Love is madness but even when exploring queer love, it seems to follow hegemonic, heteronormative tropes in young adult fiction. In Michelle L. Teichman’s novel, The Space Between, the reader is led through the exploration of queer awakening and young lesbian sexuality. However, in my essay, I will explore several key points of Teichman’s novel around the heteronormative tropes throughout. In addition, I will challenge the discourses about sexuality, desire, and subjectivity within Teichman’s novel and point to them being particularly problematic when it comes to othering and heteronormative binaries. While some themes are positive for young, queer readers, including a happily ever after for the main lesbian characters who’ve embraced queer sexuality, there is a disconnect within her book that leads the reader to doubt the correctness of anyone stepping outside heteronormative femininity. In addition, it lacks the very substance of showing the young reader how to navigate the conflict that occurs between queer bodies and heteronormative culture, leaving a longing for the missing information that it hinted at exploring from its opening pages.

​

The Book Summary

 

          The Space Between by Teichman is a young adult novel that explores themes of dealing with adolescence, finding one’s voice, fitting in with dominant cultures, and overcoming doubts around one’s sexuality. Harper Isabelle starts school at the top. She’s beautiful, intelligent, rich, and is the most popular girl in her grade 9 class thanks to the direction and almost puppet master-like control of her older sister/mother figure, Bronte. Sarah Jamieson; however, is the opposite to Harper. Shy and introverted, Sarah is the most bullied girl in her grade 9 class.

​

          But all that changes when Sarah and Harper meet. Drawn toward each other with overwhelming, uncontrollable feelings of desire they can’t understand—an ideal love sparks between them. Unfortunately, Harper is dating Sarah’s twin brother, Tyler, and even as Harper realizes that she doesn’t want to be in a heteronormative relationship, she is still forced to continue that relationship at the urging of Sarah.

​

          In the end, Harper’s world comes crashing down as the pair splits up—in an overused trope of will they be reunited or not scenario—and she is outed by Tyler when she breaks up with him as well. She stops being the most popular girl in school and faces censure and open hate from friends, her sister and even her parents. However, through Harper’s strength of enduring this treatment, Sarah reconciles with her own feelings and the two reunite and quickly find their happily ever after.

​

Setting the Tone of Heteronormativity Through Binaries

 

While The Space Between is a wonderful story of queer sexuality that provides a foundation for queer youth and adults, who see themselves in the characters of Sarah and Haper, it presents a number of problematic tropes that are commonly seen in YA novels.

​

          First, we need to explore the fact that there are binaries within the world. Popular vs unpopular; girl vs boy; queer vs heterosexual. All of these themes play out in the novel but there is no defining moment that creates a sense of shared identity. The majority of hard themes are resolved off page and even as Harper realizes that she has no attraction to boys—kissing them was like “kissing an iguana” or that the boy was “swallowing her entire mouth in his big lips” (Teichman 7)—there is that hetero/queer binary at play.

​

          We see this when Harper kisses Sarah and the experience goes from an almost asexual reaction Harper had when kissing boys to a flood of sensations when she kisses Sarah. Love and desire become this wild and crazy thing, full of bodily sensations and a loss of reason. However, despite this attraction, they want to stay firmly ensconced in their heteronormative world, hiding their sexual relationship. In fact, Sarah continues to push Harper to remain in that binary when she says that “no one can ever know,” (Teichman 216) about the relationship between the two.

 

          Second, everything in the relationship is set in the heteronormative and predominant hegemonic discourse around love being crazy and uncontrolled. That they only live for each other. The novel tends to “shape and reproduce sexual scripts” (Sciberras and Tanner 1) of both femininity and the othering of queer bodies. For heterosexual girls in Teichman’s novel, there is little path to understanding their desire and there is a discourse that women should be “immediately ready for penetrative sex” (Sciberras and Tanner 11) as girls are expected to maintain their popularity through, “just a few hand jobs and a blowjob every few months” (Teichman 41). This situates heterosexual girls as not having any desire outside of popularity and reaffirming that their sexual pleasure comes through penetrative sexual behaviours.

