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Sexual Parody In American Comedic Film And Literature, 1925-1948

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Sexual Parody In American Comedic Film And Literature, 1925-1948

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SEXUAL PARODY IN AMERICAN COMEDIC FILM AND LITERATURE,
1925-1948
By
Andrea Jean Ivanov
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
December 1994
Copyright 1994 Andrea Jean Ivanov
UMI Number: 9600993
UMI Microform 9600993
Copyright 1995, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.
This microform edition is protected against unauthorized
copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI
300 North Zeeb Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Andrea Jean Ivanov Tania Modleski
Sexual Parody in American Comedic Film and Literature,
1925-1948
"Sexual Parody" examines the extent to which notions
of essential gender are parodied in the literary and filmic
texts of Mae West, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, and
Preston Sturges. Drawing on film, literary, and
psychoanalytic theory, this study also clarifies the ways
in which subjectivity is defined within the comedic
economy.
The Introduction discusses the modernist "battle of
the sexes" common to the work of the four subjects, and
defines the notion of "sexual parody." Chapter One
examines the creation of the Mae West persona, and that
persona’s entry into the demands of film comedy. West's
sexual parody works through her "camping,” suggesting a
fundamental ambiguity about her gender. But in her plays
and films, West's theme of many male lovers conveys a
(hetero)sexual excess which countermands generic and
censors' pressures to "get Mae married."
Chapters Two and Three engage the work of James
Thurber and Dorothy Parker, respectively. Bemused by
modernity and "Woman," the "little man" of Thurber's
fiction is another guise for the comic antihero of
screwball comedy. The uncertain Thurber males, together
with the formidable women, perform ludicrous genders. Not
coincidentally, the short fiction and verse of Dorothy
Parker stress the bleak disparities between women's
performance of gender and their attempts to find a "true
self." Through language theory and Bakhtinian dialogism,
these chapters argue that the "inner self" of both
Thurber's and Parker1s protagonists are linguistic
constructs, as "nonessential" as are their genders.
Chapter Four argues that Preston Sturges's The Lady
Eve (1941), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), and
Unfaithfully Yours (1949) parody notions of "originals" and
(male) "self-mastery." Although Sturges's places the
parody of gender and mastery in the hands of a woman in The
Lady Eve, in Unfaithfully Yours, the focus is on the comic
antihero's impotent fantasies of revenge and uxoricide.
Based on the comedy of the four subjects, "Sexual
Parody" concludes that the parody of gender--its
negotiation and defense--challenges the binarisms of "high"
and "low," "male" and "female" intensified in modernist
culture.
Dedication
This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Norma
Ivanov, and to my father, Andrew Ivanov, who each have
given me love and confidence to last a lifetime.
Acknowledgments
My respect and gratitude first go to my
dissertation committee chair, Professor Tania Modleski,
whose guidance and astute criticism and knowledge both
directed and challenged my thought and scholarship.
Second, I would like to thank Professor Vincent Cheng,
whose ongoing advice and thoughtful support in all
academic and professional matters was, and continues to
be, invaluable. Equal thanks goes to Professor James
Kincaid for his encouragement, and most of all, for his
delightful affinity for the comic. I also convey my
thanks to Nancy Vickers, who supported my efforts in the
midst of an important career transition.
Next, I would like to thank the Reverend Shawn
Zambrows for her friendship, prayers and counseling. I
am especially indebted to her, the Reverend Samuel
Chetti, and the Los Angeles Baptist City Society for the
provision of a workplace when one was sorely needed.
Last, but hardly least, my thanks go to all of my
special friends and relatives for the laughter and
fellowship, the signs and foretastes of all greater
comedies to come.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ..................................... ii
Acknowledgments ............................... iii
INTRODUCTION ................................... 1
James Thurber, Dorothy Parker,
Mae West, Preston Sturges: Four
Subjects in Cultural Struggle .............. 1
"Sexual" or Gender Parody .................. 7
CHAPTER I: MAE WEST WAS NOT A MAN .............. 35
Persona, "Personality," and
Parody.................................... 35
Where the One Becomes the Many ............. 63
CHAPTER II: LITTLE MEN AND BIG WOMEN:
JAMES THURBER, SEXUAL PARODY, AND
THE AMERICAN HUMOR TRADITION ............... 99
The "Home" of Thurber's Humor .............. 99
Illustration #1: "Home" ................... 101
The Little Man and Modernism ............... 103
Thurber's First Question of Sex ............ Ill
Gender Parody in Mitty, Monroe,
and the Mrs........................... 124
CHAPTER III: BEING AND DYING A WOMAN
IN THE SHORT FICTION AND POETRY OF
DOROTHY PARKER ............................ 162
Locating the "Little Woman" ................ 162
Gender Parody and The "Tidy
Mockeries of Art" .................... 171
V
TABLE OF CONTENTS (cont.)
Parody and Radical Dialogism in
Parker's Short Fiction ............... 175
Little Worms: Parker's Poetry
and the Discourse of Death ............ 210
CHAPTER IV: SEXUAL PARODY IN PRESTON
STURGES'S CINEMA OF MASTERY ............... 227
The Lady Eve.............................. 233
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek............. 254
Unfaithfully Yours ........................ 276
CONCLUSION ..................................... 305
WORKS CITED .................................... 317
Introduction:
Sexual Parody in American Comedic Film and
Literature, 1925-1948
This study explores sexual parody in the comedy and
humor of Mae West, Preston Sturges, Dorothy Parker and
James Thurber. The readings of their work in the
chapters that follow suggest ways that the parody of
gender operates within primarily comedic genres in both
film and literature between the years 1925 to 1948. In
this introduction, I will first briefly discuss the
thematic links between these four figures, as well as
general historical, literary and cultural discourses
prevalent in their works. Next, I will define and
discuss the specific notion of "sexual parody" used in
this study, as well as define and review the theories of
comedy, jokes, and the comic, which mediate the workings
of sexual parody.
JAMES THURBER, DOROTHY PARKER, MAE WEST, AND PRESTON
STURGES: FOUR "SUBJECTS" IN CULTURAL STRUGGLE
In No Man 's Land, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
argue that "modernist texts describe explicitly sexual
duels between characters who tend to incarnate female
voracity and male impotence" (35). Their litany of
protagonists, from Leopold Bloom in Ulysses to Joe
Christmas in Light in August, stresses early twentieth-
century literary men’s repeated use of the "imagery of
male impotence and female potency" (35-36). The
generation into which James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Mae
West and Preston Sturges were born was influenced by a
"battle" in which women gained suffrage and increasing—
although by no means overwhelming— presence in cultural
production. The "battle of the sexes" links the work of
the four, and arguably, is a distillation of the "war"
waged by modernism itself.
In "Mass Culture as Women: Modernism's Other,"
Andreas Huyssen's argues that "high" literary and
artistic modernism was indeed reacting to an "other" of
popular, "low" art— "mass culture." Huyssen summarizes
prominent modernist thinkers' contributions to the mass
and "high" culture debate, observing that "the
political, psychological, and aesthetic discourse around
the turn of the century consistently and obsessively
genders mass culture and the masses as feminine" (191).
This act of engenderment produced a fear of the masses
equated with the fear of female sexuality as "nature out
of control," and extended to such other fears as the
"loss of identity" and "stable ego boundaries" (196).
In the view of such fears, the modernist aesthetic
became "more like a reaction formation, rather than the
heroic feat steeled in the fires of modern experience"
(197). Indeed, we learn from Huyssen that some
modernist thinkers, notably the Frankfurt school
Marxists Adorno and Horkheimer, "never saw modernism as
anything other than a reaction formation to mass culture
and commodification" (201). Thus, the "battle of the
sexes" is not just a favored "theme" of modernism, but
constitutive of modernism itself. And though, as Laura
Kipnis argues that such an "apolitical and contestatory"
modernism has now past ("'Refunctioning1 reconsidered"
14), our positions as postmodern readers, critics, and
spectators who wish to deconstruct this binarism
notwithstanding, the "feminine" other which modernism so
vigorously fought is that very "other" into which the
work of Sturges, West, Parker and Thurber falls.
The strongest link among the four people to whom,
for simplicity's sake, I will refer to as "subjects"
(both in the sense of "subject" or enuciator of a text,
and in the sense of a "field" of exploration) is their
position as producers of popular culture forms. West
and Sturges arguably reached the widest audiences
through classical narrative cinema, while Parker and
Thurber did so through the New Yorker style "light"
verse and short fiction or "casuals." As
contemporaries, it would be surprising if their work did
not share in themes of sexual war. Crystallized in
Thurber's drawing, "The War Between Men and Women," the
battle metaphor was popular well into the forties,
shifting into discourses of unity against a common enemy
during World war II. Of course, such a move was by no
means unilateral, as critics such as Dana Polan have
argued. The urge for the sexes to "unite" and cooperate
in their individual efforts overseas or on the home
front was complicated and contradicted by fears of women
in unprecedented positions of power, the jealousy and
alienation of soldiers upon their return, and the sudden
wartime marriages which often ended in postwar divorces
(Power and Paranoia 124).
Though working contemporaneously in the venues of
New York or Hollywood, the four subjects of this study
reached their peak of popularity in different decades.
Of the four, Preston Sturges most fits into this wartime
mutation of the battle of the sexes, although much of
his work hearkens back to the pre-war thirties when
screwball comedy and the Thurber-like frustrations of
the comic anti-hero and "little man" were most dominant.
