'Forever...' by Judy Blume

Blume, Judy. Forever.  New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1975.

Photo by: L. Propes

“Sybil Davison has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys” (Blume 1).  As I read the first sentence, I felt my jaw drop slightly, and I furtively glanced at the lady sitting next to me on the flight from Calgary to Vancouver.  I joined legions of young adults engrossed by Blume’s “direct, straightforward fashion about the fears and frustrations associated with teenage sex” (Kaplan 26).  From the very first sentence, Judy Blume sets a decidedly frank and honest tone about teenagers and sex in her groundbreaking and controversial novel Forever.

Katherine Danzinger and Michael Wagner are both upper middle-class, college-bound, responsible teenagers, who meet at a New Year’s Eve party and feel an immediate attraction to one another.  They begin dating and embark on a thorough exploration of each other, which leads to sex in all its awkward teenage glory.  Katherine and Michael are in love with all the heightened passion of teenagers.  They swear their love for each other and vow it’s forever, even to the point of Katherine's desire to apply to the same colleges as Michael so they won’t be separated.  Katherine’s parents eventually demand she take a summer job as a tennis instructor at the arts camp that her younger sister Jamie attends.  This job becomes the catalyst that forces Katherine to examine just what the word “forever” really means and how she honestly feels about Michael.  Will forever last through the summer, or will it fade like the leaves when autumn comes and drift away?

Somehow, Forever never entered my teenaged reading orbit.  This was my first exposure to it beyond seeing it on the ALA’s most challenged book lists.  I had to double-check the copyright date, just to make remind myself it was, in fact, nearly forty years old.  Blume wrote the book in response to her daughter’s wish to see a book where a teenaged girl chooses to have sex and, in a revolutionary twist for the time, nothing bad happens to her (Sutton 26).  Elissa Gershowitz calls Forever “divisive, with some people seeing it as pornographic trash, and others… viewing it as worthy, groundbreaking young adult fiction” (87).  Divisive puts it mildly.  Forever has been on the ALA’s 100 Most Challenged Books list for more than twenty years. 

Historically, novels where a teenaged female character chooses to have sex typically depicted the girl experiencing some sort of “punishment”, usually getting pregnant and being forced to marry the young man in question.  Forever was considered a radical shift from the usual fare for teenaged readers (Kurtz and Schuelke 229; Sullivan 461).   Katherine and Michael are not only shown enjoying sex with each other; there are no moral repercussions (Sullivan 461).  In Forever, “Blume’s… realism and matter-of-fact tone is a complete departure from disguising sexual activity in abstract prose or keeping it behind the scenes” (Sullivan 461).  Blume calls a spade a spade, so to speak, and doesn’t hide body parts behind cute euphemisms.  Blume doesn’t just deal with sex in an even-handed, unsentimental manner.  She treats many other topics, such as abortion and contraception with equal aplomb.  Blume writes Katherine’s visit to Planned Parenthood for a prescription for birth control pills with its subsequent pelvic exam in the same frank, matter-of-fact tone she uses for Katherine and Michael’s sexual activities, but still allows Katherine’s nervousness about the exam to come through the dialog.  The aforementioned Sybil even deliberately gets pregnant, but is able to conceal it due to her penchant for baggy, loose clothing, just for the experience, planning the entire time to put the baby up for adoption.  Sybil’s choice to have the baby is presented by Blume as just that: Sybil’s choice, with no sermonizing or blatant moralizing.  To present Forever as a “just-the-facts-ma’am” novel would be to do it a disservice and reduce it to a “how-to” novel.  Sex and birth control are presented factually, but Blume allows Katherine to examine her feelings about sex and love as the novel comes to its conclusion.

Katherine has a remarkable amount of agency.  In several instances, she refuses to have sex with Michael until she feels she’s mentally ready, not just physically.  When they do finally have sex, Katherine not only insists on condoms, but she also resolves to obtain an additional method of birth control.  Katherine’s family plays a large role in this.  Her mother is honest with Katherine about sex, and even reveals a little of her own sexual history.  She warns Katherine “sex is a commitment… once you’re there you can’t go back to holding hands” (Blume 84).  The conversations with Katherine and her mother allow Blume to briefly address the societal double standards regarding boys, girls, and sex: “good” girls wait until marriage, “bad” girls don’t, and boys are supposed to gain all the experience they can (37; 83).  Katherine’s mother dismisses the idea that a girl who chooses to have sex is inherently a bad person.  While she doesn’t give Katherine tacit permission to have sex, she doesn’t forbid it either (Blume 84).  She merely says, “I expect you to handle it with a sense of responsibility though… either way” (Blume 84).  Her grandmother sends Katherine Planned Parenthood pamphlets in the mail and initiates discussions about preventing unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.  Katherine’s mother and grandmother exemplify the running theme of the novel: safe sex is a part of a healthy, committed relationship.

Overall, adults are largely absent in the novel, only playing a relatively minor role.  This is also probably one of the more idealized facets of the novel.  Michael’s own parents don’t even make an appearance until his graduation.  Rather than have Katherine “park”, Katherine’s parents encourage her to bring her “friends home than sit in a car somewhere” (Blume 19).  On trips and vacations with family or friends, the adults basically house the teenagers in separate areas of the house, seemingly with no rules or guidelines.  Katherine’s parents only voice their concerns about her relationship with Michael by wishing she wouldn’t confine herself to dating one boy. 

The title Forever embodies so many things: the heightened and halcyon emotions teenagers attach to the idea of love, the exaggerated concept of a set period of time lasting much longer than it does, and the idea that forever is attainable.  Katherine and Michael both experience this over the course of the novel, beginning when they declare to love one another forever.  While Katherine argues with her father about the summer job and he tells her it will only last seven weeks, Katherine retorts, “Seven weeks may not be a lot to you but to me it’s forever!” (Blume 152). 