 

          For queer readers, there is a lack of “sex positivity, pleasure and communication” (Sciberras and Tanner 2). Throughout the book, as the characters fight their attraction, they don’t communicate and often feel shame for any sex positivity or pleasurable moments between them. In fact, it is even quoted as being “unnatural” (Teichman 90), which is a reoccurring theme.

 

          Finally, for both Harper and Sarah, and subsequently for the reader, desire and love follow a script that “love is powerful and at times painful” (Catron 09:34-09:38), which means it cannot be denied no matter how destructive the relationship can be.

 

All the Beautiful People

​

          Teichman sets the stage of the “beautiful people” trope within the first few pages of the novel. This can be particularly problematic when readers are exploring their own sexual feelings and behaviours around what is considered to be appropriate. All the characters in Teichman’s novel are beautiful, with the exception of Jen, Harper’s friend, who even points out that she was “not as pretty as the rest” (Teichman 243) and she becomes the ugly friend who is pretty by strength of character as she stays friends with Harper even after Harper is outed as gay.

 

          In addition, both main characters are beautiful, and it is mentioned many times in the novel. Harper starts as a gorgeous girl while Sarah is beautiful once you bring her out of her shell and remove the layers of makeup and baggy clothes. Again, the ugly misfit becoming the beautiful, more popular girl trope. This leads to a narrative for young readers that they can only embrace their sexuality if they are beautiful. Furthermore, there is a narrative that queer sexuality and acceptance can only come from beauty. Katarina Symes looks at themes of lesbian sexuality and the heterosexual modes of viewing. While her article explores Orange is the New Black (OITNB), her lens can be turned on any form of media, including Teichman’s novel. For the reader exploring their sexuality, they are sent messages of affirmation that lesbian sexuality “panders to the male gaze” and confirms that only “thin, young and predominantly white [women]” (Symes 37) are the worthy recipients of lesbian love. There is no place in Teichman’s world for any other body type, race, or experience other than this white binary stereotype of a young YA heroine. They are grade 9 students (young), Sarah remarks to herself, “if she [Harper] had an inch of fat on her” (Teichman 17) (thin), and Harper’s first physical encounter with Sarah leaves her focusing on eyes that are “the fiercest shade of blue,” and how “the girl’s skin was pale” (Teichman 12) (white).

​

          Furthermore, for any heterosexual reader, Harper acts in a similar manner as Piper from OITNB as a “heterosexual proxy” (Symes 37) as she has both a heterosexual (Tyler) and lesbian (Sarah) relationship. Through this relationship triangle, heterosexual readers can explore sexual or identity tourism where they “experience same-sex desire through a point of identification that extends beyond the search for one’s approximate self” (Symes 34; 37). While this is a positive of Teichman’s novel, it can also be problematic when viewing this experience through the established male, white, or heteronormative gaze of thinness and whiteness—creating a false dichotomy of what same-sex love looks like.

​

Fast Forward toward a Neat and Happy Ending

 

          One of the main credits regarding Teichman’s novel is that it does provide a “happy ever after” ending for her main characters, which is not always common in YA queer stories. The couple are happy, in love, and confident in their queerness; however, we don’t see what that happy ever after will be as they are just embarking on adulthood and living together.

 

          There is also a lack of a roadmap for any readers who are identifying with these characters on what a healthy relationship entails or how to get through the turmoil that Harper faces with her parents’ homophobia or with Sarah’s parents’ ignorance about her queerness. The book ends with an epilogue, skipping the fallout of Harper’s outing at school and with her parents. Everything is neat, tidy and does not illustrate the complexities in any relationship, regardless of it being queer or hetero.

 

          Even in the epilogue, it continues the societal expectations about love that “great suffering equals great reward,” (Catron 08:43-08:46) through the fact that Harper loses everything for Sarah. However, they are both rewarded for sticking together with a great apartment, advancement of their dreams as university students and while their clan is noticeably smaller (just Harper’s sister, Sarah’s brother, and Harper’s friend, Jen), the two lovers have each other and need not for anything else.

 

          This creates false narratives that first loves are true love. However, relationships are understood as a continuum of space that “includes the space between the I and the you (Benjamin 95).” There is no continuation of Harper or Sarah outside of the space—their queerness defined as only happening between them and not as a part of their own subjectivity. This leaves readers to feel that if their first relationship fails, they are left without a sense of self instead of a growth of self.