Dorothy Parker rose to popularity in the early to mid
twenties, closest to the time when "high" literary
modernism was at its peak— or at least, when its tenets
and practitioners were becoming most widely known. In
one sense, writing her acerbic verses and ironic
monologues and dialogues on the interactions between men
and women, she became one of out of the many in
Hawthorne's much cited "mobs of scribbling women," or,
in her decade, one of modernism's "others." Her
publications appeared in magazines such as Vanity Fair
and The New Yorker, and as brilliant and witty as she
was reputed to be, it was only until the late twenties
that one story "lifted" her into the margins of "high"
literary eminence. Ironically, this "lift" came in a
story featuring a "low" culture, alcoholic, non-aesthete
named Hazel Morse.
James Thurber was a journalist and reporter during
the early twenties, and by the late twenties had begun
his alliance with The New Yorker, and published his
popular bestseller, Is Sex Necessary? Of the four
subjects, Thurber's popular success was probably the
most long-lived. His drawings and short stories
featuring his battered little men and big women
continued during the thirties, peaking in 1939 with the
publication of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." He
continued to publish notable works until his death in
1961, but his delvings into the darker side of comedy
and fantasy grew increasingly pessimistic after the
early forties (and, consequently, his level of
popularity declined).
Mae West lived the longest of the four subjects,
her position as actress, playwright, screenwriter and
comedienne making her the most visible celebrity, an
icon of film comedy. Nevertheless, her success in
Hollywood films ended with the thirties; reaching her
peak in 1933 or 1934, she, like Sturges, began in New
6
York writing and performing in plays, striking pay dirt
with a long-running Broadway play, Diamond Lil, about
the same time Sturges did with Strictly Dishonorable.
Indeed, in 1929, all four subjects had achieved some
notable success: Thurber with Is Sex Necessary?, Parker
with "Big Blonde," West with Diamond Lil, and Sturges
with Strictly Dishonorable. All four creative,
"popular" texts specifically addressed the negotiation
of sexual "power" and identity. In a way, in the very
beginnings of a period that some critics may classify as
"late modernism," or others simply as the Depression
era, these four subjects "found" their beginnings— or in
the case of Parker, a kind of culmination— in a specific
cultural moment during a specific cultural struggle.
Therefore, this study takes such cultural "moments"
into account as it focuses on sexual parody within the
grounding of the prevalent, if questionable, mass/high
culture split. Similarly, the choice of West and
Sturges in film, and Parker and Thurber in literature
operates to question the likelihood that "male" and
"female" practitioners will employ the same general
media and thematics in different— or differently "sexed"
ways.
"SEXUAL" OR GENDER PARODY
"Sexual Parody" addresses two major theoretical
questions within the genres and theories of comedy
implicated in the work of the four subjects: First, to
what extent and ends are notions of essential gender
parodied and destablilized? and secondly, given the
pervasive thematic of "battle of the sexes" which
connects the work of the four subjects, how are power
and indirectly, issues of subjectivity and agency
defined within the comedic economies (and more
specifically, "battles")? The first question involves
the specific definition of "sexual" or "gender parody,"
which I address immediately below. The second question
draws on feminist film, literary, and psychoanalytic
approaches to the analysis of comedic genres of film and
literary humor. My use of the term, "sexual parody,"
is largely based on Judith Butler's theorization of
"gender parody," as employed in her 1985 study, Gender
Trouble. She argues that the "gendered body is
performative" and has no "ontological status apart from
the various acts which constitute its reality" (136).
Since such acts which constitute a body or a gender are
"performative," Butler claims that there is no
"preexisiting identity by which an act or attribute
might be measured" (144). Given these premises, Butler
therefore claims that the "postulation of a true gender
identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction"
(144).
Although it is beyond the scope of my argument to
thoroughly define, "deconstruct," or contrast the terms
"sex" and "gender," I do rely on the assumption that the
two are often interchangeable in the sense that both are
chiefly the effects of discourse. In Butler's 1993
study, Bodies That Matter, she extends her analysis from
Gender Trouble to account for the ways in which these
"pre-gendered," "pre-sexed" bodies are shaped through
language. In her own words, the aim is to make clear
that the "regulatory norms of 'sex' work in a
performative fashion to constitute the materiality of
bodies and, more specifically, to materialize the body's
sex" (2). This is not to say that differences between
"gender" and "sex" do not arise in my study; there is a
sense in which a person has a sex that is inseparable
from anatomy and present from birth, especially in the
discourse offered by the writers themselves. The
corollary of this understanding of "sex" is that
"gender," then, is what one learns, what one "performs."
My acceptance of "sex" as a more radical "entity" is
only provisional, then, in order to facilitate the focus
of my argument on the "performative" aspects of
sexuality and gender.
The analyses of the four writers also rely on the
theoretical groundwork of Butler's argument. Especially
in the films of Mae West, the visual operations of her
bodily gestures, and the performative aspects of her
persona— its curves, its sexual and fleshy excess, its
place of as spectacle as well as its control of the -
"look" and "looks"— open up an essential series of
processes in which gender parody may be explored. In
short, the narrative and comedic cinema in which Sturges
and West engage concern the image, and performance of
the body as "male" and/or "female." In her essay,
"Performative Acts and Gender Constitution," Judith
Butler writes, "The body is not a self-identical or
merely factic materiality; it is a materiality that
bears meaning, if nothing else, and the manner of this
bearing is fundamentally dramatic" (272). Butler
gualifies her use of "dramatic" by stating that the
body, more than just "matter", continually and
incessantly "materializes" possibilities (272), but I
believe that her use cannot escape its more common and
broader meanings. By the same token, her use of
"dramatic" also enables the analysis of gender parody in
the fiction of Parker and Thurber, primarily in the
sense that textual operations allow characters to
"perform" their gender through written dialogue,
narrative, and verbal imagery.
Butler's thesis that gender is performative
expectedly leads her to the subject of masquerade.
Though I also address in passing the work of other
theorists of masquerade— Mary Ann Doane, particularly,
my concern is chiefly with Butler's exposition of Lacan.
Referring to masquerade, and the place of the Phallus in
the Symbolic order, she explains the difference between
"being" the Phallus and having it. Women are supposed
to "be" the Phallus in their ability to reflect the
"reality" of the "masculine subject's "self-grounding
postures (Gender Trouble 45). While, according to her,
Lacan does not believe that "men signify the meaning of
women, or women signify the meaning of men," there is a
"division and exchange between this 'being' and 'having'
the Phallus which is established by "the Symbolic, the
paternal law" (Gender Trouble 45). Butler writes, "Part
of the comedic dimension of this failed model of
reciprocity, of course, is that both masculine and
feminine positions are signified, the signifier
belonging to the Symbolic that can never be assumed in
more than token form by either position" (45).
Most interesting is Butler's use of "comedic" and
"comedy" in her discussions. In the work of Mae West,
Preston Sturges, Dorothy Parker and James Thurber,
characters not only "are" or "seem to be" true or false
to their sex or gender, but also attempt to assume— or
11
to fight off— genders which are imposed upon them. It
is a sometimes more, sometimes less subtle "comedy" of
identity; funny in the sense that they often only dimly
understand the efforts they take "to be or not to be" a
certain gender. Butler’s reading of Lacan's failed
"heterosexual comedy" leads to two conclusions:
On the one hand, if the ’being,' the
ontological specification of the Phallus, is
masquerade, then it would appear to reduce all
being to a form of appearing, the appearance of
being, with the consequence that all gender
ontology is reducible to the play of
appearances. On the other hand, masquerade
suggests that there is a 'being' or ontological
specification of femininity prior to the
masquerade, a feminine desire or demand that is
masked and capable of disclosure, that, indeed,
might promise an eventual disruption and
displacement of the phallocentric signifying
economy" (Gender Trouble 47).
It is the former of these conclusions that most
informs the analyses in the following chapters. The
idea of the "play of appearances" is especially
important for understanding gender parody in the work of
Dorothy Parker and James Thurber, where "appearances"
must be read in verbal terms and rhetorics, most
specifically, hyperbole and understatement. For the
work of Mae West, the "play" of her appearance in films
is central, as is the "play" of a putative "feminine
desire" circulated through all of her work in the
discourse of multiple lovers. In Preston Sturges's
films, the possibility of an overpowering female voice
12
and "gaze" becomes an issue, but is not nearly as strong
or as consistently emphasized as it is in the films of
Mae West.
Lastly, I want to point out that my use of Butler's
term is applied to texts in which the "heterosexual
comedy" or "ruse" is not seriously questioned or
radically undermined. After a discussion of drag
performances, Butler writes, "The notion of parody
defended here does not assume that there is an original
which such parodic identities imitate. Indeed, the
parody is of the very notion of an original" (Gender
Trouble 138). With the exception of Mae West, who some
critics have argued engages in "female female
impersonation," the practice of drag or cross-dressing
in the texts discussed here is limited to occasional
role reversal, or donning the opposite sex's garb
momentarily. Yet, whether or not texts engage the
literal representation of drag is not so significant as
if they somehow challenge the "very notion of an
original" sex or gender. Gender is performative, or so
Butler argues, but that does not mean that the
performances must be "live," or primarily "visual" in
order to question the play of appearances. That is why
"gender parody" may be investigated in the different
mediums of film and literature. The materiality of its
representation in film may be primarily through image or
sound, or in the case of literature, through the printed
word. Either the spectator or the reader may engage the
operations or attempt correlation of "meaning" with this
representation of gender parody. Either way, gender
parody, which purports to render the "male" and the
"female" nonessential or non-original, cannot itself
escape its status as "re-presentation."
