Erin Wolverton

A Whirlwind of Dualities: The Short Fiction of Dorothy Parker, 1924-1929

Historically, Dorothy Parker has been denied a place in the literary canon. Pigeonholing her as a humorist and as a writer of womens stories, two designations that on their own may invalidate a writers achievementbut, taken together, wholly negate itcritics have ignored the greater complexities of her work. Nancy Walker, a scholar of womens humor, observes that the central problem of the female humorist in America [is] the fact that humor is at odds with the conventional definition of ideal womanhood. Humor is aggressive; women are passive. The humorist occupies a position of superiority; women are inferior (Walker Serious 12). Complicating the issue is Parkers particular brand of humor. In contrast to acceptable womens humor at the turn of the centurygentle jokes about dieting and domestic responsibilities Parkers writings were dark and ruthless, often disturbing, and branded unfeminine. Parker was marked to fail both as a humorist and as a woman, and even as a woman humorist. But with characteristic excess, Parker did not stop there. Parker first wrote in the late teens and 1920s, a period of literary overhaulwhen one trend, modernism, was in the process of overtaking another, sentimentalism. Rendering herself even more unclassifiable, Parker chose to pull literary techniques from both schools of thought. Employing some of the hallmarks of sentimental literature, Parker wrote woman-centered work, and she played on the emotions of her readers. Romantic relationships and their disastrous consequences are at the heart of nearly every story Parker published; that record remains throughout her entire career, though the 1920s found plots of thwarted romance especially plentiful.1 It can also be said that much of Parkers work is brashly emotionalsome of her women lash out, some cry, some lament, but almost all of them are sad. One of the most common contemporary criticisms of her poetry and prose was that they carried what Rhonda Pettit calls a sentimental infection (Pettit Collision). Characters such as weepy Hazel Morse were certainly out of the realm of understanding for the masculine modernists.

This may have quite a bit to do with Parkers own experience in the dating pool; though was married to Edwin Pond Parker for the majority of the 1920s, the time they actually spent together was negligible, and she was linked with many romantic partners.

Yet, much about Parkers work is modernist; her he said/she said stories are quite experimental. These stories were dialogue-driven and arranged like theater set pieces; a setting may or may not be established at the beginning, but once it is, the only developments occur in the characters speech. The stories tend towards two charactersone male, one female (thus he said/she said) and generally they speak in ways which are incomprehensible to each other. Cathy Fagan notes that Parker examined the moment in which her characters reveal who they are by the very language they employ to disguise themselves (Fagan 236). These hybrid pieces are absolutely original for their time; they could almost be considered multi-genre, as they might have been easily adapted to the stage as short sketches. 2 In A Gendered Collision (2000), Pettit characterizes this expansive career as a collision of the two stylesmodernism and sentimentalism. Critic Jessica Burstein disagrees that the styles must necessarily collide, characterizing Parkers style as more of a co-mingling of sentimentalism and modernism. She demonstrates how Parker unapologetically owned up to her sentimentality, but undercut it by foregrounding the blas (Burstein 233). Parker pulled off the ne plus ultra of sophistication [the avant-garde] by virtue of disdaining it (Burstein 235). How could a cynic be a sentimentalist? Parkers blending of the modernist and sentimentalist trends is indicative of greater dichotomies in Parkers work. By noting this, Burstein touches upon the core of Parkers accomplishmentthe unexpected dualities that she presented organically and seamlessly. Dorothy Parker is the girl with the razor wit and the eggshell heart, and both elements were consistently present in every piece of work that she published. Through a collection of oftvisited juxtapositionsmasculine and feminine, black and white, rich and poor, public and private lifeParker foregrounded the uncomfortable moments when two opposing forces rub together in conflict. These dichotomies, examined in selections from Parkers short fiction, produced between 1924 and 1929, portray the reality of living, and being a woman, in 1920s America.

Unwilling Partners in Courtship: Men and Women

The he said/she said story Here We Are was adapted for the stage in its year of publication, 1931. Parker also wrote or collaborated on a number of original plays, most notably The Coast of Illyria (1949) and The Ladies of the Corridor (1953).

