18 pages • 36 minutes read
Geraldine ConnollyThe Summer I Was Sixteen
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Lydia” by Geraldine Connolly (1988)
Connolly’s poem, “Lydia,” was originally published in the June issue of Poetry magazine (1988). The poem situates another of Connolly’s childhood memories within the context of United States history, adding a nuanced, adult perspective to an otherwise mundane moment from the poet’s youth.
“Lydia” discusses the world events contemporary with Connolly’s childhood, making explicit connections between World War II and its ramifications on the poet’s nuclear family. “Lydia” moves beyond the subtlety of “The Summer I Was Sixteen,” exposing how national conflict directly impacts the personal.
Enjambment appears in both “Lydia” and “The Summer I Was Sixteen,” creating a continuity between lines and leaving Connolly’s memory uninterrupted. “Lydia” thematically resembles “The Summer I Was Sixteen,” discussing gender as a performative identity and characterizing girlhood as a time of questioning, of constant learning and growth.
“The Entropy of Pleasure” by Geraldine Connolly (1990)
“The Entropy of Pleasure” first appeared in the February issue of Poetry magazine (1990). Connolly compares emotional turmoil to whitecaps roiling in the ocean, using concrete imagery to describe the abstract feeling of sadness. “The Entropy of Pleasure” is melancholy in comparison to the upbeat “The Summer I Was Sixteen”; however, Connolly creates the distinct atmospheres within each of these poems similarly: through her skillful diction. Both poems discuss different facets of Connolly’s emotional memory, each utilizing a volta (or rhetorical shift) within their final lines to add clarity and the perspective that only comes from aging and reflecting on experience through writing.
“When I Say That We Are All Teen Girls” by Olivia Gatwood (2019)
Olivia Gatwood’s first full-length collection of poetry, Life of the Party (2019), invites a contemporary understanding of girlhood, feminism, and the fractured, traumatic memory of the collection’s speaker. The poem, “When I Say That We Are All Teen Girls,” explores the relationship between young women and the wider world, using vivid imagery and precise diction (in the same style of Connolly’s work) to expose the tensions within the intersection of culture, gender, and personal experience.
Gatwood’s poem is written in the first person. The pronoun “I” appears in the title, establishing it as autobiographical by the same token as Connolly’s “The Summer I Was Sixteen.” Gatwood’s poetry is an important complement to Connolly’s, revealing how memory, place, and identity are continual concerns in poetry, even decades after Connolly wrote “The Summer I Was Sixteen.”
Further Literary Resources
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey (1975)
British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the term “the male gaze” in her critical essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” The essay argues that mainstream film is based on a patriarchal unconscious that assumes male audiences as normative, therefore establishing women as other. Such a male gaze suggests that the female viewer will always experience the narrative of film secondarily, forced to identify with the heterosexual male and his desires.
While Mulvey’s essay specifically concerns cinema, the theory of the male gaze has been translated into literary and feminist theories, each critiquing the representation of women as passive objects of male desire and fantasy. Connolly alludes to Mulvey’s theories in her poem, “The Summer I Was Sixteen,” exposing how, even at the young age of 16, she was conscious of “the gaze” (Line 4) of boys, altering her actions on the basis of being watched. Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” combines feminist and psychoanalytic theories in a way that is essential to understanding the deeper connotations of “The Summer I Was Sixteen.”
“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” by Judith Butler (1988)
American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler contends that gender identity is largely informed by societal expectations, forcing individuals to perform their perceived, binary role or else be subject to punishment. In her critical essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay on Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Butler argues that every individual choice—be it dress, speech, or bodily movement through different spaces—is the result of socially sanctioned gender roles. Butler observes that these roles are learned and performed through repeated action as an individual ages.
Connolly reflects on the actions of her younger self in “The Summer I Was Sixteen,” alluding to Butler’s work and demonstrating how nuanced her adult perspective has become through the analysis of this memory. The thematic concerns of “The Summer I Was Sixteen” are echoed within Butler’s work, detailing the socialization process of girlhood.
Interview with Geraldine Connolly – August 9, 2010 by Christopher Nelson (2010)
Founder and editor of the Green Linden Press, Christopher Nelson, converses with fellow poet, Geraldine Connolly. They discuss Connolly’s writing process and the image-heavy landscapes within her poetry. This interview provides further authorial context for “The Summer I Was Sixteen.” The interview offers an intimate look into Connolly’s personal poetic concerns firsthand through her own distinct voice.