In addition to focusing on this specific notion of
sexual parody, the following chapters address various
other kinds of parody relevant to the individual author,
"star," or auteur. It is far beyond my present purpose
to trace parody's vast literary, artistic and filmic
history; however, it is possible to briefly touch on
some leading scholars' general definitions. Linda
Hutcheon begins her study of parody and twentieth-
century art forms with the generalization that parody
"is one of the major forms of modern self-reflexivity;
it is a form of inter-art discourse" (A Theory Of Parody
2). Hutcheon's central definition of parody is
"imitation characterized by ironic inversion" (6). The
presence of comic effect in such parody is not integral,
and thus, opens up parody to that broader reference of
"modern self-reflexivity," or what is popularly referred
to, or encountered in the operations of intertextuality.
In contrast, Margaret Rose limits the definition of
parody somewhat by requiring the presence of a comic
effect. Having laid out this formulation in
Parody/Metafiction (1979), Rose extends her analysis and
emphasis in her recent book, Parody: Ancient, Modern
and Postmodern (1993). Whereas Hutcheon defines parody
as "repetition with critical difference (Theory of
Parody 20), Rose defines parody in its most general use
as "the comic refunctioning of preformed linguistic or
artistic material (Parody 52.) As part of the larger
agenda of her study, she insists on understandings of
parody that include "the creation of comic incongruity
as a significant distinguishing factor" (31).
Parody theorists also make a point of
distinguishing "satire" from parody, both modes or
genres relevant to the analyses that follow. Briefly,
Hutcheon notes that parody's "target text is always
another work of art or, more generally, another form of
coded discourse," whereas satire "is both moral and
social in its focus and ameliorative in its intention"
(16). Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik echo this
distinction by writing that parody "draws on— and
highlights— aesthetic conventions," while satire does
the same with "social ones" (Popular Film 19). Other
critics mark out similar distinctions between satire and
parody. Joseph Dane, for instance, states that parody
has generally been seen as "dependent on its target or
object genres," or as a "variant of other official
15
genres, the most important of these being satire"
(Parody: Critical Concepts Versus Literary Practice
10).
But the important consideration for this study is
that the texts of all four subjects engage in both
parody and satire. ' The films of Preston Sturges, in
particular, as I will argue, privilege attacks on a
variety of "social" institutions and ills. But as
becomes apparent in the work of the other subjects,
gender itself is "social." Its "norms" are psycho-
socially constructed and played out. Would, then,
Butler be better off with the notion of "gender satire"?
In truth, either term would be possible since, if we
follow Hutcheon's distinction, there is a sense in which
"gender performance" is a "coded discourse"; again, it
cannot escape representation. Conversely, some argue
that "the subversiveness of parodic transformation
affects more than the parodied text— it alters the
social order" (Harries 13). Indeed, using Bakhtin's
carnival theory in his study of film parody, Dan M.
Harries argues that "Unlike carnival, parody injects
social disruption at unpredictable moments" (13).
Parody not only affects social bodies, but also does so
with less constraint. Dane observes that the conflation
of parody with various other genres like it is really
the "expression of its effect on its audience" (11).
16
For this reason, readers and spectators do well to
remember that parody, pastiche, caricature and thus
satire are all "disturbing," because they "make visible
the very artistic bounds and rules through which [they
are] intelligible as a work of art" (11). The
occasional overlapping of "gender parody" with a
possible "gender satire" is less important than is the
resultant "troubling" of the original. In the short
fiction of Parker and Thurber, or in the films of
Sturges and West, the notion of an original is
repeatedly challenged, whether it be in the thematics of
mistaken identity, or the subtle and complex workings of
the cinematic apparatus.
However, theorists are generally skeptical about
comedy's, of, for that matter, parody's potential for
subversion. Neale and Krutnick state that even the
parody of formal features, the self-reflexive devices
that call attention to its filmic or fictional status,
work to reinforce a genre rather than question it
(Popular Film 93). Moreover, since we expect "anti
verisimilitude" from comedies, "neither comedy nor the
comic can be regarded as inherently subversive or
progressive, or as inherently avant-garde" (93).
The aim of this study is not to challenge this
evaluation of comedy, but to qualify it. Comedy is not
"inherently" conservative simply because it is not
"inherently subversive." Each purported instance of
parody— or gender parody— must be read in a limited, and
possibly, shifting, context. The sexual parody within
Sturges's films, though comic, may indeed be read as
"subversive" within certain confines. These instances
of sexual parody are also "serious"; they offer
incongruities and reversals that— though conventions of
the genre— can be troubling. Such sexual parody alludes
to the "serious" and fundamental ambiguity of sexual
identities continuing in discourses and genres "outside"
of comedy. Even if the work of comedy is to reinforce
gendered identities, comedy cannot wholly erase the need
to dismiss, or otherwise settle sexual ambiguities. For
this reason, theory normally applied to, or engendered
from non-comedic or parodic texts still provides
valuable insight into the comedic texts discussed in
this study. In the chapters that follow I therefore
use Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalytic theories, along
with those of contemporary critics such as Kaja
Silverman, Jacqueline Rose, and Julia Kristeva, because
they addresses the psychic and social aspects of sexual
identity. Furthermore, since this study also challenges
the distinctions between notions of "high" and "low," it
deliberately invokes discussions of seemingly "high" or
"serious" theory in reference to "low" or "comic" texts.
Rather than parody such theory or render it absurd,
18
these discussions are meant to elaborate the ways in
which genre, as well as gender boundaries can be
productively "transgressed."
In addition to addressing these issues of sexual
and generic parody, this study examines the sexual
jockeying of power, either in its apparent "control" or
"mastery" of comedy's narrative drive to "close" in
heterosexual union, or to gain ascendancy (even if
momentary) within a union already established. However,
such issues of "control" and "power" and of subjectivity
and agency arise not only in questions of genre, but
also in questions of joke telling and the comic.
However, it is not the purpose of this study to examine
why something is or is not "funny." Instead, the
generation of laughter becomes important when it
concerns sexually differentiated forms of power, such as
are found in the positions of the joke teller, hearer,
and "butt" of the joke, as theorized by Freud in his
Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.
Freud departs from his predecessors in separating
out the joke from its usual subcategorization in the
comic. The chief distinction comes in numbers: Freud
explains that the joke requires three people to be
effective, whereas the comic only requires two: "a
first who finds what is comic and a second in whom it is
found" (Jokes 181). When a joke is not "innocent," or
is "not an aim in itself," it is either hostile or
obscene, serving to attack or to expose (96-97). A
"tendentious" joke, in the end, however, may refer to
either type of joke. It requires three people because
"in addition to the one who makes the joke, there must
be a second who is taken as the object of the hostile or
sexual aggressiveness, and a third in whom the joke's
aim of producing pleasure is fulfilled" (Jokes 100).
Smut, in particular, argues Freud, is directed towards
women, "and may be equated with attempts at seduction"
(97). Because it is motivated by the joke teller's or
first person's sexual excitement, it works like the
"exposure of the sexually different person to whom it is
directed" (98). Freud’s theorization firmly places man
in the first (subject) position, and woman in the
exposed or "object" position. Woman’s embarrassment, or
her initial failure to become sexually excited is read
by Freud as her "inflexibility;" as such, it is the
"first condition to the development of smut," and, more
importantly, suggests a "postponement and does not
indicate that further efforts will be in vain" (99).
In addition to tendentious jokes, Freud's "comic of
unmasking" or degradation, "comic of situation" and
"comic of movement" all influence questions of sexual
power and control in the comedic economy. Freud defines
unmasking as a type of degradation of some person who
lays claim to dignity and respect without deserving it
(Jokes 200-201). Another form of unmasking degrades the
"dignity of the individual" by directing attention to
human frailty and the reliance on bodily needs (202).
Parody and travesty, for instance, are forms of comic
degradation because they destroy "the unity that exists
between people1s characters as we know them" by
substituting exalted actions or "utterances" with
"inferior" ones (201). Most importantly, however, the
comic of unmasking, though not theorized so by Freud, is
still closely and somewhat ironically linked to the
exposure the "object" in the tendentious joke. Just as
Freud says that the comic of unmasking offers the
admonition that even "demigods" are human after all
(202), one may say that all are "naked" and capable of
being exposed. However, because Freud theorizes the
tendentious joke as exposing women in particular, the
type of "human frailty" unmasked takes on a specific
gender (i.e., "Frailty, thy name is woman!"). How well
the "object" circumvents or avoids such "exposure" thus
becomes an issue in many of the texts addressed in this
study, especially in those of West and Parker.