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Parkers most popular storiesand the ones which were most commonly labeled as humorwere the ones she wrote about men and women. The Last Tea (1926) falls into the he said/she said category. First published in The New Yorker, the story shows a young man (he) arriving at a caf where he is to meet a young lady, who has been waiting forty minutes for him to show up. Immediately, the young woman (she) reveals her motivations by her reaction: I just got here myself, just about a second ago (Parker 49)3. She is adhering to the rules of courtship which state that women must strive to be accommodating and good-natured by lying to him. By making him feel better about his transgression, she can make herself seem agreeable, stroke his ego; her lie also helps her to protect her own ego (because who wants to admit they waited forty minutes?). This date, if it was in fact a date, devolves quickly as he reveals that he was at a party the night before with another woman, and is, in fact, quite interested in the other woman. The girl is disadvantaged here by the nature of male-dominated courtship, so she has no dignified reaction to this news except an urge to compete. She dismisses the idea that the other womanCarolis good-looking (I never heard of anyone that thought she was pretty (Parker 50)), and professes to find it disgusting that Carol can hold her liquor (Parker 51) impressively. She speaks to two cultures at once when she informs him that Carol is much older than she is: both 1920s social culture, which valued youth, and feminine culture, which equates beauty with youth. Her language is also heavily coded when she tries to attract or placate him. When he professes to be ill, she responds in baby talk: Was it feelin mizzable? (Parker 49) She patronizes him here to hide her own insecurities about her position with him, and de-genders him (with it) to subtly de-power him. But, at the same time, the baby talk cant be taken out of its rightful contextspoken to a baby, so it may also represent the womans misplaced maternal longings or a wish to appear maternal to him, in the hopes of attracting him. One of her most unguarded moments occurs when he seems displeased with her testiness. Whats there to crab about? he asks (Parker 51) and she immediately sugarcoats. I hate to see you wasting your time with people that arent nearly good enough for you. Thats all (Parker 51). The idea of her as being crabby is distasteful to herprobably partly because it doesnt fit in with her idea of herself, and probably mostly because being a crab would violate the rules of courtship that she

All citations for (Parker) refer to the Collected Stories. Quotations from The Portable Dorothy Parker are designated as (Parker Portable).

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follows so religiously. She flatters him to the end, because to have a man think ill of her would be unforgivable. These characters experience a disconnect in their language, which is heavily genderbased. For example, when she asks who he met with the night before, Man or woman? he replies Dame, technically a neither response. In fact, they seem utterly helpless in their attempt to communicate with each other; so many of his statements manage to be insulting that on first reading, one cant help but assume that they must be unintentional. An example of this is when she coos over him for showing up after he professed to be sick. Her tone implies that she is flattered by the sacrifice, but he lays that idea to rest quickly with his response: I might as well be here as any place else (Parker 49). In fact, every time she begins to feel surer of her place in his affection, he brings up the temptress, Carol, another time. This conversational maneuver is so perfectly executed, so manifest through the whole story, that ultimately a reader must acknowledge that he is performing this subtle rejection on purpose. He consistently one-ups her with emotional punches. Perhaps this is his way of ending the relationship, or perhaps he was never that interested in her to begin with. Regardless, the fight is not a fair one, both because he (certainly the instigator, as the person who showed up late, downplayed why he came, and brought up Carol) knew to expect the fight, and also because of the way her cultural role handicaps her. She is forced to compete both with Carol and with his expectations. Meanwhile, his manner seems cool and collected throughout the entire

conversation, even as he baits her with his remarks. He has nothing really to do except sit and let her compete, throwing out hurdles whenever he gets the chance. The characters part in a seemingly amicable way, which is another staple of the he said/she said story. Even though the characters have revealed their inner antipathy for each other, though both can come away from the interview feeling that any semblance of a relationship they may have had has taken a severe hit, they do not pierce the surface politeness. They are handicapped in their attempt at courtship by the altered spirit of modern courtship. Historian Nathan Miller confirms that, the changing nature of marriage turned out to be a twoedged sword, for some men were unable or unprepared to adjust to the demands and attitudes of the new woman (Miller, Nathan 270). The demands and attitudes of the New Woman, conflicting as they did with the demands and attitudes of the prior generations woman, made for her a great deal of frustration.

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A Telephone Call (1928) uses a comedic exaggeration of that frustration to underlie the seriousness of the cultural condition in which women of the 1920s found themselves. The exaggeration appears in the form of a young woman who, expecting but not having received a phone call from her boyfriend, pleads to God to make the phone ring. Contemporary audiences probably laughed at the protagonists predicament, inconsequential as it seemed. The

protagonist herself acknowledges this: Look. Suppose a young man says hell call a girl up, and then something happens, and he doesnt. That isnt so terrible, is it? Why, its going on all over the world, right this minute (Parker 82). Still, her attempt to see the bigger picture cannot hold her. She finishes, Oh, what do I care whats going on all over the world? (Parker 82) Probably this characters world has never been expanded by work, travel, or friends. Absent from the public sphere, she has been