The plot of the novel is somewhat thin, revolving around Michael and Katherine’s sexual exploits.  A subplot involving Katherine and Michael’s friends, Erica and Artie, and the questions of Artie’s sexuality is underdeveloped.  (Although an attentive reader will be able to guess by reading between the lines.)  Even the ramifications of Sybil’s pregnancy are largely unaddressed.  Blume herself has admitted that this isn’t her best work.  In an interview with School Library Journal, she said her comment to the Margaret A. Edwards Award committee when hearing that she was being presented the award based on Forever was, “Really? That’s not my best book” (Sutton 26). 

Stylistically, Blume writes the way she perceives people speak, full of ellipses, pauses, and interruptions (Sutton 27).  The book contains a lot of dialog, which makes the book read quickly, but at the same time, it can be a little difficult to keep track of which character is talking, especially without any kind of qualifier to identify the speaker.  One example is the following exchange between Katherine and a former classmate Tommy Aronson:

I picked up the extension in my parents’ bedroom and cleared my throat before I said, “Hello…”

“Katherine?”

“Yes?”

“This is Tommy Aronson… remember me?”

“I remember.”

“I’m home for the weekend.”

“The weekend’s just about over.”

“I’m not going back until tomorrow morning.”

“Have a nice trip.”

“I see you haven’t changed.”

“Have you?”

“Why don’t you come out with me tonight and decide for yourself?”

“Sorry… I can’t make it.”

“Oh, come on… I’ll behave.”

“It’s not that…”

“Then what?”

“I’m going with someone.”

“Oh… anyone I know?”

“No.”

“Well… in that case… what’s your girlfriend’s number?”

“I have a lot of girlfriends.”

“The little one… you know…”

“Erica?”

“That’s the one” (Blume 109-110).

Blume even uses Michael and Katherine’s letters during the summer to demonstrate the ebb and flow of their feelings for one another.  Their letters are long and detailed in the beginning of the summer, and gradually Katherine’s grow shorter and the gaps between them such that Michael feels the need to surprise her at the summer camp with a visit.  When Katherine’s words and actions say otherwise, the letters reveal a part of her that has begun to question whether or not her love for Michael is forever.  Katherine is the only character who undergoes any sort of character development, just by the act of examining her feelings and how they affect her relationship with Michael or anyone else.  Michael behaves as a typical seventeen year-old boy whose modus operandi is to have sex with his girlfriend.  Let me be clear -- in no way can Michael’s behavior be construed as taking advantage of Katherine, nor did he at any moment force her to do something against her will.  When Katherine asked or told him to stop, he did.  However, Michael employs a subtle manipulation, pushing the envelope just a little more each time (hands under her sweater one time, up her skirt the next, kissing minus several articles of clothing) until Katherine agrees to have sex.

Forever holds up remarkably well, despite its age.  With the exception of a few terms here and there (calling condoms “rubbers” and VD), there is very little that makes the novel sound dated.  The one scene that really dates the novel as a pre-AIDS era work is the scene in Planned Parenthood where the main concern is preventing pregnancy, not sexually transmitted diseases.  Blume mentions that people have felt the book ought to be banned because it doesn’t address this, but adds, “Forever is about people.  It is about feelings.  It is not a sex manual.  Does it mean we shouldn’t read… [it] because… [it] doesn’t address AIDS?  Just because the rules have changed?  You can’t do that” (Sutton 27).  Blume has since added an author’s note in later editions to address those concerns, emphasizing condom use and encouraging teenagers to contact Planned Parenthood for more detailed information. 

Jason Kurtz and Nicholle Schuelke theorize novels like Forever are an important part of teenage emotional development.  For them Forever “serve[s] as [a representation] of reality and provide opportunities for vicarious explorations of an emerging sexuality identity without necessarily participating in these ‘firsts’ in the real world… These vicarious experiences through realistic young adult fiction can empower them to consider the choices one must make” (229).  For this reason, I would suggest that Forever could be read as part of a class in human sexuality or a comprehensive sexual education class.  Students will be able to use Katherine and Michael as proxies in their discussions. 

Blume maintains a website where she addresses issues like censorship and writing. 

Judy Blume is the recipient of the 1996 Margaret A. Edwards Award.

Other books with a similar theme as Forever are: Doing It by Melvin Burgess, Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky, A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl by Tonya Lee Stone, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, Good Girls by Laura Ruby, and Story of a Girl by Sarah Zarr (Kurtz and Schuelke 230). 

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Works Cited

Blume, Judy. Forever. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1975. Print.

Gershowitz, Elissa. "What Makes a Good "Bad" Book?" Horn Book Magazine 89.4 (2013): 84-90. Web. Academic Search Complete. 9 June 2014.

Kaplan, Jeffrey S. "Ted Hipple was Right! How I Broke the Rules and Lived Happily FOREVER and Ever!" The English Journal 83.5 (1994): 25-7. Web. JSTOR. 9 June 2014.

Kurtz, Jason, and Nicholle Schuelke. "Blume, Burgess, and Beyond." Voice of Youth Advocates 34.3 (2011): 228-30. Library & Information Science Source. Web. 9 June 2014.

Sullivan, Ed. "Going all the Way: First-Time Sexual Experiences of Teens in Fiction." Voice of Youth Advocates 26.6 (2004): 461-3. Web. Library & Information Science Source. 9 June 2014.

Sutton, Roger. "Forever . . . Yours: An Interview with Judy Blume." School Library Journal 42 (1996): 24-7. Web. Academic Search Complete. 9 June 2014.