The Cheer Leader was Jill McCorkle’s first novel, and it was published simultaneously with her second, July 7th, in 1985. Like most first novels, The Cheer Leader contains autobiographical elements. McCorkle, like her protagonist, grew up in North Carolina, where she was the popular girl in high school. The Cheer Leader is Jo Spencer, a beautiful, brainy girl with a supportive family and loyal friends. However, her coming-of-age in a small town in North Carolina is far from carefree.

The Cheer Leader is divided into four sections. The first portion of the novel consists of “snapshots,” in which Jo recalls the moments captured in old family photographs. In an informal, almost confessional voice, Jo tells us, “This is Mama,” and “I am upset in this picture.” This introduction to Jo’s family and friends frames our perceptions throughout the course of the novel. Jo’s references to Vacation Bible School, to overnight camp, and to her older brother surface repeatedly, and the poignancy of her recollections creates a remarkable intimacy between her and the reader. As a result, Jo emerges as a deeply introspective individual, whose commitment to popularity and to the superficial accolades of adolescence belies her intelligent and creative nature.

In the second part of the novel, Jo falls in love with the archetypal bad boy, Red Williams. Red is older and immersed in the drug culture of the early seventies, and for Jo, his refusal to play by the rules is refreshing and erotic. Yet as their relationship intensifies, Jo finds herself caught between her good-girl image, as May queen and A student, and her yearnings to abandon the demands of conformity altogether. As the title of the novel suggests, Jo is torn between her own desires and the labels imposed upon her by society. Unable to commit a rebellion of her own, Jo creates her identity through Red, and through him, she seeks to stake her claim to something meaningful, original, and adult.

By the third portion of the novel, Jo is in college and deeply troubled by the end of her romance with Red, as well as by the end of her high school years. No longer the most popular or the most beautiful, Jo feels anonymous. In fact, she does not even recognize herself. McCorkle strategically conveys this self-alienation, as Jo begins to narrate in the third person. Her introspective, candid voice becomes guarded and juvenile. Overwhelmed by the pressures of adulthood and utterly detached from her own needs, Jo structures her life around a series of rigid rules. As she explains, “The rules must be followed to a tee or something awful will happen” (167). Thus, Jo seeks order and control in a world that increasingly seems to evade her understanding. Jo’s struggle to regain the ordered simplicity of childhood results in a full-fledged nervous breakdown and leaves her in therapy.

By the novel’s end, Jo is in graduate school, and as she brews some tea and muses about her college years, she exudes the self-assurance of a strong adult. Although she remains unmarried and unsure about her future, she confesses, “At least right now I know that I am a little bit of everything I’ve ever been” (266). As a result of McCorkle’s skillful narrative technique, we know exactly what she means. Critics usually locate McCorkle in the context of her southern background, and certainly The Cheer Leader can be read as comment on the cultural climate of the American South in the 1970s. However, this novel also deserves consideration as a traditional coming-of-age novel. Like Holden Caulfield and Marjorie Morningstar, Jo Spencer navigates the unpredictable terrain between innocence and experience. Additionally, the novel’s frequent allusions to feminist thinkers and Jo’s difficulty imagining herself in a society that wants to define her as an “either/or” makes The Cheer Leader an ideal candidate for a feminist reading.

Sources

Bennett, Barbara. Understanding Jill McCorkle. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000.

McCorkle, Jill. The Cheer Leader. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1985.

Categories: Literature, Novel Analysis

Tags: adolescence and identity, adolescence in American fiction, American women writers, Analysis of Jill McCorkle’s The Cheer Leader, Bildungsroman, Bildungsroman in American literature, coming-of-age novel, contemporary American fiction, Criticism of Jill McCorkle’s The Cheer Leader, Essays of Jill McCorkle's The Cheer Leader, Essays on Jill McCorkle’s The Cheer Leader, feminist reading of The Cheer Leader, identity and self-discovery, Jill McCorkle, Jill McCorkle novels, Jill McCorkle's The Cheer Leader, Jo Spencer character analysis, North Carolina literature, North Carolina novels, Plot of Jill McCorkle’s The Cheer Leader, Southern fiction, Southern literature, Summary of Jill McCorkle’s The Cheer Leader, The Cheer Leader analysis, Themes of Jill McCorkle’s The Cheer Leader, women's literature