culturally programmed to wait for someone to find her in her private sphere. This feminine education has taken a strong hold of her, and she admonishes herself frequently for her instinct to take control of the situation, and call him herself. I know you shouldnt keep telephoning themI know they dont like that, (Parker 81) she says early on. By the final paragraphs of the story, she has become desperate: Ill call him up, and be so easy and pleasant. You see if I wont, God. Oh, dont let me call him. Dont, dont, dont (Parker 85). The theme of power runs all through this short monologue. The female character feels frustration, sadness, and rage at the power this man has over her. Because of this, Parkers inclusion of God as, basically, the third character in the story is not coincidental. Notes critic Sondra Melzer, because man has created a male God who in both daily worship and prayer is portrayed in masculine terms, (Melzer 54) woman is left out in the cold, othered by the most Supreme Being. The protagonist of A Telephone Call thus cries out for mercy to one (God) as a substitute for the other (man). Different critics have addressed the protagonists loss of power and from where it originates. Melzer looks at the female characters slightly veiled admission that she has recently had sex with the man whose call she awaits. For a woman, physical love often implies a sense of loss, writes Melzer, as in the loss of virginity, the loss of reputation, the loss of purity (Melzer 60). Clearly, the character is wrestling with all those losses. Are You punishing me, God, because Ive been bad? Are You angry with me because I did that? (Parker 82)

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Other critics have argued that Parkers characters suffer only from their own weaknesses. Ken Johnson removes the patriarchy from the equation entirely, suggesting that the lockdown experienced by some of Parkers characters (including the heroine of A Telephone Call) is entirely self-imposed: Such limitations come about through an inability to rise above or see beyond obsession and pettiness (Johnson 68). Emily Toth writes that Parker reserved most of her criticism for people who chose to be ridiculous (Toth Feminist Humor 142) but doesnt express a particular opinion on whether we can consider A Telephone Call to be critical of the woman who waits; the absence of a narrative voice in the story leaves readers undirected by the author on this issue. I can see evidence of both criticism and compassion from Parkers authorial choices. The main characters vulnerability exposes her to some behavior that could be characterized as childish, for example, her superstitious belief in messages from God: If he doesnt telephone me, Ill know God is angry with me (Parker 83). She has no logical reason to equate a missed phone call with Gods disapproval, but children often have an instinct to assume fault in an unhappy situation. This childish response is seen especially in the speakers time-passing

occupation of counting to five hundred by fives, a common exercise for a child learning their multiplication tables, but something adults rarely find reason to do. This infantilizing of the main character could be a subtle criticism, suggesting that she needs to grow up and actively better her own situation. Yet, in that counting, the character reveals one weakness for which the character cant be fully held responsible: her idleness. The tedium of her existence, probably a major reason for her obsession with the phone call, is apparent in this line: I must think about something else. This is what Ill do. Ill put the clock in the other room. Then I cant look at it. If I do have to look at it, then Ill have to walk into the bedroom, and that will be something to do (Parker 82). The comparison between this idleness and her boyfriends bustling career (he was busy, and he was in a hurry, and there were people around him (Parker 81)) reveals a disparity in the characters social capital. One who is busy will be often doing something else when sought after, and be able to choose to which occupation they give their attention. The woman is always waiting for stimulation, always to be found in the same placea missed connection for her is always a direct rejection. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows

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Im waiting here. Hes so sure of me, so sure (Parker 84). Because he is sure of her, he easily takes her for granted.

Women Invade a Male Marketplace: Economic Inequality

The womans idle hands versus her boyfriends relative importance in the business world are a subtle comment on what Parker sees as a male-dominated economy. The 1920s were also a period of economic boom (albeit, a boom that would terminate in the stock market crash of 1929 and mire the country into a decade-long economic depression). The preponderance of wealth was distributed mostly among the white, the privileged, and the male. It was fairly common for women to work outside the home in the 1920sNathan Miller suggests that 20% of American workers were women in 1927 (Miller, Nathan 255)yet their positions tended towards the entry-level, the secretarial, and the service industries. Trailblazing women fought for better jobs and better wages, but, by and large, the American people preferred to keep women down. For middle class and wealthy women,

working still carried a social taboo. Martha Patterson shows that even the New Woman, allowed to explore both domestic arrangements and career life, was expected to prioritize the former over the latter (Patterson 2). Despite the waves of change, society still put a lot of credence into the separate spheres concept, a holdover from the 19th century which reinforced the importance of the family unit and the importance of the womans role in maintaining the unit. Unfortunately, this robbed a lot of women of the opportunity to find fulfilling activity outside the home, and to experience the confidence that accompanies self-determination. Rhonda S. Pettit looks at the lurking menace of the male-dominated economy in her article, Material Girls in the Jazz Age: Dorothy Parkers Big Blonde as an Answer to Anita Loos Gentlemen Prefer Blondes from Pettits editorial endeavor, A Critical Waltz. Pettit looks at Parkers story and Loos 1925 novel, noting the basic similarity of the plots, both about a blonde woman attempting to find a man to support her. Pettit highlights where the similarities end, by questioning how those two blondes could be working their way through the same world, with such divergent results. Writes Pettit, Parkermust have recognizedthe danger of

