Dorothy Parker’s Big Blonde

1067 Words3 Pages

Dorothy Parker was a female writer in the 1920’s and is still known all around the world for her wit. Parker was a member of one of the most affluent groups in New York City at the time, the Algonquin Round Table. Besides her wit Parker also was known for her drinking problem, many suicide attempts and string of failed relationships. The most popular and prized of Parker’s works is a short story entitled “Big Blonde.” This story won the O’Henry Prize for best short story in 1929. In this story Parker creates a character who is tapped a society that revolves around a woman’s need to be nothing more than a pretty face who is always having a good time. Parker went above and beyond of showing the irony of the ideals women are held to and how they can eventually lead to the destruction of who they are. She does not write about a woman who are liberated or free, she instead shows a woman who are trapped and vulnerable. She took a very different stance then a lot of women of her time on women’s new found position in pro-suffrage society. She focuses much more on the way men saw women an amusement. In fact Parker creates women who are trapped as being a means of entertainment for the men. They are to live up to that idea and if they do not they are easily replaced with another.

“Big Blonde” tells the tale of former wholesale dress model Hazel Morse as she drinks herself into the arms of many men and eventually to a suicide attempt. Throughout the story we see Hazel having many relationships with many different men all who want nothing more than for her to be a good sport. The first we are introduced to is her husband Herbie Morse. The two wed only six weeks after meeting and start a life together. Pleased by her new o...

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... of her boyfriends states to her when she was not in an upbeat mood, “Why the hell don’t you stay home and not go spoiling everybody’s evening?” (Parker 199) Parker is reiterating her the idea that women were not meant to be anything but positive and upbeat in this society. It even states that “even her slightest acquaintance seemed irritated if she were not conspicuously light hearted.” (Parker 199) Thus the idea that women were made to be positive and upbeat continues in her world.

Works Cited

Lansky, Ellen. "Female Trouble: Dorothy Parker, Katherine Anne Porter, and Alcoholism." Literature and Medicine (1997): 212-230.

Parker, Dorothy. "Big Blonde." Parker, Dorothy. The Portable Dorothy Parker. Penguin Books, 1976. 187-210.

Simpson, Amelia. "Black on Blonde: The African presence in Dorothy Parker's 'Big Blonde'." College Literature (1996): 105-117.

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