Caroline, in Her Life as She Knew It isn't, I don't think, a mean girl in the modern sense, though her friend Jenny was. Caroline followed Jenny because she wanted to please her mother, who valued Caroline's friendship with a prominent family. Caroline was never mean herself, even when she was in high school. She never got satisfaction from Jenny's ostracizing other girls and she never for a moment let herself think what Jenny did was right. You might remember the comment she made about not letting her father find out what she and Jenny had done at one point. But Caroline is pulled in two directions by the anger in her home. She wants her mother to be happy, wants to please her and perhaps bring peace to her parents' deeply troubled marriage.
After Jenny dies--for reasons that the reader won't understand until close to the end of the book--Caroline lashes out because she's hurt and angry. She's been ostracized herself for something she had no control over, yet she can do nothing about it until she begins writing her column for the Guilford Tribune.
More later on why Caroline does what she does.
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