In contrast, in the ways in which this study
addresses the "comic of movement" (Jokes 190-194) and
the "comic of situation" (196), the person found "comic”
tends to be male. Freud explains that the comic of
21
movement is produced when we recognize that another's
actions are absurdly exaggerated or inexpedient for the
task at hand. The viewer of this comic effect makes an
implicit comparison between the actor's inappropriate
motions and the ones "he" would have made had he made
the same motions. The viewer thus derives a superior
notion of himself. Much of the "comic of movement"
occurs in slapstick, and is not necessarily gender
specific. However, in following discussions of thematic
mastery and the Lacanian "mirror stage" in the comedy of
Preston Sturges, the "comic of movement" does involve a
specifically male subject's actions. Similarly, the
"comic of situation" results when we observe someone
overcome by an "often over-powerful external world"
(196). The comparison made between this person and
ourselves is like that in the "comic of movement"; yet,
this time, the person becomes inferior only in
comparison to an earlier version of himself. For, if we
compare him to ourselves, we know that we could not have
acted differently; there is, therefore, an identity of
situation.
Arising out of Freud's "comic of situation" is the
"comic antihero," a foundational figure in modernism,
film comedy and American humor. Although he is not a
joke teller or hearer per se, his characterization is
sustained by, and influential upon the work of the
comedic narrative. He asks us to "identify" and
sympathize with him. When we see him overcome by the
"often over-powerful external world" (Jokes 196) we
laugh, but only because we (secretly?) admit that the
same might befall us; or, we perceive the sudden but
markable change in versions of himself— as he is before
the brick hit him in the head and after. Specifically
in the context of the Great Depression, and in the film
genre of "screwball" comedy which many argue arose
during this era, the antihero finds himself frustrated
in a "world that seems more irrational every day"
(Gehring, Screwball Comedy, 3). As Wes Gehring goes
formulates, the comic antihero is especially frustrated
by women, who, in "screwball" comedy, are usually the
dominant player in the wild and eccentric courtship that
precedes the comedic resolution of marriage, or as
Stanley Cavell calls it, "remarriage." Ironically, the
"screwball"— the one with the screw loose— is usually
the woman. But in the genre named after the woman, the
critical focus for theorists like Gehring becomes the
comic antihero: his "abundant leisure time, childlike
nature, urban life, apolitical outlook, and basic
frustration" (15).
If comedy is a genre set on the circular motion of
union and reunion, of misunderstanding and
clarification, of mistaken identities and recognition,
23
then whose agency it is who propels such movement must
become an issue. It also remains an important issue
outside of "screwball" comedy and outside of film in
general, since the comic antihero is a permutation of
the "little man" protagonist of American humor. In
fact, Gehring writes that the work of Thurber and his
immediate predecessor, Robert Benchley best exemplifies
the "comic American hero" (28). In other words, the
"little man" of Thurber's canon arguably crosses over
into that of Sturges, especially in such characters as
Norval Jones in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, or
Woodrow Truesmith in Hail the Conquering Hero. It is my
contention that such characters within both Sturges’s
and Thurber's works often parody the stereotypical
notions of masculinity, and are thus "half" of the
equation which destabilizes gender. However, Gehring's
focus on the comic antihero should be marked with a
caveat: as the basis for a genre analysis, it becomes a
kind of myopia. Women are excluded from consideration,
except as frustrating "forces" to be reckoned with
alongside of falling pianos and runaway shopping carts.
Arguably, it becomes a defense and strategy in defining
a genre in which women have (nominal) power in their
"subversive" eccentricity, but at the expense of
becoming stereotyped as "flighty" at best, or imbued
with an inherent irrationality at worst.
Nevertheless, it is the "screwball" in screwball
comedy, usually the woman, who "leads" or initiates the
series of events which result in union. This study
neither completely dismisses the women's apparent
narrative "control" as ideologically adverse illusion,
nor completely reclaims it as a sign of "subversive"
power. Critics of the genre have addressed the issue of
narrative which leads to union in different ways. In
Pursuits of Happiness, Stanley Cavell's theorization of
the "comedy of remarriage" sees the heroine or married
woman as the active agent in the effort to reunite the
couple (4). Similarly, in her analysis of romantic
comedies of the thirties, Elizabeth Kendall finds the
"control" of the narrative chiefly in the hands of the
woman. Claudette Colbert’s Ellie Andrews in It Happened
One Night (1934) is the "one who had set the plot in
motion at the beginning and the one who saves the
romance at the end" (The Runaway Bride 49). Providing
an alternative focus to that of Wes Gehring's, Kendall
writes that the "runaway bride is one of the most
joyous, kinetic, and rebellious images produced by mass
culture in the Depression" (49). Following up Kendall's
analysis, Kay Young comments that such a figure
"problematizes marriage by risking running away from and
toward it; she discovers and expresses a sense of self-
determination and freedom in this act of running toward
25
and away from her object of desire" ("Hollywood, 1934"
258).
Alternatively, some critics find the issue of
narrative control subsumed or seriously questioned by
the socio-historical development of romance and its
relationship to marriage. Taking issue primarily with
analyses such as Stanley Cavell's, David R. Shumway
argues that rather than "enlightening us" about marriage
as Cavell maintains, screwball comedies "mystify
marriage by portraying it as the goal— but not the end—
of romance" ("Screwball Comedies," 7). More than
"simple," Shumway claims that romance is a "complex and
tenacious ideology" (10). "Romance," then, becomes a
metanarrative for screwball comedy in general, or simply
the motive or "force" weaving itself throughout the
narrative and compelling the subject of that narrative.
Shumway goes on to argue that this ideology is connected
to genre at the fundamental level of narrative, and
draws upon Donald Maddox's use of the triadic structure,
"including a pair of subjects and an excluded third
subject" (10). This "excluded" subject is the spectator
or subject of narrative who is "constructed" so as to
"feel marriage [of the included pair] as the thing
desired" (7). Narrative "succession" unfolds because
the "excluded subject always seeks to be included in the
pair" (10).
In Creating the Couple, Virginia Wright Wexman
explores the ideology of romance in Hollywood more
extensively, also reviewing the ideas of critics across
a spectrum of disciplines. In addition to drawing on
Foucault and Habermas, among others, Wexman paraphrases
German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who "sees
contemporary culture as having fostered an ideology of
romantic love centered on the ideal of sexual
fulfillment and characterized primarily by notions of
freedom and individuality" (8). She seems most
influenced by Luhmann's ideas when she summarizes "the
movies' depictions of heterosexual romance" as moving
from an "acceptance of the Victorian notion of separate
spheres to the companionate ideal to the validation of
romance as a key to individual identity" (13). Wexman's
concern is for a more sociologically and historically
based account of Hollywood's cinematic "coupling." Her
understanding of "romance ideology" interestingly
emphasizes its service in discovering "individual
identity."
Since issues of narrative control are a secondary
focus of this study, it is beyond its scope to follow
the directions of Shumway's and Wexman's inquiries into
the ideology of romance. Their arguments do, however,
help us to understand the extent to which romantic
comedy has been seen as a conservative force in
maintaining the heterosexual status quo. It is,
however, the focus of this study to address the dynamics
of gender construction within this "conservative" arena.
And, in an influential way, such genre criticism, along
with psychoanalytic theory, has described the comedic
economy, its distribution of "power," and has suggested
the terms in which "male" and "female" subjectivities
are defined and discussed. But while Freud's
formulations tend to limit women's positions in joke
telling, and postmodern critique of comedic narrative
tends to characterize the genre as ideologically
constrictive, a third approach, represented in the work
of women's humor critics, scholars and critics of
women's humor, endeavors to "reclaim" comedy as a viable
medium for women's self expression and empowerment.
Such critiques begin their work by emphasizing women
humorists' different place. Alice Sheppard notes:
We conceptualize 'women humorists' as a
special category because humor is implicitly
defined as a male realm, and the terms comedian,
cartoonist, and humorist are implicitly gender-
referenced. We thus feel compelled to
distinguish comediennes, woman/lady humorists
and women/lady cartoonists from their male
counterparts ("Social Cognition" 36).
Distinctions such as these are admittedly important
in varying social and political times and contexts,
although their emphasis might lead to static
categorization. Nevertheless, scholars such as Nancy
Walker have pursued such distinctions most notably by
documenting a separate history and tradition of women's
humor; Walker's Women's Humor: A Very Serious Thing, is
one such study. In other work, Walker sees the women's
humor tradition in opposition to the male-dominated,
tradition of American humor in general, inspiring her to
such arguments as found in "'Fragile and Dumb': The
'Little Woman* In Woman’s Humor, 1900-1940." In this
essay, Walker finds a "little woman" figure in the work
of Parker, among others. Defined in contrast to such
figures as Thurber's "little man who typically finds
himself lost in an absurd world, the "little woman"
finds herself absurd in a world that makes sense to
someone else ("'Fragile and Dumb'" 24). This brand of
"distinctive" thinking and typing also has lead scholars
to define women's humor in terms of its oppositional
characteristics. In a recent anthology of essays on
women's humor, Gail Finney summarizes the traits
discussed by scholars such as Walker, Regina Barreca and
Emily Toth:
. . . comedy by women is less hostile than that
by men: female comics are more prone to self-
directed put-downs than to putting down others,
the object of women's humor is the powerful
rather than the pitiful, and women are less
likely than men to laugh at those hurt or
embarrassed . . . ("Introduction: Unity in
Difference" 5).
29
Finney's summary refers to certain "rules" that
scholars feel mark out women’s humor. Regina Barreca,
for instance, cites Emily Toth's "humane humor rule"
that women "should not make fun of what people cannot
change, such as social handicaps (such as a stutter) or
physical appearance" (They Used To Call Me Snow White
13). Barreca argues that women's comedy therefore
"takes as its material the powerful rather than the
pitiful" (13).