[Looss] false depiction of female success within patriarchal capitalism. Big Blonde answers Loreleis [the protagonist of Looss novel] well-executed but glib success by offering a much

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harsher critique of the commoditization of women (Pettit Material 84). These two differing viewpoints are probably somewhat due to the differing ways Parker and Loos saw the world, but also the differing intentions Parker and Loos had for their works. Loos seems to have sought to entertain and satirize the social trend of the gold-digger. Parker undoubtedly meant to imbue her work with a sense of the reality of womans place in a business-oriented society. Foregrounding the workplace/economy as a tool of male domination is Parkers early story, Mr. Durant (1924). The tale of a man who ends a casual affair with a secretary when she becomes pregnant, Mr. Durant personifies the power a man, labeled successful in the workplace, wields over a woman who dares to step foot in that masculine arena. Parkers masculinization of the American workplace is accomplished largely through the sexual imagery of the industrial setting of Mr. Durant and Roses employment. Colleen Breese and Sondra Melzer both mark the rubber works as a reference to condoms (Breese 28; Melzer 30). Melzer goes on to examine Parkers descriptions of the plant as a solid red pilerising impressively into the darkness (in Parker 23; Melzer 30). The rubber works have been

deliberately described to lionize the phallus, equating man with power, and leaving woman in a subordinate position. Rose, the secretary, is subordinated both by the masculine plant and by a masculine seducer, Mr. Durant. Rose is not Mr. Durants secretary. She is borrowed from another office in the plant (her work clearly objectified) and that was how Rose had come to him (Parker 24). Though Durant is not important enough to merit his own secretary, he is important enough to request one, and have her delivered as though ordered out of a catalog. The narrator makes a point to inform us how Durant was first attracted to Rose as she bent over her work, her back showing white through her sleazy blouse, her clean hair coiled smoothly on her thin neck, her straight, childish legs crossed at the knee to support her pad (Parker 24). Their sexual meetings occur in the office, after hours, with the two feigning legitimate work to be done. Even Roses stance in the early stage of the relationship is professional: She never thought of stirring up any trouble between him and his wife, never besought him to leave his family and go away with her, even for a day (Parker 25). Durant has clearly fetishized the image of the working woman and his ultimate rejection of Rose occurs only when she breaks that faade. She visits Mr. Durants office and, she wept, as he sweepingly put it, all over the place (Parker 26). Her unexpected pregnancy, as well as

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her uncharacteristic emotion, has jolted them out of the comfort of the workplace dalliance and into the uncomfortable territory of domesticity. Whats interesting is that Durants domestic ideals are yoked to his workplace chauvinism. He speaks of his relationship with Rose as an entanglement of the most restful, comfortable nature. It even held a sort of homelike quality, for him (Parker 26). His obvious supremacy over his wife belies the notion that he respects domesticity, showing that he respects the clear male-dominance of his vision of domesticity. The walls of his study at homepapered red, creating a womb-like qualityare hung with perverse images of women and ornamental pipe racks, establishing the inner confusion Durant feels about women. He cant reconcile the lust and the misogyny that he feels in equal measure, and that conflict finds voice in his dismissal of the female puppy brought home by his children. Disgusting, he repeated. You have a female around, and you know what happens. All the males in the neighborhood will be running after her. First thing you know, shed be having puppies (Parker 32). This indicates the inevitability of Rose and Mr. Durants respective conclusions. Rose feels compelled to leave the rubber works, loathing the sight of a place where she has been so mistreated (Parker 28). Meanwhile, our final image of Durant is one of perfect domestic harmony: having dispatched of the troublesome puppy, he places an arm possessively over the shoulder of his wife and they move purposefully into the next room to consume the dinner carefully prepared by his wife (Parker 32).

