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| From
the July/August 2008 issue of The Horn Book Magazine A Second Look
Following the appearance of the first volume in 1983, Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High became one of the most successful series of the twentieth century. The romance-themed novels starred gorgeous and popular sixteen-year-old twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, detailing their flirtations and long-term relationships. Although their identical appearance rendered them nearly indistinguishable, readers soon learned that Elizabeth was the studious and responsible twin who authored their school newspaper’s gossip column while Jessica was the sneaky and conniving twin who led the cheerleading squad. Set in the fictional town of Sweet Valley, California, the series introduced a (mostly white) cast of supporting characters whose problems mattered only insofar as they affected the sisters’ lives. In spite of its cool reception by teachers and librarians, the series developed a large fan base of young readers whose purchasing power pushed one volume of the series — a “super edition” called Perfect Summer — to a position on the New York Times list of best-selling paperback fiction, marking the first time a young adult novel appeared on the list. The inaugural series entry, Double Love, established the Wakefields’ romanticized perfection, the novels’ utopian setting, and the parameters of the plots that would characterize the series. By page three, readers had already learned about the girls’ “sun-streaked blond hair,” “sparkling blue-green eyes,” and “perfect skin” as well as their height (“five feet six on the button”) and “spectacular, all-American good looks.” The second chapter described the twins’ hometown: “Everything about it was terrific — the gently rolling hills, the quaint downtown area, and the fantastic white sand beach only fifteen minutes away.” This first novel also introduced the kind of narrative conflict that would become typical of the series. Jessica and Elizabeth fall for the same guy, basketball star Todd Wilkins, and, while Jessica schemes to land him as her escort to his fraternity’s dance, Elizabeth holds onto the hope that she is the sister Todd really wants to date. By the end of the novel (and after two notable — and implausible — cases of mistaken identity), Elizabeth has claimed her spot on Todd’s arm and Jessica is already planning to hook BMOC Bruce Patman. Although few installments would pit twin against twin in direct romantic competition, throughout the series Jessica and her clique would conspire again and again to win Liz’s friends’ boyfriends, beauty queen titles, and rightful spots on the cheerleading squad. On hiatus since 2003, Elizabeth and Jessica have returned to literary life and, as of April 2008, are effectively reliving the adventures begun in 1983 with Double Love. The twins have aged well: they are still gorgeous (though they are now described as wearing a size four, not a size six) and continue to occupy the same central place in the updated series. However, their accoutrements and activities have been updated to reflect the twenty-first century. The new Double Love reads like a time-traveled transliteration of the original novel: the girls ride around in a Jeep Wrangler rather than the red Fiat convertible they drove in 1983; Elizabeth has a blog on the school website rather than a column in the newspaper; Jessica’s secret bad-boy date takes her to an illicit drag race rather than to a seedy bar; and the characters have expanded their vocabulary to include the intransitive vulgarity “that sucks” and the ubiquitous “whatever.” The initial emergence of the Sweet Valley High series coincided with what Michael Cart has called the “romance renaissance” in young adult publishing, during which offerings from romance imprints like Scholastic’s Wildfire and Bantam’s Sweet Dreams occupied young people’s bookshelves. Those stand-alone romance novels featured simple plots, romanticized and mildly but recognizably flawed heroines, and a gentle and even immature sensuality that inspired critics to compare these titles to the junior romance novels of the mid-century. Sweet Valley High built on those novels’ templates and added a consistent cast of characters and continuing story line to distinguish itself from competitors. The series’ trademark characters — sweet, studious Elizabeth and flirty, scheming Jessica — were dramatically different aspirational fantasy figures who appealed to readers’ dreams of being both the good and the bad girl. Cliffhanger conclusions punctuated by directed advertising for each successive volume (“What is the dark mystery in Enid’s past, and how does Jessica use it to her own advantage? Find out in Sweet Valley High #2, SECRETS”) encouraged readers to further their involvement with the series. The original Sweet Valley High expanded on literary production conventions perfected by