While it is easy enough to argue that many of Mae
West1s and Dorothy Parker's witticisms seem to comply
with this rule, there are more effective ways to
approach the specificity of their work. Truthfully
enough, as "woman" and as humorist and comedienne, each
occupies a doubly contradictory position: at once part
of the "low" culture, "trivial" realm of the comic, and
at once part of the culturally and historically
"inferior" political realm of the "second sex." Such a
problematic historical placement no doubt lead scholars
of women humor to cite women's positive achievements,
viewing them as advancements. Emily Toth, for instance,
wrote that Parker "emancipated women writers from the
need to be nice, to hide their anger" ("A Laughter of
Their Own," 207).
But at the same time, such general typing and
summary of the subject matter and approach of women's
humor can be flawed. Women's humor, for instance, is
not the only kind that gathers force from anger or the
passion over inequities. In Preston Sturges's films,
especially, satirical and cynical treatment of largely
corrupt (patriarchal) institutions is common, and the
films just as often lambaste men's own ideas of
omnipotence in relationship to women. That women’s
humor is imbued with empathy and righteous indignation
more so than are other "types" or traditions of humor
seems, ultimately, a less than useful generalization.
Instead, this study relies more on the critical
methods and focuses of exemplified in the work of
Patricia Mellencamp, Alice Sheppard and Judy Little.
Mellencamp responds specifically to Freud's theorization
of the "tendentious" obscene joke, or "smut," an element
of comic theory typically "modernist" in its placement
of woman as the "object," or "other" of the joke. In
her study of the television show, Burns and Allen,
Mellencamp argues that Gracie Allen defies this
positioning by her command of the "shaggy dog" story
which impels the narrative. Being found "true," this
story then hoodwinks George, putting the joke "on" him
("Situation Comedy" 84-85). George, of course, in his
straight address to the camera, his satirical asides,
and his control over the "narrative 'logic'" of the
situation, frequently makes Gracie appear eminently
silly, the "object" of his knowing looks (85).
Mellencamp rightly assesses that the situations of both
the Burns and Allen and I Love Lucy shows do not benefit
from the three-way process of the joke, and thus turns
to an analysis of the comic— a "two-way process" that is
not "gender defined" (91). Since the "comic" only needs
"a first who finds what is comic and a second in whom it
is found" (Jokes 181), Gracie comes to be "subject" in
making George appear comic as he is frustrated by her
"illogic." However, far from exemplifying a unilateral
victory for feminist reappropriation of Freud,
Mellencamp also finds that Gracie becomes/remains
"object" by being found comic in George's customary
domination of her: "Say good-night, Gracie."
What Mellencamp's analysis does exemplify is the
problem of woman's bind as both subject and object of
the comic, as both "agent" of power and "oppressed."
Her thinking on this problem is complemented by Alice
Sheppard's in "Social Cognition, Gender Roles, and
Women's Humor." Sheppard explains that humor in a
social situation is "initiated by someone of higher
status," who, often, are not women. Sheppard continues:
When a person of low status initiates a
joke, the judgment may be that it is
inappropriate for that person to be joking. In
that case indignation supplants amusement, and
any tendency to respond humorously is suppressed
from the outset (39).
Judging by the popularity of their work, both West and
Parker achieved some measure of success in overcoming
the status quo as it is seen through social and
cognitive theories. Sheppard goes on, working from
imposed stereotypes of "passivity" and asking, "Can a
woman be passive and control an audience? Can a person
serve as attractive sex object and comedian?" (39-40).
A similar question is raised by Luce Irigaray, and in my
analysis of Mae West's performance and comedy, I address
both questions in detail.
Similarly, in my analysis of Dorothy Parker's
fiction and poetry, I address the operations of the text
which place the speaker in both object and subject
position. Though she tends to favor the project of
"typifying" women's humor, Judy Little usefully
appropriates Bakhtin in explaining the dynamics of
specialized discourse. In her essay, "Humoring the
Sentence," Judy Little concludes that double-voiced
discourse is a mainstay of women's comic writing. She
writes,
When these writers humor the sentence, they make
it unsay, or partly unsay, what it seems to say.
In so doing, these women expose the ambivalent
structures of language and its implied world
view. Power is revealed as a linguistic posture
(and a bodily posture in the case of drama),
while gender categories unravel in the
linguistic stripping (31).
In brief, instances of self-ridicule and effacement
taking place in Parker's work, while making women
characters both "subject" and "object" of the joke, is
perhaps better understood as part of the "saying" and
"unsaying" process which reveals power as a "linguistic"
or "bodily" posture." That process is, in fact, a kind
of gender parody. For example, Mae West's "bodily
posture," her style of walking, and performative
gestures are all forms of exaggerated, excessive
(feminine) sexuality, which, as clear imitation, is
meant to parody the idea of a "natural" femininity.
Parker's overall strategy in stories like "The Waltz"
calls into question "feminine" discourse, while at the
same time allowing speakers and readers to both identify
with it and distance themselves from it.
Rather than categorize overly general "types" or
subject matter in women's humor, the approaches of these
feminist critics concentrate on useful addresses of the
problematic double-bind in the comic theory relevant to
West and Parker. For despite my emphasis on the
nonessential nature of gender, I assume that impositions
of gender stereotypes upon women had/have a specifically
exclusionary effect. To de-essentialize gender, to
question innate "originals," is not necessarily to deny
that a history of women's oppression exists. In this
assumption, of course, is one of central "tensions" of
the essentialist/deconstructivist debate within
feminism. This tension also occurs in the idea that it
is possible to destabilize gender and, at the same time,
posit that specific "male" and "female" writers are
somehow "connected" to their work, or indeed, that not
only women's humor questions gender. However, following
the gist of Butler's fundamental thesis, this study
maintains that gender is enacted, or "played," and so
may also be "imposed" or "expected" from its "actor."
Women and men have both "acted" their genders and been
oppressed, to varying and usually unequal degrees, by
having to "act" them in a certain way. Both occupying
"token" positions in the signifying economy, the
"female" and "male" subjects of this study question
gender and as well as write from its specific locuses in
history.
35
Chapter I
Mae West Was Not A Man: Sexual Parody in the
Plays and Films of Mae West
PERSONA, "PERSONALITY," AND PARODY
"I am an example— rare I hear— of a writer who
performed her function perfectly, in the sense
that I was both the creator and the consumer of
my own basic literary material . . .
Yes, I first had to create myself, and to
create the fully mature image I had to write it
out to begin with. I admit that my writing is
only for the theatre, that my ideas and my texts
were from the first for the stage, through the
secret doors of my personal life. But no one
has clearly created himself in the public eye as
I have, unless it's George Bernard Shaw or
Flagpole Kelly."
— Mae West, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It
The comedy of Mae West began with the authoring of
"Mae West." Through performance and writing, West
invented a powerful and successful stage, screen and
public persona, and claimed sole authority for its
creation. This was her "personality," what she referred
to as "the glitter that sends your little gleam across
the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black
space where the audience is" (Goodness 7). In part,
"her creation" only complied with the requirements of
popular theatrical tradition. A "true vaudevillian's"
art, stated a Yale Professor in 1933, is the development
of a "stage personality so definite, rounded, unique and
so entirely his own, that he would be recognized and
36
hailed when he appeared on a stage— in New York or
Kalamazoo" (qtd. in Ward 7). On the whole, however,
West's self-creation necessarily involved the fiction
that "she" was more than vaudeville, that she
transcended genre and tradition with an explosive splash
of style and sex.
Long before the advent of her film career, Mae West
was writing and performing in off-Broadway plays and
productions usually seen as offensive, vulgar and cheap
by current moral and legal interests. Theatrical
reviewers, until the debut of Diamond Lil in 1928, also
consistently panned her plays and excoriated her. In
1927, Mae West was sentenced to, and served ten days in
prison for producing an "immoral play"; Sex, her
melodramatic tale about a waterfront prostitute,
nevertheless ran for 383 performances before it was
raided by police and forcibly closed. That she reaped a
million or more dollars worth of free publicity from
these and like legal actions was hardly a surprise to
any of the parties involved. "When girls go wrong,"
Lady Lou informs the fallen Sally in Paramount's 1933
film, She Done Him Wrong, "men go right after 'em."
Transgressive and sensational, West's persona, like
that of many in the "star system," was formed into a
multi-media palimpsest. Notoriety from her early
vaudeville and stage career shaped the figure created
through playscripts, films, and ephemera such as theatre
reviews, studio releases and publicity clippings. West
wanted to put on a "show," and to "out-show" her
predecessors and competitors. In "creating herself,"
she displayed her inimitable powers as a popular artist;
but more importantly, she attempted to outdo comedic
genre and tradition. West forged her early career not
only out of the contemporary obscene and shocking, but
out of the contemporary perverse and unspeakable. She
wrote and directed The Drag in 1927, demonstrating her
familiarity with the oppression of homosexuals and her
knowledge of camp and gender parody. Along with
masquerade, these two practices helped to shape her
persona and conjure up later rumors about the "man"
behind her mask.
West enacted "herself" strategically; the "self
parody" involved in "doing herself" having been read as
"camp" or masquerade. Several critics find West
engaging in the masquerade of sexual identity, whether
this be as a woman calling attention to stereotypical
femininity, or as a woman or "man" "bursting" through
such a guise to a "truer" masculinity. In "The Power
and Allure: The Mediation of Sexual Difference in the
Star Image of Mae West," Ramona Curry sees West as
embodying masculine traces, and through these,
functioning as a female female impersonator (389).
