56 pages • 1-hour read
Sunburn
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of antigay bias, sexual content, and substance use.
Overcoming Obstacles in Forbidden Love
Sunburn sets up Lucy’s romance with Susannah as a forbidden love, one that is not accepted by their community. Further, Lucy understands this framework in contrast to the assumed heteronormativity of Crossmore’s society. Early on, Lucy notes how she fantasized about kissing Martin at a ceremony, adding, “I don’t even think anybody would have been too upset with me if I had kissed him. It would probably have been funny and well-remembered” (9). Lucy understands that the town is open to sexuality and affection, so long as it fits within the prescribed norms of their society. This underscores how heteronormativity is framed as a social reward system—compliance grants approval, while deviation invites rejection. Throughout the novel, Lucy remarks on how any affection she shows Martin will be met with approval, culminating in her decision to kiss Martin in front of her mother, an act that seemingly remedies the damage done by Lucy and Susannah’s relationship. However, the obstacles blocking Lucy from fulfilling her love with Susannah are broad, encompassing her family, friends, and even herself.
Lucy’s friends are a huge influence on her identity and sense of self, and their approval is important to Lucy. She notes, “Without the girls, I don’t know who I would be…These rigid and clear paths. I want to be tied down to my path” (72), linking her friendship with the girls as a means to cement herself and her life in a specific “path.” This connection between Lucy’s identity and the group of girls is one of the key differences between her and Susannah, and Lucy acknowledges this difference, thinking, “I love the girls more than I love myself, but they would not love me if they knew,” adding that “Susannah must also know this” (105). The difference between Lucy and Susannah is that Susannah is comfortable with herself, and she sees herself as a full person participating in a group of full people. However, Lucy sees herself as a partial person, dependent on the approval and love of others to feel real. This dependence turns love into a social performance for Lucy, where sustaining group belonging often outweighs personal authenticity. The girls are all obsessed with boys, and Lucy plays along to appease them and make sure that they continue to include her in the group.
Though her mother, Martin, and the girls all play a role in preventing Lucy from openly loving Susannah, Lucy is her own biggest obstacle. When she finally reflects on her sexuality and her love for Susannah, she thinks, “How can I fix this? Do I want it fixed? […] What is there to fix? There is evil in my yearning, I know, I just can’t see where yet” (74). The fact that Lucy assumes her love is “evil” is born from her upbringing, her family, and her friends, but she is not yet ready to examine this obstacle within herself. Here, internalized antigay bias functions almost like an inherited superstition, something that Lucy accepts as fact without yet locating its origin. When she says that she cannot see “where” the evil is “yet,” she is close to seeing how the evil is only outside of herself in the words and actions of others. Even when Evelyn tells Lucy, “Girl, there’s no such thing as sin,” Lucy thinks, “I am the meaning of sin, I don’t need her to define it for me” (205), but the “sin” Lucy feels is no longer rooted in her love for Susannah. Instead, in the final section of the novel, Lucy realizes that her true “sin” was being the obstacle between her and Susannah. The reframing of sin from a moral transgression to an act of self-betrayal signals Lucy’s moral awakening. Her regret is no longer that she is in love with a woman but that she could not accept her love earlier.
The Challenge of Identity in Small Communities
In the beginning of the novel, Lucy is concerned with fitting in, and Crossmore is a small, tight-knit community in which differences are rarely accepted. Lucy worries that her “newfound admiration for drinking, the threat of a blundered attempt at sex, and the incurable frustration” she feels will drive her mother away (8), even as these same traits bring her closer to her friends. Lucy wonders if her mother did these same things when she was younger, but she fails to realize how small communities do not just allow an acceptable range of behavior; they use this range as a way to restrict further deviations from the norms of the town. This creates a false sense of freedom in which teenagers can “rebel” in pre-approved ways, but anything outside that narrow scope becomes socially dangerous. Lucy is expected to drink a little too much, smoke cigarettes, disagree with her parents, crave independence, and have sex with boys, specifically. These actions all fall within the expected range of teenage behaviors, but deviating from these norms too much, such as having sex with another girl, pushes Lucy outside what is accepted in her town. Lucy’s main struggle for most of the novel is how to reconcile her true identity, which loves Susannah, with the hypothetical Lucy that she was “supposed” to be, who would love Martin.