Edward Stratemeyer: credited as the series’ “creator,” Francine Pascal outlined each novel while book packager Cloverdale Press hired ghostwriters to fill in the blanks. As the result of this assembly-line production, a new Sweet Valley book could appear every month. The efficient production process also allowed Pascal to introduce and oversee a number of series spinoffs, including the Sweet Valley Twins series for younger readers and the Sweet Valley University series for older teens. During Pascal’s tenure with the organization, Cloverdale became Alloy Entertainment, the media group now associated with Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl and Lisi Harrison’s The Clique. When considered among the swath of popular romance novels produced in the same period, Pascal’s series can be seen as both a reflection of the Reagan era and a clear response to the darker and more realistic YA fiction published in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The series capitalized on the larger American interest in the spectacle of high school, a preoccupation evidenced by the success of other similarly themed media products popular at the time (viz. the television shows Square Pegs and The Facts of Life and the movies Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Sixteen Candles). Although the series was criticized for its facile depiction of high school life and teenage romance, Sweet Valley High reflected the optimism and conservatism of the eighties. Sweet Valley, California, was a middle-class oasis, a dream setting where, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, characters were capable of improving their circumstances beyond their expectations. With Elizabeth’s (and sometimes Jessica’s) guidance, fat girls, sluts, and drug addicts “improved their circumstances” and learned to “just say no” to food, sex, and drugs. Nine years after The Chocolate War’s Jerry Renault asked if he dared disturb the universe, Sweet Valley High suggested to readers that it was not the universe that needed to be disturbed but the wayward figures in it. With the 2008 re-emergence of Sweet Valley High, the series is again assuming a responsive position similar to the one it occupied in 1983. Following the 1990s literary trend of what critics called “bleak books,” its optimism stands in contrast to much contemporary young adult literature. Sweet Valley High, however, may be too naively optimistic for its contemporary audience. This decade’s series standards, Gossip Girl and The Clique, are decidedly more cynical. Like Pascal’s novels, these series’ plots and characters reflect an unrealistic privilege that is nonetheless pleasurable to read and fantasize about; however, their narratives are knowing — even self-mocking — and have an ironic tone missing from Sweet Valley. It is this lack of irony that may ultimately doom Sweet Valley High for new audiences. Popular taste has changed. While, in the 1980s, mass-market fiction about teen life centered on relatively safe zones such as a theoretically typical high school or home, today’s young adult literature locates its fantasies on Park Avenue or in boarding schools. The escapism factor is both amped up and further out of realistic reach. While in its attempt to seem edgy and au courant the new Sweet Valley High might reference The Fast and the Furious and MTV Cribs, it does so clumsily, as if the person employing this new language of popular culture is not certain of all of the vocabulary’s meanings. Jessica’s allusion (“each one more Pimp My Ride than the last”) to the movie and MTV show when she describes the souped-up cars at the drag race, and her confession that she’d never believed an underground race scene existed because “the whole thing had just seemed too ripped-from-the-movie-screen to be true,” seem forced, even desperate. The Clique and Gossip Girl, in contrast, demonstrate not just a facility with this symbol system but also a sense of irony and distance from it, as if they anticipate their own eventual obsolescence. Sweet Valley High hasn’t hit that point yet; the updated series maintains a characteristic refusal to consider its own mortality.
From the July/August 2008 issue of The Horn Book Magazine |
t’s
the moment I’ve been waiting for: Francine Pascal’s
Sweet Valley High is returning to print. Like other women of a certain
age, I grew up with Sweet Valley High and continue to wrestle with
my love-hate relationship with the series’ perfect blonde
heroines. As young teens, my own twin sister and I compared ourselves
with the Wakefield twins and came up sorely lacking. (Glasses? Check.
Braces? Check.) Today, we ask ourselves why we bothered. In spite
of this backward-glancing cynicism, I own the Sweet Valley High
board game (I still play it); I keep paperback copies of the first
ten Sweet Valley books in my office (the rest are at home); I even
wrote my dissertation about the series. 
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