[Throughout] Blume's novels the age-old image of the female, a dependent, ineffectual creature whose importance can only be derived from a man, remains drooped over its pedestal. Conservative watchdogs accuse Blume of iconoclasm; but in fact her portrayal of young women helps perpetuate both the female stereotype and the status quo. Her adolescents may sprout breasts, but in a more fundamental sense they do not develop. Bland, passive, and unfocused, they are locked in Neverland where the future is a dirty word.

The static quality of Blume's heroines is particularly striking in novels about twelve- to eighteen-year-olds. More than any other stage of life except infancy, adolescence is characterized by change. The word means 'growing towards adulthood'. (p. 88)

[In] literature it is typically heroes and not heroines who, after trial and testing, emerge the wiser for their experience…. Still the female Bildungsroman is not absent from our literary heritage, Emma [by Jane Austen] and Jane Eyre [by Charlotte Brontë] being examples of novels that do grant girls the right to passage. (pp. 88-9)

In the four novels I want to consider—Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Deenie, Tiger Eyes, and Forever …—Blume herself sets up the Bildungsroman expectation. Each of her heroines confronts a potentially transforming experience: a religious quest, a physical affliction, the loss of a parent, or sexual emergence. For psychologists like Erik Erikson, such crises are 'turning points' or 'moments of decision' that are essential for growth…. In her adolescent novels, however, Blume demystifies the purported 'crises'. Pain, religion, death, and sex, she says in effect, are 'no big deal'. Her young heroines are given the answers before they have had a chance to grapple with the questions. By reducing, dismissing, or denying the crises, Blume prevens them from occasioning passage. Her heroines adjust and cope; they do not suffer and change.

Although hardly of Augustinean or Dantean dimensions, Margaret's crisis is religious: she can't decide whether to join the Jewish Community Centre or the Y. She visits a church and a synagogue by finally postpones her decision indefinitely…. With religion out of the way, Margaret finds the long-awaited bloodstains on her underpants. A biological event substitutes for spiritual choice. Her prayer to be 'like everyone else' has been answered. Although she is no further along in her quest than she was in chapter one, Margaret pronounces herself now 'almost a woman.'… (p. 89)

Deenie's crisis is physical. Near the beginning of the novel, the thirteen-year-old heroine is diagnosed as having adolescent scoliosis—curvature of the spine. For the next four years, night and day, she will have to wear a Milwaukee brace. Her secret dream of being on the cheerleading squad will never be realized. Once again Blume sets up the reader's Bildungsroman expectations, spelling out the medical details of the malformation and documenting the treatment as if these had metaphorical significance. But what might have been life-altering for Deenie turns out to be merely inconvenient….

In Blume's most recent novel, Tiger Eyes, the heroine does appear to make progress of a sort. Ridden with fear, fifteen-year-old Davey Wexler, whose father was shot to death in his 7-11 store in Atlantic City, takes refuge with her mother and younger brother at an uncle's house in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Through time, therapy, and of course a boyfriend, Davey confronts the memories of the fateful night and seems to accept her loss. At the end of the novel, she returns, apparently mended, to resume her life in Atlantic City.

While Blume's treatment of religion and physical affliction with the younger heroines is primarily reductive, her handling of death and loss seems dishonest. Davey never fully experiences what it means to be without a father. Wolf, the boyfriend who plays the key role in Davey's recovery, is in many ways a father surrogate. (p. 90)

Wolf differs markedly from the stock 'cute boy' in the adolescent roster. At twenty he is much older than Davey: a Caltech student, he is also much smarter. In spite of an erotic pull, their physical contact is, for a Blume novel, curiously minimal. Instead, Wolf plays mentor to Davey, teaching her how to hike New Mexico's steep canyons and giving her a book to read about the area. Like her young father, Wolf leaves Davey, but she is certain she will see him again…. [Rather] than allowing Davey to confront death fully, Blume has in effect mitigated its finality. Yet neither the heroine nor the author seems aware of the deception. Davey claims to have changed 'deep down inside'. But once again, what might have been a linear progression or a spiral ascent turns out to be merely circular after all.

As in Tiger Eyes, human beings in Forever … also fill functional slots; but this time the heroine substitutes lovers rather than father figures for one another. At seventeen, Katherine Danziger is old enough to wonder whether she even is still an adolescent. The novel is a do-it-yourself account of her sexual emergence, complete with gynaecological examination and choice of contraceptive. Sex for Blume is too wholesome and uncomplicated to trigger crises, however. Katherine experiences none of the horrors that usually accompany teenage sex in fiction…. The only small cloud in this novel's otherwise unrelievedly clear sky appears when Katherine falls for another boy while counselling at a summer camp. Michael is angry; Katherine is depressed. She decides she's not ready for 'forever' after all. But her recovery is swift and complete. She switches from Michael to Theo, and her life goes on as before. Like religion, physical affliction, and death, first love is no big deal.

Besides reducing the crises which might have promoted the adolescent heroines to adult life, Blume also avoids another related agent of change: the generational showdown. In literature, alienation from a parent or parent figure often accompanies adolescent crises…. [By] defying their parents, whether in literature or in life, adolescents are often defining themselves. In Blume's novels, parent-child friction abounds; but only rarely does confrontation occur. (pp. 90-2)

If Blume prevents the crises and conflicts which might prod adolescents out of childhood, she also fails to provide examples of adult women who might entice the heroines into growing up. The unappealing role of women in teenage fiction has been amply documented: adults generally play negative or indifferent roles, and mothers in particular are nagging, weak, and manipulative. While it is perhaps unreasonable to expect adolescent novels to portray dynamic, fun-loving, interesting parents—especially mothers—Blume's mothers are an unusually dreary lot. They are if anything even more unformed than their daughters. As a rule they have neither jobs nor skills nor interests. And they all depend on men…. [These] women are too vaguely sketched to contradict the covert message that the majority of Blume's women convey: to be an adult woman means not being anyone at all. (p. 93)

Lacking both present adversity and a prospect of future fulfilment—the carrot and the stick—to propel them towards adulthood, Blume's adolescents seem doomed to inhabit an intellectual, moral, and emotional limbo. Theirs is a world that offers neither mystery, power, belief, or values. Such a world might seem merely humdrum—Dorothy's Oz without the magic or Nancy Drew's River Heights without the sleuthing—if only Blume's characters like [L. Frank] Baum's and Carolyn Keene's were immortal. But for Blume's heroines the clock is ticking. In three of the four novels, the heroine marks her birthday. There is no question of anyone staying twelve or fifteen or eighteen forever. They are approaching the future even as they set their faces against it. (p. 94)

As an adult, Judy Blume once remarked that she found her life to be 'more exciting, more rewarding, and more full of adventure' at twelve than it was later on. Given the roles to which women have been relegated for thousands of years, Blume's assessment is perhaps understandable. At the same time, an author with this perspective can hardly be expected to depict the growing-up process in positive terms. In recent years, the opportunities for women to lead exciting, rewarding, adventure-filled lives have increased. It seems quite possible that the new generation of writers will contain more members who find their lives to be more satisfying as adults than as adolescents. We await their novels, some of which, we hope, will celebrate the female rite of passage. (p. 95)