Reading these letters against the reviews and analyses of the day allows us to recognize how professional criticism and the institutions supporting it construct readership, while at the same time questioning how readers create meaning in ways that go beyond that criticism. This essay thus pinpoints the moment when Seventeenth Summer became age-graded and gendered as a “girls’” text, then investigates how the letter writers both uphold and challenge such categorization. I ultimately suggest that the men’s tone and focus on Seventeenth Summer evinces a dissatisfaction with wartime masculinity that the critics’ simple categorization of the book as a “girls’ junior novel” cannot incorporate. (24-25)
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The novel tells the story of seventeen-year-old Angie Morrow’s relationship with Jack Duluth. It is set in a lush, seemingly timeless Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, during Angie’s final summer before college. From June through August (each month serving as a chapter), Angie meets and dates Jack, experiences newfound social popularity because of her tie to him, almost loses both Jack and her social status when she briefly dates a “fast” boy, and ends the novel somewhat ambiguously by accepting Jack’s ring—but not putting it on—and leaving Fond du Lac to start college in Chicago. Surrounding Angie are her mother and three sisters, but it is the middle sister, Lorraine, who experiences the most heartbreaking narrative as she engages in what is likely a sexual relationship with Martin, a cad who stands her up and clearly refuses to reciprocate her feelings. (25)
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within five years of its publication Seventeenth Summer was firmly entrenched in the reading domain of adolescent girls. Although there are many possible causes for this speedy shift in categorization (from adult to adolescent, from nongendered to “girls’ book”), I believe that one of the dominant catalysts was the influence of the institution of the library, and of New York Public Librarian Margaret Scoggin in particular. (26)
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By the late 1940s, the classification of Seventeenth Summer as a junior novel aimed specifically at girls was complete. Indeed, one can perceive the entrenchment of this categorization within articles published by librarians and academics throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. Writing in Salt Lake City’s Deseret Newsin 1947, Leone H. Harris implored parents to “not deny the adolescent girl her book of romance,” suggesting that “‘Seventeenth Summer,’ by Maureen Daly, and ‘Going on Sixteen,’ by Betty Cavanna, are two books most girls would enjoy for the delightful love story in each” (5). (27)
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