Virginity in Young Adult Literature after Twilight by Christine Seifert (review)

According to Christine Seifert, “progressive” young adult romance novels have a lot in common with ideas that are thousands of years old. In this study, she analyzes some of the most popular young adult novels since 2005—based on reader favorites on Goodreads and Amazon—that present characters who want to have sex but cannot for the sake of preserving their virtue. Popular romance, Seifert argues, relies on the trope of “abstinence porn,” in which teens and, by extension, their virginities become objectified and readers are invited to participate in this eroticization of virginity (3).

Chapter 1, “From Forever to Twilight,” briefly discusses the concept of the purity myth and its role in America’s cultural understanding of young girls. This notion of purity is reflected in adolescent literature, where “abstinence porn tells us that the most titillating aspect of a sexual relationship is obsessing about doing it [because] once you do it, it’s all over” (5). Invariably, Seifert claims, the characters are predominantly white teens in heteronormative relationships, and issues of race, gender, and sexuality are rarely (if at all) questioned (17–18). In chapter 2, Seifert deals with virginity and sex in paranormal novels after Twilight, with special emphasis on the couples in the Hush Hush series by Becca Fitzpatrick, the Mara Dyer series by Michelle Hodkin, and the Wolves of Mercy Falls series by Maggie Stiefvater. Invariably, the heroines are “ordinary girls who are secretly extraordinary,” and only the “romantic hero” is able to see their extraordinariness from the very beginning (24). Chapter 3 focuses on the formulaic romances in dystopian fiction, where virginity is not a choice for female characters. In the three series Seifert examines—the Selection series by Kiera Cass, the Matched series by Ally Condie, and the Delirium series by Lauren Oliver—virginity is a requirement and is central to the plot: “marriage is the ultimate goal because it means the couple can finally have sex” (67). Similar issues are raised in chapter 4, which deals with contemporary teen romance, in which the protagonist’s virginity is once again equated with morality.

All of the novels that Seifert examines are predictable to the last; she even provides her readers with charts that summarize the romantic relationship between characters based on their status as virgins, how dangerous they are to each other, the problem in their relationship, the sexual activities in which they partake, and how the story ends. While the romantic partners may or may not have sex in the text, the innocent female protagonists almost always marry their (dangerous and sometimes abusive) partners. According to Seifert, there are four recurring tropes associated with virginity. Most important, the female protagonist’s naïveté and lack of sexual awareness not only make her attractive, but are also instrumental in making a “bad boy” good. Second, women cannot be trusted with their own virginity and must rely on a paternalistic “virginity guardian” to step in and reinforce the rules. The idea of “true love as destiny” is critical to these romances, in which “teen relationships can and should last forever, even if the partners seem to be poor matches” (38). Finally, and most disturbingly, possessive behavior and potentially dangerous people are portrayed as sexy and tempting, and violence is central to most of the novels that Seifert examines. Particularly insightful is her observation that virgins retain their virginal status even after they have had sex, as the “protagonist will remain pure for [her] one special and fated partner” (38).

Arguably, the seemingly repetitive text serves to highlight the fact that the same ideology (sex is bad, abstinence is good) recurs in each of these novels, albeit with slightly varied plot lines. In a nutshell, virginity is less about sexual intercourse than it is about good behavior and moral quality; female nonvirgins become the young adult romance novel’s designated antagonists and are depicted as lacking in moral values because they acknowledge their sexuality. Chapters 5 and 6 help place Seifert’s...