Minority Culture in Parkers Bourgeois World

In addition to the power struggles occurring between men and women during the Jazz Age, minorities also sought recognition in the social world, the business world, and the cultural world; recognition they felt they had been historically denied. White response to this

phenomenon was mixed, to say the least. A segment of the white population strategized as to how they might actively keep the minorities down, and racism was practiced openly among people, a problem Parker found very serious. Yet Parkers story Arrangement in Black and White (1927) is actually about a different, and just as insidious, kind of racism that she must have found equally alarming: the casual racism that masquerades as tolerance.4
4

Parker willed her entire estate, upon her death, to Martin Luther King, Jr. He was killed, less than a year after Parker departed, and the money eventually wound up in the hands of the NAACP, who took possession of her ashes and buried them at their headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland. A plaque on the spot commemorates Parkers noble spirit which

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Arrangement in Black and White creates an indelible character in its protagonist, an unnamed society woman. She has been invited to a party in the honor of a famous African American performer, Walter Williams, and she exults in the statement she makes by attending, conversing with the man and shaking his hand, even though the self-consciousness she affects with him makes it clear that shes not as comfortable as she pretends. She spoke with great distinctness, moving her lips meticulously, as if in parlance with the deaf wrote Parker (79). The woman makes any number of gaffes in her attempts to compliment the black race, remarking how they all have music in them (Parker 79) and are just like childrenjust as easy-going, and always singing and laughing and everything (Parker 78). Like the characters in the he said/she said stories, the society woman from Arrangement in Black and White again illustrates Fagans notion of characters illuminating their discomfort through their attempts to pose (Fagan 236). An important offstage character in the story is the main characters husband, Burton, who she professes is not as open-minded about blacks as she believes herself to be. She cheerfully relates to the host of the party that Burton would never share a table with an African American but finds them to be ideal as servants. She promises to tease her husband about the conversation she just had with Williams, as though Burtons racism is just a cheerful marital squabble they always have. Parker, a committed activist for social equality, knew better. Parker is well known for writing to portray lifes imperfections, exactly as she saw them, but in many stories, she strove to institute change. No doubt Parker socialized in circles such as this one, with wealthy people who liked to claim liberality but lost it in practice. The story is said to be true: witnessed by Dorothy herself, with Walter Williams a stand-in for Paul Robeson, a famous black actor of the early 20th century. She had to have wanted to expose these kinds of hypocrites for a long time via satireand she does manage to make the story cringingly funny at its basest level. Yet Arrangement in Black and White, works at another level. The dubious heroine remarks often upon the racism of others, notably her husband, and yet her own racism is not really exploredthe prejudiced female character is not commented upon by the narration except through coded indications of shallowness, such as the assisted gold (Parker 77) of her hair. Parker, then, trusts her audience to recognize the severe hypocrisy of this woman through the
celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people. (Dorothy Parker NAACP)

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stereotypes to which our society woman adheresbasically, Parker allows her to dig her own grave. Through this distancing of the narration, Parker subtly indicates that even as activism may fail minorities, racism left unchecked will serve to shame the prejudiced race. These bourgeois hypocrites will trip themselves up, allowing only the minorities to emerge with dignity still intact.

Private Needs and Public Poses: Celebrity and Social Behavior

Parker, through her status as a public intellectual (due partly to her reviews, which she wrote under the persona of a wryly dubious dilettante named Dorothy Parker, and partly to her much-quoted quips), had much to examine in the spheres of public and private. In service to this theme, Parker wrote two stories within this time period in which she made the unusual choice of casting herself as the protagonist/narrator, The Garter (1928) and But the One on the Right (1929). Both stories have the same basic settinga partyand both fall into line with Parkers cultivated persona, the outsider. Parker explored this role more explicitly in a Constant Reader selection from November of 1928, entitled Wallflowers Lament. Ostensibly a review of a book called Favorite Jokes of Famous People, Parker spends the first half of the review talking about her retirement from parties. She has wearied of being the guest who sits in a corner with her thoughts, smiling brightly the while in order to indicate a pathetic willingness to play (Parker Portable 519). In Wallflowers Lament, Parker reflects that sometimes she also gets to sit next to a gentleman who wants to bore her with war stories while she listens politely, an easy connection to But the One on the Right, which is a stream-of-consciousness narrative telling a variation on that story. The boring gentleman in But the One on the Right doesnt talk about the war, or much of anything beyond the dinner. I have said precisely four words to the gentleman on my left, Parker the narrator remarks. I said, Isnt this soup delicious?; thats four words. And he said, Yes, isnt it?; thats three. (Parker 132) Such an intelligent woman as Parker certainly would expect more stimulating conversation, but the autobiographical glimpse she gives us here shows how she was so often used when she went out in public. Theyve been saving him up for me for weeks, Dorothy says of her hosts. We can stick him next to Mrs. Parkershe talks enough for two (Parker 132).

