “SVH” logo—is, like the new series itself, both a departure from and response to the old “Sweet Valley High.” Like “Sweet Valley High,” “SVH: Senior Year” is purportedly about “love” and “life”; that the series is also “about time” distinguishes “SVH” from “Sweet Valley High.” A jab at the old series’ tendency to manipulate the temporal narrative, the “It’s about time” phrase suggests that the new series will qualify itself in more contemporary terms than the old, notably with a “lot of attitude.” One of the new series’ more apparent re-conceptualizations of “time” is found in its series structure. No longer made up of episodic installments that conclude within volumes but intimate and advertise the conflict the following installment will address, “SVH” constructs longer story arcs that intersect and cross volumes. The series’ timeliness is also evident in the new books’ design, characterization, narrative structure and content, elements of “SVH” that reflect more recent young adult publishing trends as well as what Dresang might call the Radical Change characteristics of the series’ contemporaries. While the form of “SVH” appears distinct and different from that of “Sweet Valley High,” the new series remains consistent with the old, particularly with regards to its attitude towards sexuality, romance, and what Willinsky and Hunniford have called “the power to attract attention” (1993, p. 101).

“SVH”: Revitalized Design and Structure The design and packaging of “SVH: Senior Year” are distinctly more modern than that of “Sweet Valley High.” Although “Sweet Valley High” had made some changes in its cover design—the most notable of which occurred when, in the mid-1990s, the series shifted from realistically painted cover images of the series characters to photographs of the actors and actresses who played

154 • Reading the Adolescent Romance the characters on television—for the duration of its print run, the series retained its characteristic red and white “Sweet Valley High” logo. Earthquake and Aftershock are two of only three novels in the series (Last Wish, the novel that precedes Earthquake, is differently but singularly designed) to deviate dramatically from its traditional presentation; these novels, with their full-cover photographic collages and new, sans-serif “SVH” logo, served to transition readers from one design scheme to the next. Featuring unconventionally framed and sometimes canted photographs of teen-aged models who are intended to represent the series’ characters, the “SVH: Senior Year” covers are, like the covers of Earthquake and Aftershock, colorful bleeds. The series logo—with the all-caps sans-serif abbreviation “SVH” sitting at a right angle to the horizontal lower-case “senior year” that appears above it—is positioned in the top left-hand corner of the cover, while the individual book’s title is printed in a more edgy, almost industrial font and set slightly askew in the lower right quadrant of the cover. The “SVH” covers reflect the influence of what Cat Yampbell describes as the late 1980s and early 1990s move from painted images to photographs on adolescent book covers and, as “sophisticated graphics in many media forced publishers in the late 1990s to create dramatic and stimulating, ‘fast and furious’ book covers” (Yampbell, 2005, p. 357), from portraits to more dramatic images. The novels’ back covers feature a faded, full-page (bleed) detail of the front cover, over which what appear to be the musings of the character depicted on the cover are superimposed. Unlike the two-paragraph teasing plot synopses found on the back covers of “Sweet Valley High,” these bits of text are equally teasing but presented as character confessions. The copy found on the back of Can’t Stay Away, the first novel in the “SVH” series, is printed in a hand-written font: Elizabeth Wakefield Elizabeth Wakefield-McDermott Elizabeth McDermott Mrs. Conner McDermott Liz McD. Okay. I’ve totally lost it (Pascal 1999a). Readers familiar with the old series will wonder who “Conner McDermott”— a name never before seen in “Sweet Valley High”—might be, particularly as Liz—who, in “Sweet Valley High” was romantically linked to few young men and only in monogamous, long-term situations—seems to have uncharacteristically “lost it” over this stranger. New readers might find themselves attracted to the self-aware and ironic attitude (“Okay. I’ve totally lost it.”) the character narrating the back cover copy seems to assume as she recognizes her “obsession” with a young man. With its address to the dual audience of Sweet Valley series readers and non-readers, re-construction of the photographic cover, new logo design and title presentation, as well as its re-conceptualized

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 155 back cover design and copy, “SVH” bears closer resemblance to its contemporary series sisters than to the original “Sweet Valley High.” The back cover copy, as it depicts the voice of the new series, signals the structural and literary changes the text of “SVH” will manifest. The characters’ self-awareness, as it is intimated in the back cover copy and as it is conveyed in graphic terms in the novels, becomes one of the new series’ distinguishing metafictional narrative and design features. In the first pages of each series installment and peppered throughout each novel’s greater thirdperson narrative, the series’ primary characters’ first-person “confessions” and autobiographical responses to the fictional situation appear. These confessional interludes are differentiated from the narrative through the use of hand-written and cursive-style fonts meant to further characterize the speaking narrator. Thus, while Elizabeth Wakefield’s musings are presented in a hand-written font that is neat and serviceable, her sister Jessica’s are conveyed in a more feminine and embellished italic font. Conner McDermott, the young man who emerges as Liz’s love interest, “speaks” with an uneven and scratchy typeface meant to signify his troubled sensitivity while Tia Ramirez, another new character, is represented by a bold, all-capital-letters handwritten font meant to connote her chutzpah. The series’ use of typeface to convey character acts as one example of the kind of graphic communication Dresang argues is characteristic of Radical Change literature. As the words of the “SVH” characters are rendered in typefaces and fonts meant to “reflect a character’s way of thinking and talking” (Dresang, 1999, p. 20), the new series reveals its situation within a digital world in which font and typeface take on a symbolic quality. Furthermore, as the chosen font works to further characterization, it implies a type of self-consciousness characteristic of metafiction. In this case, it is not the text or its literal meaning that operates at a metafictional level, but its graphic presentation which, as it calls attention to its own construction, “reflect[s] on the nature of [its own] storytelling” (Head, 1996, p. 28). The literal narratives these first-person texts convey are metafictional and sometimes explicitly intertextual, particularly as they work to distinguish “SVH” from “Sweet Valley High.” The first “SVH” novel’s first two “confessionals” exemplify this tendency as they operate at both a metafictional and an intertextual level. “Elizabeth Wakefield’s New School Year’s Resolutions,” a first-person narrated list of “school year’s resolutions” that appears on the first, unnumbered pages of the first novel, Can’t Stay Away (1999), and fi lls the following two and a half pages, recounts Elizabeth vows that she “will not get straight A’s this year”—a choice she defends with the observation that straight A’s are “bad for a person’s image”—as well as her allowance that if she does get straight A’s, she “won’t tell anyone about it” (Pascal, 1999a, n.p.). Elizabeth further resolves to “reappraise some of [her] decisions about sex,” although she confesses that she is “probably not going to do it” (Pascal, 1999a, n.p., emphasis in original). The construction of this passage as a list of resolutions calls readers’ attentions to the construction of the text, particularly as

156 • Reading the Adolescent Romance it distinguishes the handwritten pages entitled “Elizabeth Wakefield’s New School Year’s Resolutions” from the differently handwritten pages that follow as well as the more traditionally typeset pages that comprise the bulk of the novel and that are divided into labeled chapters. These resolutions—in their content as well as in their presentation—operate to develop the character of “Elizabeth Wakefield” and function as intertextual reference to “Sweet Valley High.” While new “SVH” readers may find an image of an as-yet-unknown female character interested in rethinking both her scholarly ways and sexual mores forming as the first pages of the novel imply a character with a studious past (who doesn’t want to get straight A’s “this year”) and who is a virgin (and, as she guesses that she is “probably not going to do it,” is likely to remain this way), veteran readers of Pascal’s series, familiar with an Elizabeth who would never consider relaxing her scholastic standards or re-drawing sexual boundaries, will find Elizabeth’s resolutions to be jaw-dropping evidence of Aftershock’s promise that Sweet Valley “would never be the same again” (William, 1998a, p. 227). In contrast, “Jessica Wakefield’s Senior Year Resolutions,” which appear on the following pages, characterize Jessica in terms more familiar to “Sweet Valley High” readers: Resolving initially that she will “clean [her] room once a week,” Jessica edits her goal, writing, “Okay, let’s be realistic. Every other week” (Pascal, 1999a, n.p.). Although she vows that she will “do [her] homework unless there’s something better to do,” Jessica has, by end of the page, stopped listing resolutions and written, “Why am I bothering with this list? It’s not like I’m actually going to do any of these things, so what’s the point?” (Pascal, 1999a, n.p.) Jessica’s passage, with its literal depiction of her decision to discontinue her list (the line prior to her “Why am I bothering” question reads “I will . . .” [ellipses in original]), is more dramatically metafictional than Elizabeth’s, as it evinces a form of metafiction Nikolajeva describes as one in which “the character—and thus the reader” is made aware “of literary texts as artifacts” and “of the artificiality and conformity of text constructions” (1998, p. 232). As it demonstrates its own awareness of its construction (“Why am I bothering with this list?”), Jessica’s list reveals its metafictional character. Elizabeth and Jessica are not the only characters who are granted voice by way of “SVH”’s “confessional” conceit. The aforementioned Conner McDermott and Tia Ramirez—new characters who are introduced in the first volume of the new series—as well as familiar secondary characters Lila Fowler and Maria Slater take turns providing commentary. The new series’ reliance on multiple narrative voices further distinguishes it from its predecessor and situates it more firmly within a more contemporary Radical Change and young adult literary context. Melanie Koss and William H. Teale’s survey of turn-of-the-twenty-first century trends in adolescent literature identifies the use of multiple narrators among the literary trends they describe, noting that “although novels with multiple narrators, voices, and point of view are not new . . . these books are becoming more prevalent” in the universe