However, in "'The Kinda Comedy That Imitates Me:' Mae
West's Identification with the Feminist Camp," Pamela
Robertson argues that West's female female impersonation
works to hyperbolize the feminine through masquerade; it
parodies drag, but not because of West's underlying
masculine characteristics. Rather, West "recuperates"
the female impersonator aesthetic as a "female
aesthetic" (63). West's female fans identified with her
and therefore this identification was a camp practice— a
"feminist camp" (63). It is my contention that West's
comedy works not only through the performance of her
gender parody or "camp," but also entails her persona's
entrance into the demands of genre. West's masquerade
was in fact a "man-scare-ade"; the ambiguity of her
persona's sexual identity was combated and consolidated
through specific forms of gender(ed) and generic excess
that played with men's (and more specifically, male
spectator's) fears.
The first part of this chapter therefore examines
the authorship of West's persona, and the sexual parody
that made West's comedy more than self-mockery and
allowed her to manipulate generic (and bodily)
constraints. The second part of this chapter analyzes
the dialectic between persona, gender and genre. The
"masquerading," parodying, and "camping" persona enters
the genre— mask, and all— most prominently through the
39
theme of multiple lovers. This theme marks the excess
that constituted much of her parody of gender roles and
sexualities, and it also appears to be West’s violation
of comedy's traditional closure in marital union.
However, pressure to "get Mae married" emanated from
both the Hays Office and "literary" tradition. The
comedic genre put certain limits on the persona, forcing
West to seek out hybrid genres, such as the comic
melodrama and Western.
Critics firmly situate Mae West in the wake of
vaudeville stars Eva Tanguay and Sophie Tucker. Martin
and Segrave describe Tanguay as the "biggest star in
vaudeville's history," interpreting her blend of raucous
antics, lewd ballads, and generally grotesque demeanor
as symbolizing "the growing restlessness of women
emerging from Victorian darkness;" she "was very much
the forerunner of, and influence on, the liberated
1920's flapper" (68). Similarly, Tucker was "the bold
brassy hunk of woman, flaunting her sexuality through
bawdy songs" (79). She sang on vaudeville and Broadway
in roles and acts that emphasized and made fun of her
matronly excess of flesh, transforming it into an
excessively demanding sexuality— or rather, the allusion
to (or illusion of) one. Striking similarities exist
between West's stage and screen persona and that of
Tanguay's and Tucker's. Tanguay used trombones to mark
her stage entrances, and West appropriated the fanfare;
in I'm No Angel, for instance, West uses a successively
greater number of trumpeters at each of her two circus
entrances. For Tanguay, the herald indicated star
status, and perhaps the sheer volume and brazenness of
what was to follow in the act— a violation of silence,
as it were. In West's films, the horns and lengthened
pauses between their soundings marked the suspense
necessitated by desire. This desire not only fed on the
spectacle that was "Mae West," but on the diegetic
desire written into the film— the fiction of Tira as the
woman all men want to see.
In Horrible Prettiness, Robert Allen evaluates the
West persona as becoming "less and less threatening as
it became more and more difficult to take her expressive
sexuality seriously" (281). Quoting Marjorie Rosen,
Allen presents the image of a 40-year-old, overweight
West in 1933 as a "turn-of-the-century sausage"; West
"had come to resemble nothing so much as a female
impersonator, parodying rather than exuding the vamp's
controlling sexuality" (281). Fixing West in the
Tanguay and Tucker tradition of the grotesque, Allen
thus suggests that West's transgressive sexuality was a
ruse. His discussion of her career follows the
narrative of the sexually threatening female entertainer
who eventually turns to parody when her body will no
41
longer sustain the signs of a seamless, "serious"
sexuality. Allen describes West as moving from "small
time" vaudeville, a particular "level of vaudeville" or
rather, a chain of venues that featured both films and
acts, to Broadway and the musical revue. In Sometime,
West did the shimmy, a stationary shaking of the
shoulders, breasts, and torso. West claims that she
imported this dance from a black jazz club in South
Chicago, although Allen claims that it was already
prevalent across the nation (275). The shimmy was
replacing the "hootchie cootch," and Mae West, whose
sexuality offended the bourgeois audiences of big-time
vaudeville in the 1910'sl, "succeeded in revues in the
1920's" which tolerated sensuality "to a degree that
would have been unthinkable in big-time vaudeville"
(275). By the time she emerged as a "star" in theatre—
her persona as Diamond Lil finally reaching the extremes
of notoriety— this "unthinkable" sexuality was on the
verge of being exposed. But what was actually exposed,
iwest was, in fact, dismissed from a small-time vaudeville
theater in 1912. West and critics alike quote a newspaper review
to describe the offense in question; apparently, her rendition of
the cooch dance was an "enchanting, seductive, sin-promising [sic]
wriggle" (Goodness 41-53; Allen 275; Ward 9). In this instance,
"Mae West's" "aggressive" sexuality was culled not only from the
physical spectacle and gyrations of West's body, but the rather
happy and alliterative phraseology of a journalistic text. The
persona was offensive because it "promised" something delightful
but unchaste.
argues Allen, was a sexuality "unthinkable" in another
sense. In the "history of burlesque since 1869," the
denouement of West's career and persona may be— perhaps
a little too neatly— summarized in the "final strategy"
of this history: grotesque figures such as Tanguay's,
Tucker's, and West's were "authorized to be
transgressive because, by their fusing of incongruent
cultural categories, they had been 'disqualified' as
objects of erotic desire" (281-282).
It is almost impossible to speak of West's comedy
as an entity or practice separate from her sexuality,
but it is also a commonplace and a reductive conflation
to say that her sexuality was her comedy. In the
picture of the 1933 West, both Robert Allen and Marjorie
Rosen suggest that West's comedy relied chiefly on self
parody. Since her sex appeal "was no longer obvious,"
this parody's implied target was West's own failure
(largely as body, as physical image) to meet implicit
(seemingly instinctive) standards for acceptance as a
viably "sexy" woman. But the tough, sexually
sophisticated, and glamorous persona attributed to West
throughout her vaudeville and stage career did not pass
unproblematically into the category of the grotesque at
the beginning of her film career. On the contrary, West
and other diverse agents and media changed "norms" of
sexual attractiveness.
In 1933, the year after West made her debut in
films, a number of articles discussing "Westian"
influences appeared in local city papers. Despite her
40 years and full figure, or rather, because of them,
West was altering fashion, or working hard to prove that
she was. "Light journalism," especially letters to
"Mae" from columnists such as J.P. McEvoy appeared,
thanking West for her eye-opening revision to the
"fashionable" woman's body. "You see," writes McEvoy,
"for years I've been looking at women and wondering in
my artless fashion, what all the fuss was about. They
were all kind of straight up and down, like men, only
they didn't have nearly such good shoulders" (McEvoy
1933). Motion Picture ran a July 1933 article entitled,
"Curves! Hollywood Wants Them— and So Will You!" It
claims, among other things, that the "advent of beer,"
and "the influence of Mae West" lead to an increased
"avoirdupois— and curviness— of beauty on the screen"
(Tildesley 34). In an earlier article from a Los
Angeles paper, "before" and "after" photographs call
attention to Mae's double chin before studio
cosmeticians had a chance to "freshen her up." Mae is
quoted discussing her penchant for the 1890's: "None of
your boyish-figure stuff for them. They were all-woman,
busts, hips, hair, jewels, clothes" (Whitaker, 4/16/33).
44
In the same year, Paramount, following suit— or
creating it— furnished their own releases. In "Mae West
as I Know Her," Jim Davies, "masseur and physical
culturist," reports his telling West that she would
"make a grave mistake" if she tried "to reduce." West
would ruin her perfect figure, the measurements of which
she shared with no other than that classical paragon,
Venus de Milo. Interviews, biography, and releases such
as these repeatedly describe and cite West's famous
regimen of daily exercise, no alcohol and no tobacco
smoke as the influence of her prizefighter father. As
such, her reputed discipline became part of her persona,
providing a blatant contrast to her weight "problem."
Once again, West employed a strategy of professionalism
and devotion to her image that quite literally tailored
standards of appeal to suit her. Her "coup de gras" in
this sense, then, might have been the type of headlines
that read, "Physicians Endorse Mae West's Curves":
Milwaukee, Oct. 6, 1933— Mae West, whose
curves won her fame in the movies, has received
the full approval of the Central Association of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The
organization, holding its annual convention
here, heard Dr. W. Holmes, Chicago, former
president, compliment the blonde actress for
making plumpness stylish.
"If it is Mae West who is responsible for
this new and yet age-old fashion, my hat is off
to her," declared Dr. Holmes. "The return to
pumpness [sic] in women is a boon to
motherhood."
West was adamant in her refusal to play mothers in
any of her plays or films. Ironically, her recruitment
to wholesome motherhood in this clipping may not appear
surprising in light of Claire Johnston's reading of
West's "mother image" ("Women's Cinema as Counter-
Cinema" 212). West's appreciation of publicity, good or
bad, would likely lead her to overlook— or lead us to
overlook— the move from Venus de Milo to the Madonna. A
month after this last (in)auspicious report from the
Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the following headlines
appeared in the Examiner: "Will Mae West Make Us Fat?"
Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the
American Medical Association, stated that the repeal of
prohibition and the styles inspired by Mae West
"probably would make Americans a more corpulent race."
Fishbein told a clinical conference in Oklahoma City
that "the Mae West renaissance and the cocktail will go
hand in hand in adding pounds to the average American"
(Examiner 11/1/33). The sanctions and concerns of the
two medical associations weave the discourse back to
J.P. McEvoy and his facetious remarks on viewing the
Rubens paintings: "There must be a lot of inflation
going on in here."2
2The typographical error "pumpness" in "Physicians Endorse
Mae West's Curves" might be ignored both as a faulty transcription
and as an editorial oversight. However, even as such, it
indicates the suggestive, if admittedly perverse word play between
46
The Mae West persona, figuring in, and figured by,
the texts described above, may be only ambivalently
placed between the contexts of a "legitimate"
(hetero)sexual appeal, and that of a parodic one.
Variously read as grotesque, or as sexually and morally
threatening, the Mae West persona both exceeded and
violated "erotic norms" as well as changed them to fit
the "buxom" body perfectly. Especially in fashion— so
closely connected to the structuring processes of the
female body image— the actress Mae West and the multiple
discourses about her claim a certain authority.
Typically exemplified in the Paramount Studio release,
"Mae West Says 'I Don't Follow Fashions Fashions
Follow Me'" (Mansfield 1), this claim is one to the
"plumpness" and the inadvertent neologism "pumpness." Mae West's
"plumpness" marked the "pumping up" of the thin woman of the
twenties, or the "inflation" implied in the Rubens paintings.
This word play becomes even more intriguing when we consider that
during W.W.II, the RAF christened their life preserving jackets
"Mae West's." The slight difference between "plumpness" and
"pumpness" parallels the challenge that the West persona brought
to standards of beauty and sexuality (was she just pleasingly
plump, or absurdly overblown?) Arguably, the West persona incited
this query most as filmic object— or when the "movie camera
exaggerated one's figure" (Davies 1). Mae West's body, as well as
the image of her body, was constructed through— and by—
connotations of fullness and buoyancy which were already widely
dispersed in American and British popular culture and discourse by
W.W.II. Also at play is West's image as female bodybuilder, or
the woman with "pumped up" muscles. In his studio release, Davies
remarks that West could perform various muscle-hardening exercises
"better and longer than the average man" (2). A "pumped up" West
not only presented challenges to standards of feminine beauty, but
repeated the challenge she was already bringing to gender
construction.
47
creation or "authorship" of fashion, and thus to the
origination of the "image" or "persona."
To create a "fully mature image," Mae West claims
that she had to "write it out to begin with" (Goodness
72). The written, or more precisely, discursive
production of West's persona is more than evident in
journalistic and star-system ephemera. West manipulated
these texts to reinforce her viability as a sexual icon.
More subtly, she also parodied the "ideal" vision of
womanhood, and the "ideal" itself. The "self-parody"
that critics such as Allen and Rosen note in West may
also be read more accurately as a form of "gender
parody," especially in Butler's formulation that gender
is "an identity tenuously constituted in time— an
identity instituted through a stylized repetition of
acts" ("Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" 270).
Butler derives this notion chiefly through her analysis
of performative activities within gay cultures. Here,
the "repetition of heterosexual constructs" is manifest
in gay discourse and sexual practice as the "butch" and
"femme" sexual styles; in fact, these constructs best
reveal themselves as such when they are repeated in non
heterosexual contexts. Once the constructed status of
the "original" is shown, performative proliferation of
the "idea of the natural and original" is possible
(Gender Trouble 31).
The striking difference between West's self- and
gender parody is illustrated by a scene from the 1940
film My Little Chickadee. At the end of the film, W.C.
Fields slyly repeats the invitation to "Come up 'n see
me sometime," while West counters (in her best Fields
voice), "I'll be sure and do that, my little chickadee."
Following is a close-up of West’s behind slowly
sashaying up the stairs, "The End" cleverly superimposed
over the image of her rear-end. As an instance of self-
parody, this single image might be suggest the loss of
her sexual attractiveness and "the end" of her career.
Indeed, her "end" is simply assimilated into the
repetition of a piece of comic business clichd since
"the end" of the silent film era. In its "broadest"
reading, this visual joke becomes a reader/spectator's
inference of intertextuality. As opposed to Margaret
Rose's idea that parody should have comic effect, Linda
Hutcheon stresses a parody that is neutral— "one of the
major forms of modern self-reflexivity; it is a form of
inter-art discourse" (2). Although the effect is
undoubtedly comic, the close-up of "The End" is first an
interfilmic quotation— a visual repetition of the silent
film convention of the closing title card. The
"imitation characterized by ironic inversion" (Hutcheon
6), also comes into play. The title card's
superimposition over Mae West's behind is the operative
"inversion"; it first became "ironic" because of the
availability of the camera's eye and the whole of a new
media which enabled one to conflate/connect the literal
with the visual. By 1940, the connection was a well-
worn one and only newly "ironized" by the owner of "the
end" being shown. The parody then becomes the quotation
of West's "largeness" (and of the "heavy" comedy) of her
body.
Alternatively, the close-up and subsequent
enlargement of the Mae West behind serves as an extreme
exaggeration, another instance of excess, after the
already disorienting reversal of personas and genders.
That there is pleasure afforded in the erotic as well as
in the comic spectacle further emphasizes the viability
of different (sexual) viewpoints. For it is this other
instance of parody which seems to situate the West
persona in light of Butler's theory. When Cuthbert J.
Twillie extends the invitation from "the bottom" of the
stairs, Flower Belle answers. Yet, to contemporary
spectators familiar with the two famous personas, it is
actually W.C. Fields who invites Mae West to "come up
and see [him] sometime." Not only are the "stars"
blatantly "breaking character" and emerging as
"themselves," but they are performing the final gender
reversal in a film already replete with them. Earlier
in the film, we see Fields prancing around in a frilly
robe, and West poised with pistols firing. The idea
that an original is always already copy may well be
exemplified by the illusion of the two stars "breaking
character." Who are the two stars, W.C. Fields and Mae
West, but "character"? Does the "come up and see me
sometime" persona signify separately from the "real" Mae
West, the actress who "quietly" bought up "hundreds of
acres in the San Fernando Valley,", and who lived in a
white and gold "candybox" apartment on Rossmore street
(Reitz)? The "characters" of Flower Belle and Twillie
are never more than the "characters" of Mae West and
W.C. Fields. Their final exchange is a polite and
mutual "self" parody, intended, perhaps, to reveal their
"true" selves while only exposing more of their
"characters," and in turn, their status as constructs.
The question becomes, of course, can we see past this
act of legerdemain to the constructedness of the gender,
or is it part of the "joke" that beneath that pink robe
(and obviously so) there is really W.C. Fields, a real
man, and a real gendered subject?
Mary Ann Doane writes, "Male transvestitism is an
occasion for laughter," whereas "female transvestitism
is only another occasion for desire" ("Film and
Masquerade" 48). From this comment, and similar ones by
Molly Haskell and other critics of drag and camp, we
begin to see that the "joke" is aimed specifically at
51
the (straight) male spectator. Andrew Ross quotes
Rebecca Bell-Metereau1s argument that the comic/erotic
distinction relies on more than gender alignment.
According to her, female impersonation may be seriously,
'willingly,' or 'sympathetically' received by the groups
within the film {No Respect 157 n40).
In My Little Chickadee, no such "sympathetic" group
exists. In Freudian terms, the straight male spectator
of this film becomes either that "second person" who
finds what is comic in the object of ridicule, or that
third person in the economy of the "tendentious" joke,
who has witnessed an exposure. W.C. Fields in a frilly,
pink robe is comic for a number of reasons: bibulous,
overblown, and bald, he is clearly a grotesque in the
trappings of a beauty. Summarizing the viewpoints of
those who hold that such a "comic" moment is indeed
gynephobic or misogynist, Carole-Anne Tyler quotes
Alison Lurie: "'Although women in male clothes usually
look like gentlemen, men who wear women's clothes,
unless they are genuine transsexuals, seem to imitate
the most vulgar and unattractive sort of female dress,
as if in a spirit of deliberate and hostile parody'"
("Boys Will Be Girls" 41). Tyler comments that this
parody foregrounds femininity as a display, a "put on"
(which, I would add, is different from the class
pretensions in West's "putting on the ritz"). Writers
like Lurie suggest that "the man in drag . . .is the
phallic woman" (41). This type of the comic does not
enact, but implies the joke of exposure. Tyler analyzes
a scene from Pink Flamingos, in which Raymond watches a
"beautiful woman" who "lifts her skirts to reveal her
penis" (44). The male spectator laughs only if he does
not identify with Raymond's desire; "his laughter is a
defensive response to the castration anxiety suddenly
evoked and evaded by making what is literally a
transvestic identification with the phallic woman" (44).
But the masquerade Fields dons is far from a "man-scare-
ade." The male spectator's laughter becomes an
anticipatory response to this very joke; he is relieved
that should Fields remove the robe (an act which is
imminent as he parades in front of the bathtub), he
won't be surprised.