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The Garter portrays a different party, and a different dilemma. Protagonist Parker has broken a garter, and cannot walk without revealing it to the party at large. So, she sits in a corner and curses her fate. She recalls the Wallflower article more than once, first when she remarks sarcastically that she must be cutting a wide swath through this partymaking my personality felt (Parker 101) and again when she asks, Can this be me, praying that nobody will come near me? (Parker 101) Clearly she usually prays for the oppositefor someone to join her, welcome her into the group. Stylistically, The Garter is quite interesting. One of the most unabashedly humorous of Parkers pieces, she employs several humor techniques to amuse the reader. She comically exaggerates the severity of her situation, comparing herself to Napoleon and plotting her next move (Parker 99). Later, she imagines that, with no means of moving, she will be forced to sit at the party forever, through the change of seasons, missing her chances for love or motherhood. She swoonily goes on: There will be for me nor travel nor riches nor wise, new friends, nor glittering adventure, nor the sweet fruition of my gracious womanhood, and wraps up the statement with a comic reversal of tone. Ah, hell (Parker 100). Another fine moment of linguistic humor occurs at the beginning of the story. Parker the character quotes Tennyson, but puts her own spin on it by finishing the quotation slangily. I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me, she recites. Boy, do I would that I could! (Parker 99) This is funny, firstly because its an ironic use of the quotation; in itself the line is about mans inability to be articulate about natural beauty, but Dorothy uses it in the context of not being able to articulate her frustration at how unlucky she is to have broken a garter. Secondly, she mimics the style of the quote in her answer to it: Boy, do I would that I could! She makes slang of literature, bridging the gap between highbrow and middlebrow expression. It is worth noting, however, that Parkers humor always contains a tinge of darkness. In The Garter, she returns to her most common motif, death. It doesnt matter; my lifes over, anyway. I wonder how theyll be able to tell when Im dead. It will be a very thin line of distinction between me sitting here holding my stocking, and just a regulation dead body. A demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body (Parker 100). The image of a decaying body is alarming for a comedic piece, and the reference is somewhat buried; easy to miss. Yet, Parker was always purposeful in her writing, and her readers can be sure that any word that makes it to publication

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is doing a job. Here, the death imagery serves the remind us that, as comedic as the situation may feel, there is an element of despair in the story. Parker is cut off from the crowd (cornered, like a frightened rat, in a room full of strangers (Parker 99)), a virtual outcast. She is severed from interpersonal relationsfrom happinessby a garter, an unabashedly feminine object. Symbolically, the story suggests that the trappings of feminine life remove a woman from a carefree, joyful existence.5 It serves one well to read Parker with eyes open to the potentially darker subtext. In her own time, almost all her stories were considered to be straightforward comic sketches potentially because of her association with The New Yorker, and probably having a lot to do with her celebrated wit. Suzanne Bunkers, in an article from 1978 called I Am Outraged

Womanhood: Dorothy Parker as Feminist and Social Critic tells the tale of how the critic first became aware of Parker when assigned to recite Parkers story, The Waltz (1933) in a high school speech contest. The category was humorous declamation (Bunkers 153). Yet to uncover the deadly serious subtext of this story, one needs only to read Paula Treichlers article, Verbal Subversions in Dorothy Parker: Trapped Like a Trap in a Trap, which first appeared in print two years later. Treichler sees the waltz, performed against the female characters will, as a symbol of a greater male trespass upon the female body. She characterizes the dance as a locked, unavoidable collection of actions that women must perform to get along in a patriarchal society, and even floats the idea that it constitutes an out-and-out physical rape (Treichler 54). Not Much Fun, in the words of a recent anthology of her poetry. Big Blonde: The Culmination of Parkers Literary Output of the 1920s

Most critics consider Parkers crowning achievement to be Big Blonde, a story from 1929, for which she won the O. Henry prize for best short story of that year. The story is heavily narrative and demonstrative of Parkers careful artistry, and contains a difficult and unflinching look at the effectsbodily, mentally, sociallyof the alcoholism that is par for the course in a great deal of the literature of the 1920s. Much longer than Parkers average story, its scope also covers much more territory than she tended to in her other work. The narration follows the story over a number of years: fading
5

See also the symbolic function of Hazels high-heeled shoes in Big Blonde.