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 157 of adolescent literature (2009, p. 570). Koss and Teale’s suggestion that “it is likely that something is occurring in today’s social and cultural environment to result in more of these types of books being written” (Koss and Teale, 2009, p. 570) echoes Dresang’s argument that literary changes are responsive to the environment. Dresang, who points to the growing prevalence of multivoiced stories for children and adolescents as evidence of Radical Change, argues that, “in the digital age,” such multiplicity is “instantly available” and observes the ways in which “radical-change books for Net Generation youth . . . incorporate an array of perspectives in a number of ways not common before the digital age” (1999, p. 125). While the “Sweet Valley High” novels did provide readers with a limited omniscient perspective from which to view each installment’s action and, as such, allowed readers access to the Wakefield twins’ thoughts and reactions and made readers periodically privy to some of the thoughts and reactions of the series’ secondary characters, “SVH” consistently foregrounds the responses of a wider cast of characters in a way that challenges the old series’ exclusive Wakefield-twin focus and enlarges the scope of the narrative. The secondary characters’ confessions, like Elizabeth’s and Jessica’s texts, are depicted in what become characteristic fonts and, like Elizabeth’s and Jessica’s, exhibit metafictional characteristics and serve an intertextual and a growing intratextual purpose as well. The first novel features the first-person voices of ten characters (including Elizabeth and Jessica) and positions these texts primarily as chapter “end caps,” using them to emphasize or elaborate upon narrative points described in the previous chapter or to foreshadow events to be described the chapter to follow. These first-person texts might be presented as a character’s musings, or they might be presented as a more formal artifact of the character’s life, as in the first novel, in which Elizabeth’s and Conner’s creative writing class essays are presented. Elizabeth’s is presented following a chapter in which she bickers with Conner at the public library and he suggests that she might be a trite author. The handwritten pages that follow are headed with Elizabeth’s name, the underlined phrase “Creative Writing,” and, in smaller, handwritten font, the presumed title of the writing assignment, “Loss.” Elizabeth’s essay, as its title and position in the novel suggest its structure and a fictional motivation for its writing, is distinctly metafictional; that it describes Elizabeth’s feelings of grief at the loss of a friend (Olivia Davidson, who was killed in the earthquake described in the final books of the “Sweet Valley High” series), allows the essay to be read as intertextual; its position as a response to Conner’s challenge (he calls her “the hearts-and-flowers girl” [Pascal, 1999a, p. 51]), demonstrates its function as an intratextual narrative as well. The chapter that follows describes the creative writing class in which Elizabeth and Conner must critique one another’s writing and submit their assigned essays. Elizabeth and Conner are asked to read each other’s essays and, Elizabeth judges—with surprise—that his is “really, really good” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 65). Conner’s essay appears on the

158 • Reading the Adolescent Romance four pages following that chapter’s conclusion, fi lling in the blanks left in the previous chapter’s discussion of his writing.

“SVH:” Continuous Content and Theme While the enlarged narrative scope offered by “SVH” does make room for voices that “Sweet Valley High” considered “other,” namely, the voices of characters of color, the new series remains, as many of its popular novel contemporaries did, what Sims Bishop might call a “melting pot” text. Although, as Aronson and Cart had observed, adolescent fiction in the 1990s had become more inclusive, Koss and Teale have argued that this inclusiveness is deceptive, as fiction describing dominant cultures and experiences continues to overshadow those depicting minority experiences. “SVH” distinguishes itself from “Sweet Valley High” by granting consistent voice to two primary characters of color: African-American Maria Slater and Latina Tia Ramirez. That these characters are depicted in culturally neutral terms and that the nature of this depiction seems to encourage an assimilationist perspective is more problematic. Described as “model beautiful” with a “stunning, tall, athletic body” and “flawless milk-chocolate skin . . . Short black hair that exposed high, apple-round cheekbones and wide, luminous eyes” (Pascal, 1999b, p. 94), Maria’s “milk-chocolate skin”—and the use of an African-American model to depict her on the cover of the series installments in which her storyline is central—is the only thing that differentiates her from her mostly white classmates. An over-achiever and a perfectionist, Maria’s narrative conflicts are never related to race. Tia Ramirez, a funky cheerleader, is “compact and athletic but didn’t fit Elizabeth’s image of the cheerleader type at all” (Pascal, 1999b, p. 35). Tia is more problematically racialized; she is never identified as Latina; however, she refers to siblings with the culturally suggestive names of “Tomás” and “Miguel” and, on the back cover of Get a Clue (2002), had listed among the items on her “to-do” list: “pick up cheese for mom’s enchiladas.” These descriptive notes operate as a code for a racial identity that is never fully articulated. Fran Hurley’s criticism of the “Sweet Valley Jr. High” series (a series that appeared at the same time as “SVH” and that adheres to similar narrative conventions) is appropriate here; Hurley writes: I believe that the author intended to have characters of different ethnicities exhibit the commonalties of adolescent life in middle-class culture in the United States. While this goal is consistent with a melting-pot view of assimilation in which culture-specific attributes are forfeited in favor of a more homogenized and supposedly harmonious culture, certainly the richness of knowing many cultures is lost in such an approach. In this, the reader may also take away the message that despite one’s cultural origins, likeness to the white middle-class is what is valued (1999, para. 7).

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 159 Ultimately, although the series’ inclusion of these characters represents a nod to multiculturalism, “SVH”’s depiction are what Sims Bishop might characterize as “culturally homogenous” and “ignore the existence of any cultural specifics in the [minority] experience” (Harris, 2007, “Canon,” para. 2) and, as “Sweet Valley High” did with the establishment of its nearly all-white world, suggests that the white, upper-middle class existence is the norm. While, with its radically new design and narrative presentation, “SVH” would seem to challenge the literary mores of “Sweet Valley High,” the new series works to continue the reification of some of the old series’ more problematic ideologies related to sexuality and romance. Jessica’s first story arc, which continues across at least five volumes, sets this tone for the series. Known as a popular flirt in the “Sweet Valley High” novels, in “SVH,” Jessica’s reputation is reappraised and called into question. When she invites Will, a good-looking student from her history class, to her home on the pretense of lending him her class notes, she has hopes that “he wouldn’t accept the offer . . . just for her notes” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 58). He makes the first move, “pulling her close” as she stands to give him her notes and kisses her “deep[ly]” and “urgent[ly]” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 60). When “Will’s hand [finds] its way to the zipper at the back of her dress,” Jessica stops him, suggesting that the two take their time, as they have the entirety of their senior year to become intimate (Pascal, 1999a, p. 60). Unaware that Will has a serious girlfriend, when Jessica discovers his infidelity, she insults him in front of a group of girls, and Will’s girlfriend, Melissa, overhears and takes offense. Vowing that the “girl who had somehow gotten herself between them . . . was going to pay” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 93), Melissa launches a campaign against Jessica, encouraging Will to spread rumors that she is “easy” and spreading a few, herself. Soon, Jessica is the target of suggestive comments from boys, and the scorn of her female classmates. A note reading “Jessica Wakefield is a slut” (Pascal, 1999b, p. 24) appears on a classroom blackboard, causing Jessica to burst into tears and run from the room. The series uses this conflict for dramatic purposes, establishing Melissa as the series villain and Jessica as its put-upon heroine. While “SVH” seems to have taken a cue from “Sweet Valley High” in its construction of this arc (“Sweet Valley High” volume 10, Wrong Kind of Girl, finds secondary character Annie Whitman in a position similar to Jessica’s as she struggles to overcome her “easy” reputation and in “Sweet Valley High” volume 2, Secrets, a teacher is accused of having an affair with a student and a message to that extent is anonymously written on a classroom chalkboard), it doesn’t resolve this conflict so easily and Jessica struggles with her new reputation for several volumes of the new series. Although “SVH” is more sympathetic to Jessica’s plight than “Sweet Valley High” was to Annie Whitman’s (in “Sweet Valley High,” volume 10, Wrong Kind of Girl, Annie attempts suicide after Jessica and the cheerleading squad reject her on the grounds her bad reputation will taint the team; however, as she lies in a coma, Jessica’s promise that she will be added to the team causes