 

A Disconnection of Time and Place

 

          Disconnection is a big critique of Teichman’s novel. The author relies on the trope of shadowy dates and while in Toronto, there is still a disconnect. She does mention cellphones and social media a few times; however, it is not as prevalent in her book as it was in the high school culture of the era.

 

          Sarah and Harper are subjected to the biases and ignorance of the society around them. Throughout the novel, the characters must keep their relationship a secret for fear of reprisal from those they love—only for those reprisals to occur as Harper becomes a social outcast when her own sister says, “You [Harper] are not my sister,” in front of the whole school. In this very moment of self discovery and subjectivity, Harper faces a loss of not only her sister but of a mother figure. In fact, the reader is left to determine “whether the price of selfhood is going to be the loss of the mother’s [sister’s] love, or, conversely, whether the price of love is to be the inhibition of autonomy” (Benjamin 87).

​

          However, Bronte’s reaction was a representation that queer youth will not be accepted by society or their family, which is not always a truth in today’s climate. In her novel, the popular girl, Bronte, is seen rejecting the queer student, othering her in front of all their peers, and allowing the censure of her own sister. Other students feel vindicated in their treatment of Harper, calling her derogatory names and ostracizing her.

 

          It is jarring when juxtaposed with the knowledge that they live in a city that is the “third most queer friendly city in the world” (Zamon) and creates a confirmation for the reader that they will be alone, stuck in “the space between what is wrong and right” (Teichman 235), if their sexual desires break from heteronormative binaries.

 

          While I am not saying that queer readers will not see themselves in the plight of the main characters, there is a disconnect in place and time. The views of the students, the lack of access to queer safe spaces and communities, and the overall experiences of exploration in queer life feel out of sync with mentions of cellphones and Toronto. I would place the location in a small, conservative town and 10 to 20 years earlier in time if it wasn’t for the small references to social media. This disconnection in time and space could lead to queer readers reaffirming feelings of othering and loneliness in their sexuality and desire.

​​

Conclusion

​

          In the end, while The Space Between does explore some very important themes and representation of both queer love and queer identity, it lets down its young readers by establishing that any representation of sexuality, desire and subjectivity needs to mimic heterosexuality. Furthermore, it continues to rely on tropes that queer youth are alone and despised by their society and ignores that there are many viable and thriving communities for queer youth to explore their sexuality and self within. Instead, the novel illustrates that queer youth must find their subjectivity through the lens of another looking back at them and should cling to those first experimental loves (those first moments of queer awakening) because, without them, they will face a cruel world alone—bereft of community and culture. Overall, I found that Teichman’s novel creates a contradiction of experiences that can both empower and oppress queer youth as they explore their own self and desire.

 

Works Cited

Benjamin, Jessica. “A Desire of One’s Own: Psychoanalytic Feminism and Intersubjective Space.” Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 78–101, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18997-7_6.

​

Catron, Mandy Len. “A Better Way to Talk about Love.” Mandy Len Catron: A Better Way to Talk about Love | TED Talk, TEDTalks, www.ted.com/talks/mandy_len_catron_a_better_way_to_talk_about_love?hasProgress=true&language=en. Accessed 4 Mar. 2024.

​

Sciberras, Ruby, and Claire Tanner. “‘Sex Is so Much More Than Penis in Vagina’: Sex Education, Pleasure and Ethical Erotics on Instagram.” Sex Education, vol. ahead-of-print, no. ahead-of-print, 2023, pp. 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2023.2199976.

​

Symes, Katerina. Orange Is the New Black: the Popularization of Lesbian Sexuality and Heterosexual Modes of Viewing. Feminist Media Studies. 17(1). 29-41.

​

Teichman, Michelle L. The Space Between. Ylva Publishing, 2016.

​

Zamon, Rebecca. “Toronto Touted as the 3rd Most LGBT-Friendly City in the World.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 27 June 2017, www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/toronto-lgbt-friendly_ca_5cd4df6de4b07bc72972cc5d.

​