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in, touching lightly upon an illustrative moment in Hazels life, then pulling back and moving forward again. In fact, in the comparatively epic context of Big Blonde, Parker is able to feature every variety of reversal that I have explored up to this point. Like the he said/she said stories, it looks at the male-female question. It looks at the gendered nature of conspicuous consumption and concealed privation, and examines disconnect between public behavior and private needs. Even race issues are addressed through the marginal presence of African Americans in the story. Parkers story is chiefly known as an indictment of standards of femininitywhite femininity. Critic Amelia Simpson has identified the way black characters are used in Big Blonde to complicate the accepted message of the story. [The presence of] Africanist

figuresproblematizes the text beyond its interrogation of the cultural construction of the big blonde as an ideal of femininity (Simpson 188). This paradox is Simpsons observation that the black characters in the story reinforce the societal problems that have kept Hazel Morse, the titular Big Blonde, from finding happiness. The doctor who visits Hazel at her suicide attempt is pulled away from a young black woman Simpson identifies as a prostitute. Her presence underlines the prostitution that Hazel has perpetrated on her self. Simpson also examines how Nettie, Hazels maid, upsets the traditional hierarchy of race by interrupting Hazels suicide attempt. By yanking Hazel unwillingly back into the life that she was eager to leave, Nettie bonds Hazel to her unhappiness. Ironically, Parker makes the black figure the embodiment of the bonds of slavery (Simpson 193). In terms of other juxtapositions, Hazels problems with men and with money are one and the same. When she can no longer trade on her looks as a dress model, and her husband has left her, she begins to support herself by allowing men to bestow gifts and money upon her. Without thinking, as she does just about everything, Hazel has categorized herselfmind, body, and soulas a commodity in the social marketplace. Ed, her first boyfriend after Herbies departure, offers her a regular allowance and she dutifully saves what she has earned (Parker 113). But her product becomes harder and harder to supply. These men require Hazel to dutifully

provide them with the companionship they expectcompliments, joviality, and an uncomplicated reprieve from their daily lives of business and conventional marriage. Hazel, who in her own married life discovered how tired (Parker Stories 106) she had become of this aspect of courtship (being a good sport (Parker 106)), is forced to take it up again indefinitely.

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Endeavoring to fulfill her monetary needs, Hazel barters away her own emotional needs, and thus she comes to illustrate the responsibility of maintaining a public image contradictory to ones private life. Hazel denies her private longings to uphold the bravado these men have purchased. Interestingly, historian Harvey Green hits upon (we will assume coincidentally) the same phrase used by Parker in his book of cultural history, The Uncertainty of Everyday Life: 19151945 (1992). Writing of changes appearing in married life, Green says, Companionate

marriage was the fashionable term for the ideal marriage relationship in the 1920s. A good sport and shared interests, rather than the nineteenth-century concept of separate spheres were the keys to happiness (Green 134, emphasis mine). We can see here, then, how the changing face of womanhood has not aided Hazel in finding a niche where she may succeed and be happy; on the contrary, companionate marriage has increased her responsibilities in her romantic relationships by forcing her to be an equal player in the proceedings when her unimaginative personality and her economic circumstances both undermine that equality. Mostly, Big Blonde looks at the many ways the world has found to beat Hazel Morse down. While other Parker characters (women in particular) find themselves bested in one area of their lives, Hazel is bested by everything 1920s society can throw at her. Many critics look at this story as heavily autobiographical, and certainly Parker experienced hardships similar to those of Hazel, from the alcoholism to the forced jocularity, straight down to the thwarted attempt at suicide. Wyatt Cooper, an acquaintance of Parkers in her later years, best expresses the torment that inspired Parkers greatest work:

The inside of her head must have been a battleground. Her desire to be a lady (and she was a lady and a great one), soft-spoken, gracious, delicate, charitable, and wellmannered (and may I be struck dead if she wasnt those things), was constantly at war with her incredible mind, a critical mind, brilliant, precise, and to the point. It was her misfortune (and her fortune) that she saw the absurdity of everybody, including herself; not just piecemeal, either; she saw it whole, entire, all at one time, and sometimes, when one was with her, one would look at people and see them with her X-ray vision (an experience not recommended for casual social intercourse) and would find oneself as dismayed by the phenomena as she must have been (Cooper 61). Denying Dorothy Parker a place in serious literature robs her of the esteem she rightfully earned; and she did earn it, by taking the conflicting tornado of her personality and harnessing it

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into work that is at every turn charming, bitter, culturally significant, dazzlingly well-crafted, outrageously funny and dishearteningly sad, all at once.

