"Summer Sisters"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the book "Summer Sisters" by Judy Blume which revolves around the friendship between Vix and Caitlin and causes two opposite worlds to collide. It looks at how the character of Vix is given the opportunity to escape from the drudgery of her life in poverty and her controlling mother, Tawny by the offer to spend the summer at Martha's Vineyard by the privileged Caitlin and how the next five summers at Martha's Vineyard not only expose her to boys, sex and fun, but also give her a taste of the infinite possibilities that were once beyond her imagination, such as going to Harvard. It provides a brief background to Judy Blume and looks at how she writes with a pithy, simple style, making her stories easy to read for the majority of readers.

From the Paper:

"In this work, Blume presents a vast array of men and women, representing a full spectrum of gender roles. The most striking characters who seem to defy the prescribed roles of their gender are Phoebe, Caitlin's mother and Caitlin, who walks in her mother's footsteps. The very first impression Blume conveys of Phoebe is one of an unorthodox mother: "Phoebe, dressed in faux Indian clothes? including her boyfriend of the moment, a guy with long, silvery hair?" (11). Furthermore, she had convinced Lamb, Caitlin's father, of having an open marriage that ultimately did not work (Blume 34). In these aspects, Phoebe represents the image of a new woman who does not stay within the confines of a traditional prescription of a wife or mother."

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