160 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Annie to waken and mend her “easy” ways), the new series is more explicit and even judgmental in its terminology; Jessica’s classmates call her “slut” and spread stories about her that, in her estimation, are worse than mere namecalling. In one of her first-person “confessions,” Jessica reveals that “the things they’re saying about me are a lot worse” than just being called “slut”: “[t]hey’re the kinds of things that make people ask to hear the story again, that make people repeat the story and add to it and blow it up until it’s so big, no one can forget” (Pascal, 1999c, n.p.). Elizabeth’s ex-boyfriend Todd Wilkins relates one of these overblown stories to Jessica. When she asks him why her classmates have branded her a “slut,” Todd answers: “[I]f you hit on one girl’s boyfriend and sleep with another guy that same night, what do you think people are going to call you?” (Pascal, 1999b, p. 173, emphasis in original). In comparison to Wrong Kind of Girl’s use of euphemism to suggest Annie’s promiscuity (she “fall[s] deeply in love with one guy after another, but each deep love never last[s] more than a night or two” [William, 1984f, p. 7]), “SVH” is more specific, outlining the behavior that, in Todd’s estimation, merits attention. While “SVH” makes it clear that Jessica has been wrongly accused of promiscuity—it is Will who failed to reveal his relationship status and who essentially made “the first move”—it does call Jessica’s familiar, flirty behavior into question and renders her “Sweet Valley High” popularity in different terms. When Melissa asks Will if he and Jessica kissed, Will evades the question, and cites Jessica’s popularity as evidence of her poor character: “‘The girl’s a troublemaker . . . She’s been out with practically every guy on the football team. They all had stories to tell about her,’ [Will said]” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 129). Indeed, during the junior year depicted in “Sweet Valley High,” Jessica had dated her share of football players; in volume 4, Power Play, she admits mischievously that while she hadn’t dated the entire football team, she also hadn’t “dated a single boy who isn’t on the first string” (William, 1983c, p. 133), and she—and the rest of the school—consider it a compliment when the school football team’s offensive line and backfield “paraded through the lunchroom carrying a big banner” in support of Jessica’s candidacy for the title of Miss Sweet Valley High (William, 1983c, p. 139). Ironically, it is Annie Whitman who emerges as one of Jessica’s sole defenders. When Tia asks Annie if “Jessica did all the things they’re saying she did,” Annie replies, “Jessica’s dated a lot, and it’s not like competition ever stopped her from going after a guy . . . But she’s not a slut” (Pascal, 1999b, p. 54). While “Sweet Valley High”’s solution to Annie Whitman’s dilemma in Wrong Kind of Girl is both trite and pat and ultimately serves to punish Annie

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 161 for her promiscuity, “SVH”’s depiction of Jessica’s similar struggle, although more ambiguous, blames Jessica for her passion, suggesting that, like Annie, if she would “tone it down,” she might avoid such trouble. After Melissa and her friends make fun of Jessica’s short skirts and Jessica begins to feel as if “every guy in school was leering at her legs and every girl was sneering at them,” she makes an effort to dress more conservatively, donning an outfit she considers “pretty nerdy” and that “could have been lifted from Elizabeth’s wardrobe” (Pascal, 1999b, pp. 21, 60). Jessica recognizes the power of appearance; in another of her first-person “confessions,” she recognizes that “everybody” judges others based on appearance and wonders “how people see [her] when they meet [her]” (Pascal, 1999b, n.p.). Jessica continues: For practically the first time in my life, my high school isn’t fi lled with people who’ve known me since my idea of stimulating entertainment was eating Play Doh . . . I’ve always been popular. And my image has always been important to me because I know how important first impressions are. But when people meet me, do they see me as a cool person . . . or do they just see me as this dumb blonde who’s popular because she follows the crowd? (Pascal, 1999b, n.p.) Unlike Annie, who, presumably, has to work on changing her behavior and re-think the clothing choices that seem to underscore her reputation (one volume of “Sweet Valley High” describes a dress Annie wears as “short enough to make her a girl watcher’s delight” [William, 1984e, p. 131]), Jessica has to reconsider her appearance—the image that has “always been so important to” her—to earn back her respect. In one of her fi rst-person confessions, Jessica reappraises her “old” behavior and habits: I used to love being a beautiful blonde . . . It got me a lot of attention, especially from guys. But there’s a downside to looking that way that I never realized before. One wrong word whispered in the right ears and it all turns against you. What used to be sexy is cheap. The short, tight clothes aren’t flirtatious—they’re slutty. The label of “party girl” takes on a whole different meaning. One I’d rather not mention . . . I’ve always accepted dates from practically anyone who asked. I mean, how are you supposed to find the one if you don’t go out with lots of people? But if I had known how easily that could turn on me, I never would have done it (Pascal, 1999c, n.p., emphasis in original). In ironically parallel storylines, each series emphasizes what Jessica calls “first impressions” or “image,” noting, as Jessica does, that although “People always say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover,” “everyone” does it, and issues a warning to readers that a bad reputation cannot always be fi xed by “good hair and fab outfit” (Pascal, 1999b, n.p.); in fact, the wrong outfit might

162 • Reading the Adolescent Romance just reinforce the reputation as the flirtatiously “short, tight clothes” become “slutty” rather than “sexy”. As in “Sweet Valley High,” in “SVH” the female characters are granted what Willinsky and Hunniford have called the “power to attract attention” (1993, p. 101); although it mocks “Sweet Valley High”’s stock descriptions of Elizabeth and Jessica, the new series emphasizes the male gaze on the stillgorgeous twin protagonists and suggests that the feminine object of the gaze is powerful only as she attracts its attention. “SVH”’s fi rst narrative glimpse of Elizabeth and Jessica is through the eyes of Conner, who spies the twins walking down one of Sweet Valley High School’s main hallways. “Oh, man,” he murmured, getting out of their way. They were too much, really. He almost wanted to laugh. A matched set of perfect-looking aquaeyed blondes, one in sunny yellow and the other in baby blue. Twins. Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, he thought bleakly. Poster girls for Sweet Valley High (Pascal, 1999a, pp. 1–2, italics in original). Although, through Conner’s eyes, the trope of the beautiful, blonde twins (“poster girls for Sweet Valley High”) becomes ironic and cliché, the girls’ “perfect” looks do not escape notice. While he “want[s] to riff on the absurdity of the Barbie twins and the evil their kind represented to high schools all over the country,” Elizabeth (whom he initially dubs “Barbie Two”) “was proving surprisingly hard to mock” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 86). After he reads and is impressed by her essay, Conner finds that he can’t help but “consider the fact that she was actually very pretty” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 87). Unaware that Conner has been admiring her, as Elizabeth admits to herself that she is developing a crush on him, she strives to attract his attention. Although she acknowledges that “Conner’s opinions of her should not factor into her wardrobe decisions” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 138), she dresses in an uncharacteristically “sophisticated and sexy” ensemble to attend a school dance, nixing an initial plan to wear a “yellow minidress” because “Conner McDermott would think she was a dork” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 139) and allowing that, if Conner were to show up at the dance, “It wouldn’t hurt anyone if she looked drop-dead gorgeous” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 139). When she arrives at the dance and discovers that Conner is not in attendance, in spite of her friend’s pronouncement that she looks “gorgeous,” Elizabeth “suddenly feel[s] like it didn’t matter very much whether she looked gorgeous or not” (Pascal, 1999a, pp. 151–152). Without an audience—namely Conner— Elizabeth has no chance to exercise her “power of attraction.” The missed connection at the school dance becomes one of many bumps on Elizabeth and Conner’s road to relationship, a romance that follows a more literarily and generically traditional path than those depicted in “Sweet Valley High.” While, in “Sweet Valley High,” social pressures or lack of communication served as temporary barriers to romance, in “SVH,” the feelings between Elizabeth and Conner build as the characters play the aggressive and passive

