Dessen juxtaposes Remy and Dexter's relationship with Remy's mother and her new husband, Don, that shows how Remy's defensive nature is to keep herself from being hurt like her mother. The novel directly addresses several conventions of the romance novel: readers become emotionally attached to the characters, the novels empower women, that it provides an escape from reality, and that sex happens only within happy, monogamous relationships. This Lullaby exemplifies most of these conventions, but also challenges the reader's notion of a romance novel.
Most importantly, Dessen captures an awkward and important developmental stage in her novel and addresses issuses accompanying it without judgment. Remy has a past of sleeping around and is often drinking with her friends. Dessen does not demonize these acts, but compares them with how Remy acts when she is in a satisfying relationship and when she isn't drunk. This switch from having ever-changing realtionships to a single, serious relationship is not portrayed as an abandonment of independence, but as a stage in creating a firm identity and developing emotional stability.
Luckily, the discussion of these serious topics occurs within realistic teenage dialogue and honest emotions. This Lullaby allows readers to see themselves or people they know in the characters and learn from the plot how to deal with these traits. While the story does have a sappily happy ending, both Remy and her mother are better off for the chances they have taken. Establishing independence looks different for various people and relationshops, and This Lullaby lets readers know that this is OK.
3 comments:
As Tori mentioned, Dessen juxtaposes the Remy/Dexter relationship with that of Remy's mom and Don. I think there is a third comparison too, of Remy/Dexter and Remy's brother Christopher and his girlfriend Jennifer Anne. While Remy and her mother find Jennifer Anne nitpicky and somewhat controlling, Chris feels secure in the relationship.
My favorite aspect of Dessen's storytelling is her grasp of symbolism. She never hits you over the head with it and if you miss it, it's not a big deal. It's just part of the story. I think Chris's lizards are another mode of commentary for Dessen. Chris devotes a lot of time, energy, and closet space to these lizards, rigging up a watering system and setting up an incubator for the eggs. While Chris's nurturing of the eggs emphasizes Barbara as the unconventional mom (she can't even make scrambled eggs!), Dessen also uses the hatching of the lizards as a parallel to Remy discovering her attachment to Dexter: it's new, it's unknown, and it's kind of scary.
I think the relationships between Remy and her three best friends were particularly important in this book. Each character represented a different kind of personality, showing different ways that teens react to adolescence relationships. In fact, these friendships reminded me of my closest group of friends when I was a teenager. Jess is strong, seemingly emotionless and the mother of the group. Her sense of responsibility comes from her mother’s death and having to help raise her younger brothers. Remy refers to her as “one of the only people who just didn’t take my sh** and I had to respect that.” Lissa is the romantic of the group. The opposite of Remy, she falls deeply in love and is just as deeply impacted when love doesn’t last. Remy ends up having to console Lissa when she is dumped, a bit of an obvious plot development as it happens the same night that Remy breaks up with Jonathan. I think Lissa’s openness to love works to soften Remy’s resistence to relationships. Chloe share Remy’s view of keeping boys at arm’s length. Remy refers to her as “my twin in all things concerning boys and relationships”. Chloe, therefore, is the most worried when Remy falls in love with Dexter, perhaps thinking that she and Remy will grow apart. Jess and Chloe don’t get along but that never seems to impact the closeness of the whole group. I think it is important to show teens that you might have differences with another person but you can find a way to get along for the sake of the group. Or perhaps their arguing was the only way they knew to get along?
I looked at the reader’s reviews on Amazon and found that the few people who didn’t like the book (discounting those that hated the drinking and bad language), disliked the Remy character and felt that Dexter deserved better. Interesting that those readers saw so little value in Remy’s emotional journey!
This Lullaby was a unique romance novel. I felt the novel moved slowly, but had an overall good story line. Remy was a uniqe female character becuase she did not seek nor fall in love easily. When she finally met a love interest, Dexter, she faught against her feelings. All of her relationship problems were because of the relationships her mother had with numerous men over the years.
At the end of the novel Remy learned that it wasn't her responsobility to take over her moms life. She also learned to except relationships. The book showed Remy's growth as a person and that aspect of the book can be benifical to teens. The novel also provides many examples of both positive and negative relationships for teens.
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