The character of Bubba provides a contrast to Olive’s determined and desperate clinging to her youth. Over the course of the play, Bubba becomes Kathie. The little five-year-old she was when the group began is evoked though the reminiscences of the other characters and she is, at twenty-two, now the same age as Olive was when the summer seasons began. She is ‘shy-looking’, eager and affectionate, but also ready to enter adulthood. Although she is easily daunted by the censorious Pearl and treats Barney and Roo as her uncles, Bubba is drawn into showing grown-up dignity at the end of the play when Johnny Dowd treats her as an adult. Roo recognizes the change in her when she insists on meeting Dowd and asserting her independence: ‘Little Bubba- you’ve outgrown the lot of us, haven’t you?’
Emma in her forthright wisdom describes Nancy’s abandonment of the group as good sense:’ She knew which way the wind was blow in ’, that one’. Although the others think of her as a goodtime girl, Nancy has been the only member of the group to look to her future, seeing herself as getting too old for romantic flings and settling for marriage with ‘that- book bloke’. The absent member of the foursome, Nancy’s quick- witted humour and energy are missed by the others and Olive wonders if she regrets her decision to trade romance for security. Her leaving the group has been the catalyst for its breakdown, but Emma points out the inevitability of this ending: ’Nancy got out while the going was good, that’s what Nancy did.’
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll presents a bleak view of the ageing process. Loss, infirmity and humiliation seem to be inevitable by-products of ageing, and people who have seen themselves as invincible because of their youth and confidence have to accept these changes, not just physically, but as part of an altered self. Nancy accommodates these changes by settling for the security of respectability and marriage; Roo finds the dignity to become (as he sees it) a lesser man; while Barney continues to evade the truth about himself. As Bubba takes on the future with hope and determination, the play shows us that youth itself is a glorious summer season, but that it is not a permanent part of identity. It must be relinquished in the end and we must learn to see ourselves in other lights.
One of the paradoxes of belonging seems to be that the stronger and more affirmed a person feels as a result of being part of a group, and likely they are to feel devastated if that connection is broken. We speak of ‘heartbreak’ using an image of terrible physical rupture, at the end of a love affair, when the intensity of the twosome is gone. When an individual is no longer the beloved, they are likely to see themselves as unloved and alone, even perhaps (for a time) as unlovable. To a lesser degree, people can suffer vulnerability about who they are when other connections fail. Leaving a familiar community, finishing school or breaking up with a group of friends can all threaten our sense of who we are, how we operate in the world and how others perceive us.