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 163 male and female roles found more often in adult romance: Conner adopts the persona of the brusque and even cruel romantic hero while Elizabeth stands by as his devastated heroine and attempts to decode his actions. Conner’s behavior is representative of what Tania Modleski calls one of the primary “enigmas” the adult romance: “Why does [the hero] constantly mock the heroine? Why is he so often angry at her?” (1992, p. 24). Elizabeth’s first formal interaction with Conner articulates this enigma. When, on the first day of their shared creative writing class, Conner mocks Elizabeth’s response to the teacher’s discussion prompt, suggesting scornfully that Elizabeth “probably writes flowery prose about how getting her first zit was a rite of passage,” Elizabeth is humiliated, and “dr[aws] in a sharp breath. Who was this guy? Why was he attacking her like this? What gave him the right to come into her school and make fun of her?” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 20). Modleski argues that the answers to Elizabeth’s questions lie in the romance formula itself, which encourages readers to construct a fantasy that allows them to attribute the hero’s expressions of hostility to his inability to admit, perhaps even to himself, how much the sight of the [heroine] . . . inflames his passion and rouses his admiration. Male brutality comes to be seen as a manifestation not of contempt but of love (1992, p. 26). Conner’s first-person “confessions” and his thoughts—as revealed in the third-person narrative—prove representative of Modleski’s argument. After he performs a song he has written about Elizabeth at an open mic night (“You catch a glimpse of sun-streaked hair/Flashing ’cross the room/She’s hotter ’n Santa Ana winds/Cool as iced perfume” [Pascal, 1999c, p. 144]), he drives her home, and, as the two ride together, “the sexual tension in the car [becomes] so heavy, he could feel it pressing on every inch of his body” (Pascal, 1999c, p. 156). Although he wants to kiss her, he stops himself: He realized he couldn’t do it—not to Elizabeth. He knew that if he kissed her, he might not want to stop. Eventually it would just end the same way it had with Maria, and he couldn’t have that (Pascal, 1999c, pp. 156–157). Like the heroes Modleski describes, Conner withholds affection—even replacing it with derision—in an attempt to protect Elizabeth; his rudeness is, as Modleski writes, a “manifestation not of contempt but of love” (1992, p. 26). Both Elizabeth’s active, albeit weak, response to and passive acceptance of Conner’s disdain allow her to play the role of what Modleski identifies as the traditional romance heroine. The innocence and artlessness Modleski describes as characteristic of the romantic heroine is revealed and underscored as Elizabeth pronounces her hatred for Conner and participates in what Modleski describes as the “disappearing act” romances construct to channel feminine anger. Although she is attracted to him, after several encounters with Conner,

164 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Elizabeth concludes that the hatred she normally reserved “for Nazis and telemarketers” could be applied to Conner, “the most obnoxious guy on the planet” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 52). Per the adult romance formula, Elizabeth’s “expressions of . . . aversion have effects contrary to what she intends . . . they excite the hero rather than alienate him” (Modleski, 1992, p. 35). When she confronts him after he abruptly and rudely ends a relationship with one of her friends, Elizabeth’s anger takes Conner “off guard”; although he knows he should be “completely turned off” by her outburst, the narrative reveals that Elizabeth’s “little self-righteous tirade had completely turned him on” (Pascal, 1999c, p. 117). Although Elizabeth reluctantly admits to an attraction to Conner, this attraction is tempered by her anger; this combination of emotions is rendered as what Modleski describes as a characteristic self-delusion that allows the romantic heroine (in this case, Elizabeth) to “act inconsistently, thus presenting herself as a charming enigma without being suspected of deliberately trying to stir up his interest” (1992, pp. 35–36) the way, in Janice Radway’s (1984) terms, a “failed” romantic heroine might. Thus, the heroine becomes the object rather than the subject of the romance; as her frustrated reactions to his behavior serve to draw him closer rather than repel him and, in essence, serve the purpose of achieving the goal of romance she will not admit to herself. The series emphasizes the desirability of such objectification, describing Conner’s secret longings for Elizabeth. As he fantasizes about her, he calls up images of her that emphasize her position as an unaware object of his romantic gaze: He imagines her asleep in bed, “lying there, her long legs deeply tan against the yellow sheets, her blond hair spread across the pillow” and remembers surprising a baby-doll pajamaclad Elizabeth one night in the kitchen, causing her to drop the glass she was holding and “could still see her stooping to pick up the broken pieces, not realizing what a view he was getting until it was too late” (Pascal, 1999c, pp. 157–158). Her lack of awareness of this surveillance (or fantasy of surveillance) heightens his attraction and positions her as the ultimate of romantic objects. Here, as in Jessica’s story arc, the novels emphasize artlessness, suggesting that while the heroine’s deliberate attempt to attract a member of the opposite sex is suspect, the heroine must also be aware not only of her potential to inadvertently attract but also of the dangerous potential male attraction holds. As Willinsky and Hunniford write: [The] power to attract attention is, in effect, to risk physical abuse. The adolescent reader must learn that she is especially vulnerable, both physically and morally, in the one area made to seem necessary in her success in the world (1993, p. 101). Jessica’s experience at the school dance exemplifies Willinsky and Hunniford’s claim. When she dresses for the event, Jessica chooses “a short red dress with a zipper that went almost from the top to the bottom” and decides that, in this dress, she “feel[s] sexy” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 140). The dress, unlike

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 165 Elizabeth’s sexy and sophisticated ensemble, is described as “extremely short” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 147), and, when she arrives at the dance, she discovers that her “sexy” look is being misinterpreted: “Jessica Wakefield! Nice zipper!” The remark had come from a guy Jessica had never seen before. “Easy access!” another guy said snidely . . . She passed a tall brunet . . . [and] slowed down to give him a chance to ask her to dance. But all the guy did was jab his friend in the ribs and whisper something (Pascal, 1999a, p. 149). Jessica’s plan to have fun at the dance—“She’d dance with a whole bunch of different guys—all and any who asked. Dancing always made her feel better” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 140)—and hold her head high, in spite of Will’s brush off will, in her mind, be made possible by the dress. Jessica thinks, “The way she looked in this dress, she hoped Will would take a good, long eyeful and deeply regret what he was missing” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 140). Unfortunately, it is not Will who “take[s] a good, long eyeful” and feels subsequent regret; strange boys eye Jessica and, in light of the rumors that followed her dalliance with Will, interpret her zippered dress as an invitation. Elizabeth, who has also taken pains to don a sophisticatedly “sexy” outfit for the dance, but who, before entering the school gym where the dance is held, performs an “outfit check” and notes that her “miniskirt is falling a little low on her hips” and that “the buttons of her blouse [are] fastened” (Pascal, 1999a, p. 150), tempers sexiness with the restraint “sophistication” seems to imply here, leading her friends to compliment her style and heading off unwanted advances from boys. “SVH”’s literary construction allows the new series to emphasize the male gaze in a way “Sweet Valley High” was unable to; the content of the male characters’ thoughts and reactions as revealed through first-person interludes emphasizes the theme of surveillance the old series implies. “SVH” takes Ann Snitow’s observation regarding Harlequin romances for women further; Harlequins, Snitow writes, revitalize daily routines by insisting that a woman combing her hair, a woman reaching up to put a plate on a high shelf (so that her knees show beneath her hem, if only there were a viewer), a woman doing what women do all day, is in a constant state of potential sexuality. You never can tell when you may be seen and being seen is a precious opportunity (1979, p. 145). In “SVH,” readers can tell when the characters “may be seen;” the novels depict the gaze of the male characters on the female, describing (as above) Conner’s fantasy of watching Elizabeth sleep and explaining Will’s devotion to his girlfriend Melissa by demonstrating how his observation of her convinced him that she needed him more than Jessica might.

166 • Reading the Adolescent Romance Will remembers the first night following the earthquake, when Melissa’s family stayed at his family’s house and, unable to fall asleep himself, Will watched Melissa sleeping: She looked so small and vulnerable, wearing an old pair of my pajamas that she was practically swimming in. I stared at her slender little hands latching like claws onto me, and I thought how fragile she was . . . I knew, in such a deep-down way that I didn’t even need to spell it out to myself. I could never leave her (Pascal, 1999b, n.p.). Here, Melissa’s surveillance becomes what Snitow calls a “precious opportunity”; Will’s vision of his “fragile,” “small and vulnerable” girlfriend convinces him that he could “never leave her.” While Will’s observation of Melissa confirms his love for her, Conner’s own monitoring of Elizabeth causes him to grow more aware of his feelings: Elizabeth just came home, slammed the door to her room, picked up the phone, and slammed it down again. I wonder what she’s so freaked out about. I can’t believe she stayed out this late on a school night. I can’t believe I care (Pascal, 1999c, n.p.). Conner’s note that Elizabeth has stayed out uncharacteristically late (“I can’t believe she stayed out this late”) suggests a pattern of surveillance and casual accounting of her actions. That these glimpses of her “flashing ’cross the room”—in the words of the song he wrote that intimates his love for her— might in themselves be “hotter ’n Santa Ana winds” or “cool as iced perfume” (Pascal, 1999c, p. 144), again emphasizes the opportunity for romance that “being seen” affords. That these passages are presented as fi rst-person narratives invites the (presumably female) reader to participate in this surveillance, an activity that aligns her with the male character and his gaze and calls attention to the incongruous details—“sensible” clothing, a pair of ill-fitting pajamas—that attract his interest. Conner’s ironic disappointment that Elizabeth wears “sensible things like well-fitting jeans and V-necked T-shirts” that only call attention to her natural beauty serves as one example of such incongruity. This revelation—that Conner finds Elizabeth as attractive in “sensible” (but well-fitting and V-necked) attire serves the dual purpose of discouraging the overt sexual self-presentation the novels depict as dangerous while suggesting, as Snitow does, that, in the world of “SVH,” female characters are always objects of the male gaze.