Implicitly, Martin is a representation of Crossmore, while Susannah is a representation of the broader world. Susannah consistently reminds Lucy that there are people, cultures, and ways of living outside of Crossmore, even if Lucy cannot imagine them. Susannah’s worldliness exposes the parochialism of Crossmore, making Lucy’s attachment to her hometown feel both comforting and suffocating. Lucy even acknowledges that Crossmore is not the center of the universe, but she cannot help her attachment to the town. When Martin returns from Crossmore after New Year, Lucy smells Crossmore on his clothes, and it forces her to waver from her determination to leave him for Susannah. She thinks, “If I close my eyes now, I might never open them again. I close them…I love him” (230). Lucy associates her love for Martin with Crossmore and Crossmore with her own identity. In many ways, Lucy feels that she is the girl she imagines she could have been, fitting in with all the traits and requirements of Crossmore small society. So much of her hesitation in choosing between Martin or Susannah is rooted in this indecision since Lucy feels that being her true self and loving Susannah will push her away from the home she desperately wants to fit into.
In the end, the consequences of failing to meet the standards of a small town become evident in Martin’s report from Crossmore. Martin tells Lucy, “Do you know what they were saying? […] They were all telling me that you used to ride Susannah O’Shea. Maria Kealy was after telling everyone” (236-37). In a small town, hiding a secret such as Lucy’s is difficult, and with Susannah’s confession to Maria, the secret gets out. The betrayal by Maria, once idealized as almost divine, signals the collapse of Lucy’s belief that love and loyalty in Crossmore can transcend its unwritten rules. As soon as any evidence comes to light that shows that Lucy is not actually a “true” member of the Crossmore community, even her closest friends turn on her. As a result, Lucy’s return to Crossmore does not include Maria, Martin, or Lucy’s mother. Lucy goes directly to Croft Hall, which is seen as a separate world from Crossmore for the entire novel, finding Susannah without considering or discussing it with anyone else. By isolating herself from the community, Lucy starts to unshackle herself from their expectations, allowing her to start building a new identity.
The Significance of Sexual Awakening
Lucy’s sexual development is intrinsically tied to her romance with Susannah, and her realization that she loves Susannah is often paired with similar realizations about her own sexual attraction. When Lucy imagines the warmth and wetness of Susannah’s mouth, she thinks, “What a though to think! How suddenly and vehemently I think it. And how hot my cheeks are” (16), and her embarrassment is symptomatic of the beginning of her lustful feelings for Susannah. She is both ashamed to have sexual thoughts and ashamed that those thoughts are directed at another girl, but she cannot deny the excitement and obsession she feels from this point onward. This early fusion of desire and shame sets the emotional stakes for the rest of the novel, making physical intimacy both liberating and perilous for Lucy. As the other girls start to have sex, Lucy begins to understand that “sex may not be the sacred union that [she] once imagined it to be” (44), but this reaction is almost cynical, and it does not fit with her later descriptions of sex with Susannah as “divine,” “sacred,” and “complete.” Instead, the significance of Lucy’s sexual awakening lies in her need to accept her own desires and pursue them, much as her conflict with her identity and romance is rooted in her desire to deny her own sexuality.
When Lucy starts having sex with Susannah, it is not discussed in the text. No specific moment marks the point when they have sex for the first time; Lucy simply begins mentioning their sexual lives as they grow closer together. Instead, Lucy provides details on her and Susannah’s first kiss, saying, “It is simple. It is natural. I move, I kiss her. This instant is eternal” (97), again using religious terminology, “eternal,” to describe their attraction and, most importantly, calling the kiss “natural.” By labeling the kiss “natural,” Lucy briefly rejects the societal scripts that have defined her desires as deviant. As Lucy begins to understand her feelings, and the fact that Susannah returns these feelings, she says, “For the first time in my life, I am not afraid to be seen for what I am” (98). Being herself is difficult for Lucy, and her sexual awakening is one of the keys to unlocking her true happiness. Being with Susannah physically is not only pleasure but also a heightened state of herself, in which she is no longer afraid of not fitting in, going nowhere in life, or disappointing anyone.
Later, sex remains a way for Lucy to escape from the false identity she projects with Martin, and she uses Geraldine as a means of this escape. However, Geraldine does not match the freedom and pleasure that Lucy finds with Susannah. In one respect, this attachment could be simple custom; Lucy is most accustomed to sex with Susannah and finds sex with Geraldine different. However, the attachment that Howarth places on Lucy’s identity and her sexuality indicates a greater importance to Lucy’s awakening. She is not just attracted to women; she is specifically attracted to Susannah above all other women. This attachment is also fierce and jealous, as shown in Lucy’s reaction to Susannah sleeping with Julian. Lucy thinks, “Hideous…Julian might give her everything I could not. Let him” (218). This jealousy reveals the extent to which Lucy’s sexual awakening is intertwined with emotional dependency; Susannah is not just her first love but the axis around which Lucy’s sense of self revolves. Lucy is realizing that she cannot claim Susannah without giving all of herself to her, and she fears that Julian might make Susannah feel as free and alive as Susannah made Lucy feel. This final step in Lucy’s awakening is what ultimately pushes her to reject Martin and Geraldine, choosing Susannah above anyone else and beginning her authentic life.
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