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Works Consulted
Primary Resources Parker, Dorothy. Complete Stories. Ed. Colleen Breese. New York: Penguin, 2005. -----------------. The Portable Dorothy Parker. New York: Penguin, 1973. Secondary Resources (Biography) Cooper, Wyatt. Whatever You Think Dorothy Parker Was Like, She Wasnt. Esquire July 1968: 53, 61, 110-114. Day, Barry. Dorothy Parker: In Her Own Words. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004. Dorothy Parker. NAACP Homepage. 2006. 22 April 2008. <http://www.naacp.org/about/history/index.htm> Kinney, Arthur. Dorothy Parker, Revised. Ed. Joseph M. Flora. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998. Silverstein, Stuart Y. Introduction. Not Much Funthe Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker. By Dorothy Parker. New York: Scriber, 1996. Secondary Resources (Literature & Interpretation) Breese, Colleen. Excuse My Dust: The Art of Dorothy Parkers Serious Fiction. Diss. University of Toledo, 1992. Bunkers, Suzanne L. I Am Outraged Womanhood: Dorothy Parker as Feminist and Social Critic. Pettit Critical Waltz 152-165. Burstein, Jessica. A Few Words about Dubuque: Modernism, Sentimentalism, and the Blas. American Literary History 14.2 (July 2002): 227-254. Dana, Maureen Woodard. Working Women in Depression-Era Short Fiction: The Short Stories of Tess Slesinger, Dorothy Parker and Marita Bonner. Diss. Claremont Graduate University, 1999. Fagan, Cathy E. The Price of Power in Womens Literature: Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker. Gender in Popular Culture: Images of Men and Women in Literature, Visual Media, and Material Culture. Ed. Susan Rollins. Cleveland, OK: Ridgemont Press, 1995. 227-245. Harker, Jaime. Progressive Middlebrow: Dorothy Canfield, Womens Magazines, and Popular Feminism in the Twenties. Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s. Eds. Lisa Botshon & Meredith Goldsmith. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003. 111-134.

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Helal, Kathleen M. Celebrity, Femininity, Lingerie: Dorothy Parkers Autobiographical Monologues. Womens Studies 33.1 (January 2004): 77-102. Honey, Maureen. Feminist New Woman Fiction in Periodicals of the 1920s. Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s. Eds. Lisa Botshon & Meredith Goldsmith. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003. 87-109. Ivanov-Craig, Andrea. Being and Dying as a Woman in the Short Fiction of Dorothy Parker. Pettit Critical Waltz 230-245. Johnson, Ken. Dorothy Parkers Perpetual Motion. Pettit Critical Waltz 62-74. Lansky, Ellen. Female Trouble: Dorothy Parker, Katherine Anne Porter, and Alcoholism. Literature and Medicine 17.2 (1998): 212-230. Middeljans, April. On the Wire with Death and Desire: The Telephone and Lovers Discourse in the Short Stories of Dorothy Parker. Arizona Quarterly 62.4 (Winter 2006): 47-70. Mihic, Sophia. Mrs. Parker and the History of Political Thought. Pettit Critical Waltz 296-307. Miller, Nina. Making Love Modern: Dorothy Parker and her Public. American Literature 64.4 (Dec 1992): 763-784. Pettit, Rhonda S. A Gendered Collision. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. -----------------. Material Girls in the Jazz Age: Dorothy Parkers Big Blonde as an Answer to Anita Looss Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Pettit Critical Waltz 75-85. -----------------, ed. The Critical Waltz: Essays on the Work of Dorothy Parker. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. -----------------. Two Stumbles, Slip, and a Twenty-Yard Dash: Dorothy Parker and the Waltz of Literary Criticism. Pettit Critical Waltz 17-36. Simpson, Amelia. Black on Blonde: The Africanist Presence in Dorothy Parkers Big Blonde. Pettit Critical Waltz 187-199. Toth, Emily. A Laughter of Their Own: Womens Humor in the United States. Critical Essays on American Humor. eds William Bedford Clark & W. Craig Turner. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1984. -----------------. Dorothy Parker, Erica Jong, and New Feminist Humor. Pettit Critical Waltz 137-151. Treichler, Paula A. Verbal Subversions in Dorothy Parker: Trapped Like a Trap in a Trap. Language and Style An International Journal 8.4 (1980): 46-61. Walker, Nancy. A Very Serious Thing: Womens Humor and American Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. -----------------. The Tradition of Womens Humor in America. Huntington Beach, CA: American Studies Publishing Company, 1984.

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Secondary Resources (Historical & Sociological Context) Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The New Generation of Women. The United States in the 1920s as Observed in Contemporary Documents: The Ballyhoo Years. Eds. Stephen H. Paschen and Leonard Schlup. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007. 78-88. Green, Harvey. The Uncertainty of Everyday Life: 1915-1945. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992. Grier, Katherine. Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850-1930. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. Kyvig, David. Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004. Leinwand, Gerald. 1927: High Tide of the Twenties. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001. Miller, Nathan. New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America. New York: Scribner, 2003. Palmer, Niall. The Twenties in America: Politics and History. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. Patterson, Martha H. Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895-1915. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2005.

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