After Senior Year The final novel in the “SVH” series had a lot of work to do. As the series described the Wakefield twins’ entire senior year—through graduation—“SVH” had to

The “New” Sweet Valley High • 167 construct its conclusion so that it would be read as continuous with the “Sweet Valley University” (1993–2000) and “Elizabeth” (2001) series that had already been written. This meant that the new series had to, to some degree, conform to the standards of a previously written serial text set in the contemporary text’s fictional future. Thus, the last volume of “SVH” had to position the twins to enter Sweet Valley University in the fall, suggest Elizabeth and Todd’s romantic reunification, and spirit away the characters introduced in “SVH”—who wouldn’t be appearing in “Sweet Valley University”—to other colleges and locations. That “SVH” emerged as what would become the most contemporary installment of a series that had, with “Elizabeth” (a six-volume mini-series describing Elizabeth’s time abroad during college), effectively concluded likely limited the possibility for this series to seriously challenge the mores already established in the past and future series universe. Consequently, series stars Elizabeth and Jessica had to retain their characteristic dichotomous personalities and, perhaps more relevant to the romantic aspect of the series, had to retain their virginities (Jessica loses her virginity after she hastily marries in the second volume of the “Sweet Valley University” series and Elizabeth contemplates this commitment throughout much of “SVU”). Accordingly, the promise made in the paratextual advertisements for “SVH”—that the new series would be dramatically different and have a “lot of attitude”—had to be tempered for continuity purposes. Given “SVH”’s—and the other Sweet Valley high school and college series’—status as popular adolescent romance, a genre that became known for its conservatism with its rise in the 1980s, there existed little possibility that even a re-designed and re-structured adolescent Sweet Valley series would sharply challenge the generic status quo. As Pam Gilbert has written of the dynamism of adolescent romance as it was constructed across a series of Australian novels between 1988 and 1990, although romance fiction has become more “flexible . . . in its response to contemporary versions of teenage femininity and heterosexual relationships,” because the “generic pattern” from which such novels are extracted “draws so strongly upon romantic discourses for its parameters of possibility, the narrative sequences constructed in this framework are necessarily limited in the possibilities of gendered subjectivity they can represent” (1993, pp. 83, 85). Although “SVH” did introduce a gay character in the form of classmate Andy Marsden and even depicted his establishment of a successful romantic relationship, the series cast this romance—as it did its characters of color—in assimilationist terms, allowing this character and his boyfriend to exist as symbols of what Cart and Jenkins (2006) call “homosexual visibility” rather than allowing them opportunity to comment on the heterosexual romance regime the series continued to uphold. In light of Linda K. Christian-Smith’s assertion that young adult romance novels convey “lessons” about sexuality, one of which is that “the proper channel [for feminine sexuality] is heterosexual romance” (1990, p. 41), the inclusion of two gay male characters—who, arguably and in Christian-Smith’s terms, may

168 • Reading the Adolescent Romance channel their sexuality however they wish—operates to further the adolescent romance novel’s sexually conservative ideology. Kathleen Chamberlain’s discussion of the various revisions and incarnations of the Nancy Drew series suggests a second rationale for the Sweet Valley series’ commitment to the ethics and conventions it established with its inception in 1983. Arguing that the success of the Nancy Drew series lies in its promise that readers, like Nancy, can “have their cake and eat it, too,” that one can remain “personally liberated” even as she continues to adhere to “gender and class stereotypes,” Chamberlain argues that to revise the series to suggest otherwise would “destroy the quiddity of the series, for it is precisely such contradictions that are the core of Nancy’s appeal and that offer the clearest insights into our culture” (Chamberlain, 1994, p. 1). Similarly, to revise the existing Sweet Valley series or to introduce new installments within the already created frame of Sweet Valley reference that challenge the admittedly romance-centric and conservative assumptions on which the series is built would be akin to destroying its essential nature. In the case of the Sweet Valley conglomerate, the “essential nature” is reflected in the novels’ maintenance of an unresolvably bifurcated womanhood, a gendered schizophrenia with which women arguably continue to struggle.

Chapter Six The Legacy of “Sweet Valley High”

When considered against the political landscape of the Reagan era and within the context of young adult literary publishing in the 1980s, the publication and success of the “Sweet Valley High” series was inevitable. Similar in content and tone to the already popular stand-alone adolescent romance novels produced in mass market form by large publishing houses, Pascal’s series espoused a conservative, pro-family ideology that affirmed a larger social and political status quo, and, with its targeted marketing and serial structure, capitalized on the emerging consumer power of the adolescent. As a literary artifact of popular culture, “Sweet Valley High” operated as an example of the type of popular text Elizabeth Long (1985), John Fiske (1989) and Stuart Hall (1996) describe: The novels were written to appeal to a distinct segment of the adolescent audience—one that had been already been identified and affi liated with popular romance novels—and, like the publishers’ popular romance lines that preceded the series, seemed to connect with what Hall calls the “local hopes and local aspirations” and the “pleasures, the memories, the traditions of the people” (1996, p. 469), particularly as readers of the series used the novels as vehicles for their own social fantasies and to particularize their dreams of the future. The “Sweet Valley High” novels themselves, as they became associated with the pleasures and traditions Hall names, and as they formed part of what Margaret J. Finders calls young readers’ “literate underlife” (1997), served as not only as leisure reading, but also as one marker of readers’ social identities. Although they depicted the lives of characters years older than the readers themselves, the Sweet Valley series relied on familiar conventions and understood representations of older adolescent and high school life, techniques that made the fictional world the novels described seem both accessible and glamorous and allowed the series to operate as aspirational and fantastic.

169

170 • Reading the Adolescent Romance The New “Sweet Valley High” With the Sweet Valley empire’s conclusion in 2003, “Sweet Valley High” seemed destined to remain in the past, its influence felt in the turn-of-thetwenty-first century emergence of adolescent “chick lit” series like “Gossip Girl,” “The A-List,” and “The Clique.” When, however, in 2008, series creator Francine Pascal announced that the original “Sweet Valley High” series would be revised and re-issued, it was hard to imagine how the series might compete with—or even exist among—the distinctly more sophisticated girls’ series enjoying popularity in the adolescent literary world. Because, as Fiske (1989) has argued, a popular text’s popularity is contingent on its readers’ judgment of the text’s literal relevance and social resonance, its popularity is also a factor of its congruence with the social conditions existing outside the text. The original “Sweet Valley High” novels, conceived of during and reflective of a distinct period in contemporary history and created to speak to a youth audience that may now be differently understood, would seem, in this light, impossible to resurrect. Indeed, although “updated,” the re-released series works to underscore its own historicity, as the revised novels draw attention to what now seems like the series’ quaint romantic sensibilities. Set in the privileged and nearly all-white world of fictional Sweet Valley, California, the original “Sweet Valley High” novels confi ned their action to the narrow and domestic spheres of the home and the school. In a fictional world that Pascal suggested operated as “a microcosm of the real world” (2003, n.p.), the early Sweet Valley books celebrated the nuclear family, heterosexual romance and a traditional model of femininity described as existing within a narrow continuum of feminine possibility. Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield—as they represented what Pascal termed the “good and bad sides of one person” (n.a., 2008. “About the Author”)—articulated the series’ parameters of ideal young womanhood. As the novels described its main characters’ romantic relationships, the series espoused an ideology of romance that emphasized female beauty, passivity and chastity while it characterized masculinity in terms that suggested both its desirability and its danger. While critics of the adolescent romance have argued that the narrow romantic script “Sweet Valley High”—and its contemporary romance series sisters—authors for its characters delineates narrow roles for women both within and outside of heterosexual relationship, that the series’ structure emphasized the temporary nature of even its primary characters’ romances suggests a modicum of subversion. If, as Kutzer (1986) argues, this slight nod to realism ultimately serves to encourage readers to forestall intimacy, as it implies that “true love”—and its formal articulation within the bounds of heterosexual marriage—exists in the future, this moment of subversion may be effectively erased. Although its serial structure distinguished it from its initial competitors and allowed for these moments of potential subversion, the original “Sweet Valley High” novels, as romance novels that offered

