Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature

3. “He Couldn’t Get Close Enough”: The Exploration and Relegation of Desire

64 Chapter 3 “He Couldn’t Get Close Enough” The Exploration and Relegation of Desire As the novels discussed in the previous chapter demonstrate, the development of narrative intimacy in young adult literature can play an important role in modeling or reinforcing cultural norms about friendships between adolescent women. Beyond the world of fiction, psychologists and sociologists postulate that young women’s platonic relationships also play a vital part in establishing the foundation for romantic relationships, despite (or perhaps because of) the challenges that young women face in navigating their friendships. According to Kara Joyner and J. Richard Udry, adolescent women “bring more intimacyrelated skills to relationships [than adolescent men], due to their experiences of intimate contact with other females” (371). As well as providing a framework for beginning romantic relationships, Neil Korobov and Avril Thorne argue, “friendships also double as the everyday contexts in which an understanding of romantic experiences develop” (49).1 In other words, the literature of self-help and popular psychology suggests a cultural expectation that young women’s friendships may offer them models for the types and frequency of their disclosure in platonic relationships, as well as contribute to cultural demands regarding the boundaries of The Exploration and Relegation of Desire 65 emotional and physical disclosure in their romantic relationships. In terms of narrative intimacy, in turn, the model that presents the narratorreader relationship as a friendship likewise provides the foundation for the construction of narrative intimacy in texts that deal with romance, love, and sexuality. Like friendships, early romantic relationships have come to be understood as crucial to adolescent women’s development, particularly in terms of the ability to create lasting intimate attachments. Whereas friendships may be figured as “double-edged swords,” romantic and sexual relationships are assumed to present young women with an even more pronounced set of demands and contradictions. Despite growing resistance to the persistent “girls want love, boys want sex” dichotomy—a construction based at least in part on a “division of sexuality from intimacy [that] parses out desire for sex as normal for boys and desire for relationships as normal for girls” (Tolman, “Female” 227)—adolescent women face expectations that they will and should develop romantic relationships while being discouraged from exploring or expressing their desire for physical intimacy. In Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality, Deborah Tolman argues that contemporary American culture expects and encourages girls’ desires for love, relationships, and romance while ignoring their sexual desires. In turn, while navigating the division between the roles of love and sex in their lives, adolescent women tend to engage in extended discourse regarding their crushes, first dates, and other romantic concerns while in many ways remaining silent on the subject of sexuality; as Sharon Thompson succinctly notes, “talking romance is a female adolescent tradition ; talking sex is not” (7). Much of the discussion surrounding adolescent women’s experiences of love and sexuality remains shrouded in what Catherine Ashcraft calls “the unexamined discourse of ‘readiness’” (328). As Ashcraft notes, adolescents are often advised by adults to refrain from sexual activity until they are “ready” and told that one simply “knows” when one is ready for sex (328). Because this vague language offers no real guidance, while in many ways denying the possibility of further clarification or discussion, it “hinders teens’ abilities to make sense of their sexual experiences and prevents adolescents and adults from having meaningful conversations about sexuality” (Ashcraft 328). In turn, the discourse of readiness that dominates discussions of sex leads to confusion regarding the emotional aspects of romantic and sexual relationships. Adolescent women, in particular, receive a series of ambiguous messages that suggest that, to 66 The Exploration and Relegation of Desire paraphrase a cliché, no one can really explain love, but you’ll know it when you feel it.2 As a result, “many youth express confusion about what meaningful connection is all about, whether they are capable of such connection , and how they can move toward satisfying and fulfilling connection” (Paul, Wenzel, and Harvey 375). Confusion regarding the development of such connections can lead to experiences of isolation, especially for adolescent women; Ashcraft writes, “With little positive acknowledgment of the ways in which they might enjoy sex or their sexuality, girls are left to decipher these feelings on their own, wondering if they are the only ones who have them” (329). Indeed, the ways in which the...