A Mock Review of Christian Fiction Novel, Pure
Pure by Terra Elan McVoy, 2009
Publisher: Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division)
Christian fiction . . . a genre I used to check out from my evangelical church’s library and read in the privacy of my bedroom while strapped into a chastity belt. This genre’s got everything: morals, rules, guidelines, and even restrictions!
It’s been at least fifteen years since I read any Christian fiction, but I thought it’d be fun to see what’s been published in the way of purity tales since I left the Church (c. 2007). These are books that try to make abstaining from sex until marriage sound hip and subversive. And boy howdy! After reading Pure by Christian author Terra Elan McVoy, I confronted my husband with the novel idea that we become born-again virgins. Wouldn’t it be so hot, I conjectured, if we stopped having sex? All that tension would build up just like it did in high school when you’re liable to get so pent up you either cum in your shorts during science class or punch a locker for some kind of release. So we tried it (for about 24 hours) and it worked! We became ravenous and heated like wild dogs in the desert. Thanks, Ms. McVoy!
Despite the puritanical bent of this book (not including that suggestive cover!), I’ll admit that I enjoyed it. With caveats.
Pure follows 15-year-old Tabitha, whose parents are open-minded liberals who don’t “get” religious devotion. She has a close, communicative relationship with them, but she struggles with frustration over their ignorance about her motives to remain pure for Christ. They let their daughter be who she feels she is, while engaging in earnest discussions about her faith. (They sound like the type of parents who might also—gasp!—vote democrat.)
The hot new trend amongst Tabitha’s friends is “purity rings”—rings you wear on your wedding finger to show your devotion to keeping your thighs closed until your wedding night. One of Tabitha’s wealthier friends designs a purity ring for herself that’s so extravagant that Tabitha presumes it will “blind everyone with the Way, the Truth, and the Light.” Another friend, Naeomi, comments that the ring is “Jesus bling.” (Does the author indeed have a sense of humor about purity culture? If so, kudos, Ms. McVoy!)
Over the course of the novel, Tabitha has two significant shifts in perspective. First, when she meets a non-religious boy who she decides to date. She doesn’t feel like she can tell her friends about him because she’s not sure it’s okay to like him, despite the fact that he respects her boundaries. Eventually the two of them have their first kiss, which she then confides to her dad in the strangest scene in the book when her dad knocks on her bedroom door to say goodnight. He calls her “Twink” and sits on her bed to stroke her back. Tabitha says, “I kissed a boy last night, Dad. And I really like him.” He keeps stroking her back, un-phased by the news, and tells her he trusts that she can make her own decisions.
I wanted to like this scene—a scene that shows an encouraging, supportive father—but I couldn’t shake the creepy vibes I got from the multiple mentions of his back-stroking. It’s likely that this is the author’s idea of a good father-daughter relationship, but considering Tabitha’s age, the scene triggered images of sexual abuse. I’m not saying this was the intent, but it was an odd choice.
Other cringe-worthy moments in the book come from the countless bizarre uses of language and sentence structure. Some examples:
“My throat gathers itself around a crying and I have to look away.”
“I hate the way my chin is jiving around itself.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just kind of heeberdeederb right now.”
The second, and more significant shift in Tabitha’s perspective, is when she learns that her friend Cara broke “the code” and had sex with her boyfriend. Tabitha is baffled, and she can only think about how “Cara had sex.” She reflects on how she was sitting next to Cara just the other day, with her arm around her, while the whole time Cara “was completely changed forever,” and Tabitha had no idea. It shocks her that “something so completely major could happen, and nobody could even see.” She reminds herself that “the world doesn’t revolve around purity rings.” A solid point.
This plot with Cara hit home for me, recalling the day my high school best friend confided in me that she was pregnant. I hadn’t known she’d been having sex and I couldn’t get over the fact that she’d gone and done something (repeatedly) that I was so actively avoiding lest God decide I deserved an asexual husband as punishment for my pre-marital behavior. I wrote this about it in my diary when I was sixteen:
Oh Lord, my best friend is pregnant! Pregnant! Oh, God—this is so unreal! Not My friend. This only happens in the movies, right? No. In my world, sex before marriage is the devil. I don’t understand how Holly could’ve been having sex. I guess it really has a lot to do with how close you are in your relationship with Christ. Lord, this changes her whole life! I’ve only witnessed this with co-workers and girls I didn’t know at school. But Holly’s a Christian! I can’t believe she’s had sex—and I can’t believe she’s pregnant! To think, my best friend’s having a baby.
It felt like Tabitha was channeling my teenage self when she expresses: “It hits me—from now on Cara will have feelings that I can’t comprehend, at least not until I get married. A million questions stir up in me, things I want to ask her, want her to explain. What did it feel like, of course, and did it really hurt? Will they do it again now, all the time, or was it just a one-time thing? Is it weird to see a boy naked? And more than that. Like, what is it like to love someone that much, to feel something so strongly and with so much conviction, that you’d be willing to break your promise even to God?”
Just as Tabitha does after finding out about Cara, I sought out a spiritual leader to process my feelings about my friend and try to understand what was right in the eyes of God. But whereas my spiritual leader (my pastor’s wife) boiled the situation down to Holly’s sins “finding her out,” Tabitha’s spiritual guide, Marilyn, suggests that it’s up to us to pray and decide what’s right for ourselves. Even Christ grappled with deciding what was right. (Kudos again, McVoy! I believe if I’d been offered even this level of open-minded guidance from my spiritual teachers, I would’ve felt less shame for questioning the gray area between right and wrong.)
I further respect the author’s choice to have Tabitha admit that Cara’s slip-up could’ve just as easily been something that she, or one of her other friends did.
In regards to having sex, Cara (who’s been forced to split up with her boyfriend) expresses that she’s “not sorry for being in love. Or for acting on it.” But she is sorry for letting everyone in her life down. Tabitha asks if Cara will have sex again. Cara admits that she doesn’t know and she can’t definitively say because we make decisions depending on the circumstance.
Throughout the book, McVoy implies that sex is only valid if the girl is in love and can see herself marrying the guy she sleeps with. However, what the author doesn’t do is insist that sex can only happen after you’re married. Considering the purity messages I was raised with, this seems like a step in a more hopeful direction (if not still damaging in its own regard).
Tabitha concludes her emotional narrative by saying, “This has all been really confusing. And I still don’t know all the way what I feel about everything yet. I mean, it feels like, sometimes, everyone’s right. And I think I have to decide, kind of, on my own.”
Overall, Pure encourages self-exploration and analytical thought, testing what feels right for yourself, and practicing positive communication skills. It makes a point to emphasize the importance of relationship over symbolism (purity rings), and it allows room for doubt and questioning. If I’d read this as a Christian teen, I think the book would’ve helped me focus less on shame and more on the diversity of individual experience. In the way of Christian fiction, you could find much worse.