The Legacy of “Sweet Valley High” • 171 examples of successful and unsuccessful relations, were ultimately invested in upholding a model of heterosexual relationship that closely resembled one that critics decried for its narrowness and conservatism. The 2008 revision of Double Love, as it depicts the establishment of the series’ model relationship—the monogamous romance Elizabeth Wakefield and her boyfriend Todd Wilkins enjoy—exemplifies “Sweet Valley High”’s continued investment in the romantic ideologies that characterized the novel’s publication in 1983. As in the original novel, the updated Double Love describes Elizabeth and Jessica’s mutual interest in good-looking basketball star Todd Wilkins (described in the 1983 edition as “one of the cutest boys at Sweet Valley High” [William, 1983a, p. 4], in the 2008 edition, he is “Tall, dark, and yum” [Pascal, 2008a, p. 4]) as well as Jessica’s attempts to draw his attention away from her sister. After Jessica goes on a rather lukewarm date with Todd and her suspicions that he prefers her sister are confirmed, Jessica tells Elizabeth that Todd tried to take advantage of her, knowing that, by ruining his “nice guy” reputation with her sister, she can ensure that Elizabeth won’t claim the romantic prize she wanted for herself. In the 1983 edition, Jessica musters up tears and cries to her sister The rat tried just about everything. The horrible thing was that I could hardly make him stop. I had to beg him and beg him to please stop . . . [O]h Liz, it was awful. He just wouldn’t stop. His hands! Oh, God, they were everywhere (William, 1983a, p. 129). In the 2008 edition, Jessica is more explicit, and, after she tells her sister “He practically raped me,” modifies her story: Well, I mean, he didn’t rape me . . . But he tried just about everything else. No matter how many times I told him to stop or that I wanted to go home. He was just . . . he was all over me (Pascal, 2008a, p. 150). The 2008 edition is notable for its use of the term “rape,” as well as for Jessica’s later elaboration of her lie. Explaining that she initially acquiesced to his advances because she “like[s] to make out with a hot guy as much as the next girl,” Jessica continues [I]t was fine for a little while, but then all of a sudden he was shoving his hand, like, under my bra and trying to go up my dress and he didn’t even . . . he didn’t even, like, ask me if it was okay or anything (Pascal, 2008a, p. 151). While the new version of the novel would seem to allow one of its heroines to express sexual desire (“[I] like to make out with a hot guy as much as the next girl”), it imposes limitations on this expression—under the bra and up the

172 • Reading the Adolescent Romance dress are clear no-no’s—and not only underscores the role of sexual policewoman its encourages for its female heroines (“he didn’t even, like, ask me if it was okay”), it also continues the characterization of its masculine characters in terms of their potential for sexual aggression. Perhaps most problematic is the new edition’s casual use of the word “rape,” a term it avoids in 1983 and, although it is invested with arguably more particular and political nuances in 2008, fails to interrogate. As “Sweet Valley High” advanced what Linda Christian-Smith (1990) has called “the code of beauty”—an aspect of feminine subjectivity encouraged by adolescent romance novels in which beautification and its attendant rituals are depicted as both constitutive of femininity and necessary prerequisites for romantic relationship—the original novels attended to the commodity consumption of its characters, describing trips to the shopping mall, makeovers, and outfits carefully assembled for major events. In the 1983 edition of Double Love, the Wakefield twins don party dresses—Elizabeth’s “white strapless dress [is] perfect with her tanned skin and blond hair” while Jessica’s “blue dress with its delicate straps and full skirt showed off her slim body and gorgeous legs” (William, 1983a, pp. 121, 122)—and an ensemble involving a “tuxedo shirt,” matching pants and bow tie becomes a key player in an intentional drama of mistaken identity. The first pages of each installment of the original series typically refer not only to the Wakefield twins’ natural blonde beauty, but also to their characteristic styles of dress, describing, for example, Jessica’s “bright blue, skin-hugging miniskirt and matching tights” and comparing these to Elizabeth’s more conservative “wheat-colored pants and tan, striped shirt” and citing these differences as evidence of the twins’ opposing personalities (William, 1983b, p. 4). The original novels make few references to brand names, although they are attentive to what were, at the time of publication, contemporary trends, referring to, for example, Jessica’s “New Wave clothes” or a friend’s “punky” haircut. In the original Sweet Valley novels, as Christian-Smith argues of adolescent romance novels in general, the characters adorn themselves to attract boys and consider young men a “second mirror” on which to “test the effects of their beauty efforts” (1990, p. 51). As such, the Sweet Valley novels emphasize the effects of the clothing the characters choose, rather than the clothing itself. In comparison to the original series and in likely response to the contemporary (2000s) adolescent series that incorporate this trope, the updated Sweet Valley novels include references to specific brand names and popular cultural products using these, as “Gossip Girl” or “The Clique” do, to advance characterization and particularize the setting. This use of brand names— what Deirdre F. Baker, in her critique of adolescent “chick lit,” calls the “other language of American culture”—has “precise significance and is used precisely—assuming the reader/consumer knows the reference” (2004, pp. 683, 684). In the new “Sweet Valley High” novels, this language is used to further distinguish Elizabeth and Jessica from one another as well as to distinguish

The Legacy of “Sweet Valley High” • 173 their upper-middle-class status from that of their wealthy friends Lila Fowler and Bruce Patman. Consequently, in the 2008 edition of Double Love, a skirt from J. Crew and not an anonymous “tuxedo shirt,” bow tie and matching pants becomes the central player in the mistaken identity drama that concludes the novel. That the J. Crew skirt becomes emblematic of Elizabeth’s preppy style and, by extension, her more conservative personality, serves as an example of one way the new “Sweet Valley High” series takes advantage of the connotative power of brand names to enhance characterization. The updated second novel’s mention of Jessica’s “Hawaiian print Roxy dress”—an item of clothing created and sold by the designer and outlet that, according to its website, produces “clothes and accessories for girls who love surf, snowboard, music and fashion (Roxy, 2010)—and her friend Lila’s “Louis Vuitton backpack” (Pascal, 2008b, p. 1, p. 3)—a more expensive designer item that signifies Lila’s wealth—further exemplify this technique. The updated series’ references to name brands and cultural products have the unintended effect of skewing the novels’ romantic focus, as they introduce an ideology of feminine consumption more characteristic of contemporary chick lit than of romance. While romance remains the focus of the updated “Sweet Valley High” series, Naomi Johnson has observed that “the overriding focus [of adolescent chick lit] is the process of continuous consumption, mostly of expensive products and services, to strive for romantic success and competitive edge against other girls” (Johnson, 2010, “Romantic Fiction,” para. 3). Quoting Christian-Smith, Johnson concludes, “[Adolescent] heroines no longer . . . become women through romance, they now become empowered and feminine through consumption” (Johnson, 2010, “Romantic Fiction,” para. 3). Because, even in the new “Sweet Valley High” novels, romantic competition is not rendered in these terms, the series’ references to brand names become clunky and unnecessary additions to the narrative.

Reading and Re-Reading: Identity Work While the promotional announcement describing the return of the “Sweet Valley High” series suggested that the revised novels would “appeal to new readers as well as those adults nostalgic for their past and looking to rekindle their relationship with the Wakefield twins” (Delacorte Press, 2008), the strongest public reaction to the new series has come from adult re-readers of the series. These readers, writing in popular news columns and in web blogs, have responded with the most vehemence to what has become one of the most controversial “updates” to appear in the new novels: the editorial “downsizing” of the Wakefield twins from a “perfect size 6” to a “perfect size 4.” While Jessica Bennett’s brief review of the revised series for Newsweek notes only that the character Jessica “whin[es] about how fat and disgusting her ‘perfect size 4’ body is” (2008, para. 2), Nadra Kareem, writing for the blog “Racialicious,”

174 • Reading the Adolescent Romance and citing “the comments from visitors to [Racialicious as well as the blog Feministing] who say that the Sweet Valley series is to blame for their development of eating disorders,” wonders if we can “expect a new crop of girls to take up bingeing and purging after their initiation into the series, where Size 4 is now the standard of beauty?” (2008, para. 1, 2, 10). Interestingly, Monique “mo pie” van den Berg, writing for the body positive blog “Big Fat Deal,” contributes a less “indignant and infuriated” response (reactions van den Berg noted she entertained initially), arguing that Elizabeth and Jessica were always “perfect” in a way that I found it impossible to relate to, and the fact that their bodies were “perfect” was no small part of that. And beyond that, I think that the size change isn’t that they’re actually being made smaller, only that vanity sizing has come into play. Maybe size 4 is really the new size 6, and it’s not the Wakefield twins that have gotten smaller; it’s the numbers on the labels in their jeans (2008, para. 5). Vanity sizing or no, that all the adult critics at least mentioned this editorial “update” suggests that the series’ continued articulation and advancement of an ideal or “perfect” female body remains one of the more problematic aspects of the series. The adult readers’ responses to the updated series, when considered in concert with the remembered reading experiences of the former “Sweet Valley High” readers, as well as those contemporary readings of the series’ “antifans,” in equal parts demonstrate and interrogate one of Peter Hollindale’s observations about adult reading and re-reading of children’s or young people’s texts. Hollindale writes: The experience as an adult of re-reading a known and much-loved children’s book can be the literary equivalent of Troilus’s ordeal. Readers can actually feel betrayed. Short of that, they can certainly feel that they are not reading the same book. But they are reading the same prose sequence: it is not the text which has changed, but the reading event . . . The difference lies not in the text, but in the reader, and in the reader’s ability and readiness to locate the readings that the text makes available (2001, p. 84). The series’ anti-fans, contemporary re-readers of the original “Sweet Valley High” series, are, as Hollindale writes, reading the “same prose sequence” they had read as young people; however, as adults, their “ability and readiness” to “locate the readings that the text makes available” has perhaps changed. Stanley Fish (1980), who would disagree with Hollindale’s argument that the re-read text remains static, would describe this interpretive reform as evidence of readers’ re-situation within different interpretive communities and their application of different interpretive strategies. This communal

The Legacy of “Sweet Valley High” • 175 interpretive situation might inform the readers’ “readiness to locate” specific readings; whether the text is solely responsible for making these available is up for debate. The adult readers of the new series are, unlike the re-readers, responding to an edited text; they are not, as Hollindale describes re-readers, “reading the same prose sequence” they had read before. That their responses are similar to those of the adult re-readers of the original series lends more credibility to Fish’s theory of interpretive communities and assertion that these communities author texts rather than respond to them. The differences between the adult re-readings of the new and original texts and the Sweet Valley readers’ remembered experiences of reading the series reveal a difference in what Jauss (1970) might call the readers’ “horizons of expectations,” the sum total of the readers’ expectant attitudes towards the text as well as the social and historical contexts in which the text is read. As Jauss and others have argued, a reader’s horizon of expectations colors a reader’s reception and interpretation of a text; that this horizon is variable and dependent, in part, on a reader’s reading history and historical and flexible processes of meaning making, explains and even justifies the existence of such divergent readings. The adult re-readings of the new and original texts resemble the academic and critical readings of the series more closely than they do the Sweet Valley readers’ remembered pleasures. While the fallibility of the Sweet Valley readers’ memories might account for some of these interpretive differences, it is interesting to note the way these differences also suggest distinct and different readings associated with childhood and adulthood. Peter Hunt, in a noteworthy call for “childist” criticism, has observed the adult critic’s assumption that, as he or she espouses any number of textual interpretations that “accord the reader with various degrees of importance,” he or she is “dealing with [his or her] peers in a roughly equivalent culture,” an assumption, Hunt argues, that cannot be made when critiquing children’s literature, as the child reading subject of the text tends to be as created a figure as a literary interpretation (1984, p. 43). Perry Nodelman, too, describes the tendency for children’s literature and the adult critique of the same to “colonize the child” as adult critics, even as their attempt to expose what Nodelman suggests is the inevitably imperialist discursive content of children’s literature, “inhabit[s] the same discourse as they would be purporting to reveal and criticize” (1992, p. 34). The responses of the anti-fans and contemporary re-readers of the series, particularly as they suggest, as Kareem does, above, that the “Sweet Valley High” series might exert a dangerous influence on its young readers, exhibit just this critical tendency that Nodelman, following Edward Said, calls “orientalizing.” Reading on behalf of their younger selves or reading for contemporary young readers, the anti-fans and contemporary re-readers call attention to the aspects of the text academic and professional critics (who are also invested in reading on behalf of the child) find problematic as well. That the original “Sweet Valley High” readers associate these same problems with the novels only when they are asked if they would recommend

176 • Reading the Adolescent Romance the series to young readers today further evinces what Pam Gilbert might call a shift in the readers’ discursive orientations that, here, seems to take place as the readers—as adults—are encouraged to read on a young person’s behalf. Nodelman has suggested that children’s literary criticism, when enacted by adults who “purport to see and speak for children,” is not only an act of colonization, but also represents one of the ways adults seek to fi x childhood in an effort to define and empower adulthood . As Nodelman suggests that adults “need children to be childlike so that we can understand what maturity is—the opposite of being childlike” (1992, p. 32), he intimates the ironic association of adult identities with childhood. This definition of the self against the “other” is a process the adult anti-fans, re-readers and even the original “Sweet Valley High” readers participate in as they engage with the series. As they read on behalf of the youth audience they fear might be susceptible to what they identify as the series’ pernicious content, the anti-fans and the adult re-readers construct reading identities in opposition to the text (and, in the case of the adult re-readers, in opposition to their youthful reading selves). Similarly, as the original “Sweet Valley High” readers recall selecting and reading the series as young people, they constructed reading identities in opposition to the peers they considered “too young” for such a mature series. For each population, “Sweet Valley High” has become a kind of touchstone, around which adult and young readers assume interpretive positions, and through which fans and anti-fans assert ironically divergent identities.

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Index

Cherland, Meredith Rogers, 79, 80, 81, 91,111, 112 childist criticism, 127–128, 175 Christian-Smith, Linda K., 28, 29, 33–34,39, 41, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61–62, 64,65, 67, 68, 70, 79–80, 81, 82, 87–88, 89, 94, 112, 113, 116,167–168, 172, 173 Children without Childhood (Winn), 30 The Clique (series), 170, 172 Council on Interracial Books for Children, 33 Crash Landing!, 91 Currie, Dawn, 69, 70–71 Curtis, Erin, 129–130, 131, 132–134, 135, 136. See also “Forever Young Adult” (blog)

Adolescence, 8–9 adolescent literature. See young adult literature; junior novel; romance, young adult Aftershock, 139, 141, 144, 150–151, 153, 154, 156 All Night Long, 43–45, 51, 75, 86, 87, 88, 134 Alone in the Crowd, 66–72, 76, 99 “anti-fans,” 6, 125–127, 135, 136, 137, 174, 175, 176 Are We in Love?, 149 Bantam (publisher), 16 “Sweet Dreams,” 3, 17, 19, 20, 21–22, 57–58 Sweet Valley High, 21–22, 148 Benfer, Amy, 34, 35, 56, 63, 72, 73, 81, 82, 91, 113–114, 134 Beware the Wolfman, 148 Bias, Len, 47–48, 49, 50 “Big Fat Deal” (blog), 174 Bird, Elizabeth, 125, 126. See also “A Fuse #8 Production” (blog) brand names, 33, 172–173 Bruner, Jerome, 130 camp, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144. See also Sontag, Susan; Sweet Valley High (series), as camp Can’t Stay Away (SVH: Senior Year), 153,154, 155, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163,164, 165 Cart, Michael, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 29, 32,146, 148, 149, 150, 158, 167 Cawelti, John, 54–55, 56. See also genre; formula Chartier, Roger, 98, 108

“Dairi Burger, The” (blog), 126, 129, 131,133, 134, 136 Daly, Maureen, 10. See also Seventeenth Summer Dance of Death, 148 Dangerous Love, 90, 115 Dear Sister, 81–82, 88 Dell (publisher), 15, 17 Disappearance of Childhood, The (Postman), 30 Don’t Go Home with John, 149 Double Jeopardy, 148 Double Love (1983), 3, 23, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46–47, 51, 72, 73, 74, 75–76, 77–79, 83, 85, 86, 87, 89–90, 98, 133–134, 140, 142, 171–173 Double Love (2008), 171–173 Dresang, Eliza, 139, 145, 151–152, 153, 155, 157. See also “Radical Change”

185

186 • Index Eagleton, Terry, 28–29, 102 Earthquake, 139, 140–144, 152, 154 Elizabeth (series), 167 Evil Twin, The, 148 Falling for Lucas, 141 “Fear Street” (Stine), 145, 146 Finders, Margaret J., 107, 119, 169 Fish, Stanley, 102, 104, 105, 108, 116, 117,127, 174, 175. See also “interpretive communities” Fiske, John, 2–3, 5, 169, 170 “Forever Young Adult” (blog), 126, 129,132, 133–135 formula, 17, 18, 23, 53, 54–58, 66–67,120–121, 163–164 From Romance to Realism: 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature (Cart), 148 Frye, Northrup, 54, 116 “Fuse #8 Production, A” (blog), 126 genre, 23, 53, 54–57, 62, 115–116, 145–147, 148 Get A Clue (SVH: Senior Year), 158 Gilbert, Pam with Sandra Taylor, 59, 63, 64 single authorship, 59, 63, 65,66–68, 70, 88, 122–123, 167, 176 Gossip Girl (book series), 172 Gray, Jonathan, 6, 126, 127, 131 Hall, G. Stanley, 8 Hall, Stuart, 2, 3, 5, 169 Hand-Me-Down Kid, The (Pascal), 21 Hangin’ Out with Cici (Pascal), 21 Hardwick, Robin, 127, 129, 131, 132, 133,134. See also “The Dairi Burger” (blog) Heart Breaker, 60–63, 74, 75, 76, 89 Heart Has its Reasons: Young Adult Literature with Gay/Lesbian/Queer Content, 1969–2004, The (Cart and Jenkins), 14, 148, 149 Hollindale, Peter, 27–28, 45, 47, 174–175 “horizon of expectations,” 102, 103– 105,175 Hunniford, R. Mark, 35, 38, 42, 43, 44, 55–56, 57, 80, 86–87, 91, 94, 95, 112–113, 116, 153, 162, 164 Hunt, Peter, 127, 175. See also childist criticism

“interpretive communities,” 102, 103–105,107–108, 117–118, 127, 130–131, 174–176 Interracial Books for Children Bulletin, 17–18, 29, 41 Jauss, Hans Robert, 102, 103–105, 107, 109, 175. See also “horizon of expectations” Jenkins, Christine, 14, 148, 149, 167 Jones, Patrick, 106, 146, 147 junior novel, 10–13. See also young adult literature “Just Say No,” 49–50 Kareem, Nadra, 173–174, 175 “kidlitosphere,” 125, 126–127 Kiss of a Killer, 148 Killer on Board, 142 Kotrla, Bowie, 145, 151–152 Kutzer, M. Daphne, 18–19, 33–34, 36, 57–58, 59, 61, 72, 76, 90, 91, 170 Kuznets, Lois, 10, 18, 33, 57–58, 66–67 Last Wish, 140, 154 Lila’s New Flame, 142 Long, Elizabeth, 2–3, 5, 169 Lundin, Anne, 103–104 Miss Teen Sweet Valley, 149 Modleski, Tania, 55, 56, 82, 163–164 moral panic, 42, 47, 49–51 Mulvey, Laura, 83–85 Murray, Gail, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 32–33 Mussell, Kay, 55, 56, 57, 74, 75, 79 My First Love and Other Disasters (Pascal), 21 Night to Remember, A, 152 Nodelman, Perry, 103, 127–128, 175–176 Nowhere to Run, 35–40 On the Edge, 42, 47–51, 141 Out of Control, 37–38 Out of Reach, 149 Palladino, Grace, 8–9 Pascal, Francine, 21 young adult novels: Hand-Me-Down Kid, The, 21 Hangin’ Out with Cici, 21 My First Love and Other Disasters, 21 soap opera scripts: The Young Marrieds, 21

Index • 187 Sweet Valley High, 21–23, 41, 47, 48, 51, 73, 141, 170 Pecora, Norma, 23, 34, 54 Perfect Summer, 1 Pike, Christopher, 145, 146 popular literature, 1–3, 15–20 Postman, Neil, 30–31, 32 Playing with Fire, 76, 88, 172 Power Play, 64–66, 69, 70, 71–72, 74, 132–133, 160 Promises, 38, 40, 45–46 “Racialicious” (blog), 173–174 Racing Hearts, 85–86, 161 Radford, Jean, 53, 54, 61, 89 “Radical Change,” 139, 145, 150–152, 153, 155, 156–157 Radway, Janice, 34, 55–56, 72, 73, 74–75, 82, 88, 89, 91, 94, 111, 112, 113, 115–116, 136, 164 Reagan, Nancy, 49, 50 Reagan, Ronald, 32, 42, 47, 50 romance, young adult, 17–25, 89, 89–91 criticism of, 29–30, 32–34, 38–39, 55–58, 91, 167–168 formula, 54–58, 91 in Sweet Valley High, 57–89 in Sweet Valley High (SVH): Senior Year, 158–166 paperback, 17–19, 20–25 Ross, Catherine Sheldrick, 93, 120 Rumberger, Shannon, 128–129, 132, 133–134, 135. See also “Shannon’s Sweet Valley High Blog” (blog) Scholastic (publisher), 17, 18, 19, 22, 30,104 “Wildfire,” 3, 17, 19, 21, 30, 59 “Wishing Star,” 18 Secrets (1983), 60, 62–63, 76, 83, 85, 133, 159 Secrets (2008), 173 Seventeenth Summer (Daly), 10 “Shannon’s Sweet Valley High Blog” (blog), 126, 128, 130–131, 132–135 Simon and Schuster (publisher), 17, 19 “First Love,” 17, 19 Sims Bishop, Rudine, 149, 158–159 Slumber Party (Pike), 145 Snitow, Ann Barr, 82, 83, 85, 165, 166 Sontag, Susan, 141, 142, 143, 144. See also camp; Sweet Valley High (series), as camp

Society of Bloggers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, 126–127 Stephens, John, 28, 39, 40, 41, 47, 49, 77. See also Sweet Valley High (series), narrative focalization in Stine, R.L., 145, 146, 147 Sutton, Roger, 15, 16, 19, 22, 24, 47, 93 Sweet Valley High (series) 2008 reissue, 170–173 as camp, 140–144. See also camp; Sontag, Susan as romance, 22–23, 34–35, 57–91 book covers, 21–22,24,114–115,152,153–154 characters: Elizabeth, 39–41, 75–76, 78–79, 81–82, 134–135, 142–144 Jessica, 44–45, 74–75, 134, 142–144 criticism of, 34, 35, 38, 42, 63, 71–72, 73–74, 79–81, 86–87, heroes, objectification of, 82–89 heroines: “girl with a problem,” the, 63–72 objectification of, 85–87 “perfect girl,” the, 72–82 “typical girl,” the, 58–63 ideological content, 33–51 pro-family, 34–41 anti-drug, 41–51 individual titles: Aftershock, 139, 141, 144, 150–151, 153, 154, 156 All Night Long, 43–45, 51, 75, 86, 87, 88, 134 Alone in the Crowd, 66–72, 76, 99 Are We in Love?, 149 Beware the Wolfman, 148 Crash Landing!, 91 Dance of Death, 148 Dangerous Love, 115 Dear Sister, 81–82, 88 Don’t Go Home with John, 149 Double Jeopardy, 148 Double Love (1983), 3, 23, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46–47, 51, 72, 73, 74, 75–76, 77–79, 83, 85, 86, 87, 89–90, 98, 133–134, 140,142, 171–173 Double Love (2008), 171–173 Earthquake, 139, 140–144, 152, 154 Evil Twin, The, 148 Falling for Lucas, 141 Heart Breaker, 60–63, 74, 75, 76, 89 Kiss of a Killer, 148 Killer on Board, 142 Last Wish, 140, 154

188 • Index Lila’s New Flame, 142 Miss Teen Sweet Valley, 149 Night to Remember, A, 152 Nowhere to Run, 35–40 On the Edge, 42, 47–51, 141 Out of Control, 37–38 Out of Reach, 149 Playing with Fire, 76, 88,172 Power Play, 64–66, 69, 70, 71–72, 74, 132–133, 160 Promises, 38, 40, 45–46 Racing Hearts, 85–86, 161 Secrets (1983), 60, 62–63, 76, 83, 85, 133,159 Secrets (2008), 173 Tall, Dark and Deadly, 162 Wrong Kind of Girl, 74, 159–161 makeover story/metamorphosis, 63–72 male gaze, 83–85, 86–87. See also Mulvey, Laura narrative focalization in, 39–40, 44–45, 75, 76–79, 83–86, 87. See also Stephens, John “perfect size 6,” 101,114,133,134,136,173–174 “Radical Change” characteristics, 152 social issues, address of: divorce, 35–39 drugs, 41–51 racism, 149–150 sexuality, 86–89, 149–150, 171–172 special editions: “Magna Editions,” 147–148, 152 “Super Editions,” 1, 24, 141, 147 “Super Stars,” 147 “Super Thrillers,” 142, 147–148 Sweet Valley High (SVH): Senior Year (series), 139–140, 153–166 as romance, 162–166 book covers, 154–155 comparison to Sweet Valley High, 153–166 individual titles: Can’t Stay Away, 154, 155–158, 162 Get a Clue, 158, Say it to My Face, 159, 160, 161, 166 So Cool, 160, 161, 163, 164, 166 social issues, address of: race, 158–159 sexuality, 155–156, 159–165, 167 “Radical Change” characteristics, 153–157 Sweet Valley High (television show), 5, 95, 152 Sweet Valley High readers, 95–125, 136–137

abandonment (of series), 117–123 adult re-readers, 125–127, 128–135. See also “anti-fans;” Curtis, Erin; Hardwick, Robin; Rumberger, Shannon comparison to “real life,” 121–123 escapist reading, 108–109, 111–113 fantasy, 109–113 “horizon of expectations,” characteristics of, 103–105 initial engagement, 105–108 interpretive community, characteristics of, 107–108, 117 Sweet Valley University (series), 1, 167 Tall, Dark and Deadly, 162 Taylor, Sandra, 59, 63, 64 teenage magazines, 67, 68–69, 70–71 teenagers. See adolescence Trites, Roberta Seelinger, 57, 58, 59 Twisted (Stine), 145 van den Berg, Monique, 174 Walkerdine, Valerie, 62, 63, 94–95, 111 “war on drugs,” 42, 47–51 When Love Dies, 149 William, Kate (author pseudonym), 21–22 Willinsky, John, 35, 38, 42, 43, 44, 55–56, 57, 80, 86–87, 91, 94, 95, 112–113, 116, 153, 162, 164 Winn, Marie, 30–31, 32 Winship, Janice, 136–137 Wrong Kind of Girl, 74, 159–161 young adult literature, 7–8, 10–20, 29–34. See also junior novel; romance, young adult GLBTQ literature, 148–149 “golden era,” 13–14 history of, 9–25, 144–152 1940s–1950s, 10–13 1960s–1970s, 13–15 1980s, 15–25, 144–145 1990s, 145–152 horror genre, 145–148 paperback novels, 15–20 “problem novel,” 15, 30, 32, 41, 47, 49 realism, 13–14, 150–151 romance. See romance, young adult Young Marrieds, The (Pascal), 21 Zarin, Eve, 10, 18, 33, 57–58, 66–67