However, it is West, rather than Fields who
"possesses" the phallus in My Little Chickadee. In
addition to his dress-up in the bathrobe, Fields helps
out behind the bar, replaying several of his
vaudevillian routines.3 When he threatens to bodily
3West maintained that she wrote My Little Chickadee,
although in this instance, it is more accurate to say that she
allowed Fields a "block scene" in which he could perform or
improvise whatever he wished. In the battle with Chicago Molly,
Twillie (Fields) "loses" the phallus to his superior female
adversary, becoming more like the comic anti-hero or the little
man of modernism, popularized by James Thurber in such characters
as Walter Mitty:
remove a drunk woman who had been complaining about men,
the woman counters with "Yeah, you and who else?"
Misogyny and violence toward women and children were a
staple theme of Fields' comedy, but often these themes
worked to humiliate him, or else render him "feminine."
In an earlier train scene, Flower Belle becomes
Twillie's typical female nemesis, nonchalantly picking
off Indians with her pistols as Fields cowers in the
aisle; "You can't intimidate me," she tells them.
Flower Belle has her share of "truer" heterosexual
lovers, namely the dashing "Masked Bandit," and Wayne
Carter, the local newspaper editor and good guy, but
neither of these does she wed. In fact, both men parody
roles out of the Western melodrama, and it is arguable
that, in their extremes of dandified evil and naive,
"good boy" innocence, they also carry marks of the
feminine. Nevertheless, Flower Belle is better
understood as independent, not "masculine." Despite his
browbeaten status, Twillie's misogyny and sexual
"ogling" of Flower Belle reassure the male spectator
TWILLIE: I starts kicking her in the midriff. You ever
kick a woman in the midriff that had a pair of corsets on?
MAN AT BAR: Can't say as I ever remember that particular
circumstance.
TWILLIE: Well, I almost broke my great toe. The most
painful experience of my life.
MAN AT BAR: Did she ever come back?
BARTENDER: I'll say she came back. She came back a week
later and beat the both of us up.
TWILLIE: Yeah, but she had another woman with her. An
elderly lady with gray hair.
54
about the location of the phallus much more clearly than
do the posings of West.
For that particular "occasion for desire," that
moment of actual transvestitism, seldom occurred during
the film career of Mae West. Photographs of a
"masculine" Mae West certainly do exist, remnants of her
early stint in vaudeville as a male impersonator.
Charges that West was a man— or rather, the superlative
female impersonator, proliferated into the status of
legend or famous apocrypha, ever since George Davis's
tribute to her in a 1934 Vanity Fair article. Though
she rarely— if ever— practiced formal male impersonation
or cross-dressing in her Hollywood career, other modes
of "troubling" gender (to borrow Butler's term) were
open to her. The "camp" for which Mae West is heralded
is one dimension of this gender parody. Camp often
questions, provokes and denies the essential nature of
the self; its sexuality or gender is never beyond doubt
"male" or "female."
Yet, the definition of camp is surprisingly elusive
and exclusive; indeed, what seems to characterize camp
practitioners and critics alike is the assumption that
one comes to know it through lived experience. Ross
calls camp a "subjective process," then quotes Thomas
Hess aptly stating that it "'exists in the smirk of the
beholder'" (No Respect 145). In current film theory,
55
camp necessarily poses questions about, and of the
spectator; and therefore, the question of who or what
Mae West really was— parodic grotesque or sexual siren—
is often recast in terms of spectator position.
Particularly powerful stars such as Mae West, Bette
Davis and Marlene Dietrich gave spectators with
different sexual orientations an opportunity for a
notable appropriation. Ross explains that, "Denied the
possibility of 'masculine' and 'feminine' positions of
spectatorship, . . . the lived spectatorship of gay male
and lesbian subcultures is expressed largely through
imaginary or displaced relations to straight meanings of
these images and discourses of a parent culture" (157).
The chief value of West's "camp" for these spectators
rests in the extent to which it disrupted traditional,
"natural" sexual and gender roles. The question of
West's viable heterosexual appeal is then sidestepped;
undoubtedly both "siren" and "grotesque" take on new
meanings within gay and lesbian cultures.
Once camp began to be addressed as a cultural
phenomenon, there were finer slants in appraisals of
West's "male impersonation." West was the "star who
most professionally exploits the ironies of artifice
when, like a female drag queen, she represents a woman
who parodies a burlesque woman, and then seems to take
on the role for real, as a way of successfully fielding
every kind of masculine response known to woman" (Ross
160). Booth writes that "after watching Mae West or a
drag queen, we should feel less inclined to take, for
example, coquettishness seriously— more detached from
the rituals of courtship in which we are expected to
participate" (Camp 59). Finally, referring to one of
West's famous homosexual "sexual allusions," Philip Core
draws her into "the camp" by calling her at once
"'womanly,' and 'one of the lads'" (Camp: The Lie That
Tells the Truth 192).
To a certain extent, the abundance of flesh hemmed
into seductive shapes by corsets and girdles, and the
long gowns that covered most of her body suggest that
she was trying to hide something (an oft recited
professional rule of West's was never to show her
limbs). The sparkle of blond hair, white skin, and
diamonds (emphasized and coded into her character,
"Diamond Lil") weave together in a glittering, illusive
and allusive surface. Marjorie Rosen writes, "Veneer
may have been all she was about" (Popcorn Venus 154),
and Carol Ward explains the "necessity for projection of
illusion" that West appropriated from the "famous female
impersonators of the vaudeville stages" (Bio-
Bibliography 7). Rosen assumes that West was
"uncomfortable with her femininity," and in fact ended
up "mirroring" the transvestites she had sought to write
about in her 1927 play, The Drag. Quoting from Simone
de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, Rosen interprets West's
wardrobing practices as an unwarranted masochism, a sign
of conformity all too close to de Beauvoir's lyric
objections: " . . .Weighted down with fat, or on the
contrary so thin as to forbid all effort, paralyzed by
inconvenient clothing and by the rules of propriety— the
woman's body seems to man to be his property, his thing"
(Popcorn 154; de Beauvoir 147). While calling West's
"camp" her "greatest asset," Rosen joins Allen in
arguing that it resulted in a parody which no one,
especially herself, could "take seriously" (152). Since
Mae was "not a potential conquest," she was not
threatening. Ironically, like Philip Core, Rosen calls
her "one of the boys" (152), but is not referring to her
camaraderie with her gay and camp fans. According to
Rosen’s argument, the effect of the West's illusive garb
and "her banter borrowed from and elevating locker room
sass" was not to call into question her femininity but
to controvert it definitively.
Critics, journalistic ephemera, and West herself
offer other comments which illustrate the attempt to
identify the gender of the West persona. In her
discussion of the fetishization of the star, Claire
Johnston finds "traces of phallic replacement" in the
Mae West persona; "The voice itself is strongly
masculine, suggesting the absence of the male, and
establishes a male/non-male dichotomy" ("Women's Cinema
as Counter-Cinema" 211). The terms called forth by the
sign that the star persona as "Woman" presents,
therefore, are prohibitive, and set up a binary system
of inquiry that is self-reflexive— even the "non-male"
becomes a marker of the "male." Johnston does admit a
"female element" into the picture of the phallic dress,
but this she dismisses as an introduction of the "mother
image," which simply works to express the "male oedipal
fantasy" (212). The final contention of both Rosen's
sociological and Johnston's Freudian approach is
somewhat similar: the West persona, in the end,
mobilizes its aggressive sexuality and elaborate dress
in the interest of "sexist ideology" (Johnston 212).
Whether because it unconsciously allows men the
privilege to fetishize it, or because it sets an "anti
liberated" example of body bondage, West's persona
celebrates its male, and "non-male" qualities, giving
them ultimate preference over a disturbing or occluded
femininity.
Despite their difference in degree of
sophistication, Rosen's and Johnston's readings are
compatible with simpler offerings from biography and
interview. Rosen quotes the television producer who
made this comment in the 1970's, "She's really played a
leading man all these years" (Popcorn 152). Most
biographies document West's close relationship with her
mother. And, recalling her mother's doting care in
Mae's childhood years, West described the massages with
baby oil that she regularly received after her baths.
Strangely enough, West then commented, "I was always
more like my father than my mother, more like a man,"
(Chandler 55). West went on in this interview to
describe her lifelong passion for lions, and the fantasy
of entering their cages, and "totally" commanding them
(55). This particular fantasy, so often recounted in
the anecdotes surrounding the production of I'm No
Angel, supposedly motivated West to demand no stunt
double for her scene with the lions. What it also
suggests is another instance of a desire for the power
to dominate typically characterized as masculine.
However, this last anecdote shows the real problem
with attempts to determine the signs of "Mae West's"
gender. Aggression, and the desire for control over
one's life or image are behaviors common to both
genders. But it is popularly held that the wish to
subjugate is not. Though in its ideal state it is
unmediated and genderless, the wish for "power in
itself," like the wish to subjugate, is often played out
in phallocentric terms. Mary Ann Doane has theorized
that the woman desires to desire the (fetishized)
60
woman/mother image, because such an image promises a
modicum of control. Rosen, in fact, argues that West's
shrewd professionalism and her persona's tough-minded
roles earn her the epithet of the "Woman's Ego" (Popcorn
161). Indeed, West's "camp" and the glittering surface
of her image seem to hide a "surprise" gender, or to
become a fetishized object; in effect, her dress and the
visual imagery produced both by camera and spectator may
work to downplay a "happy" or possible femininity.
Yet, even after her Hollywood career, occasional
press attempted to establish West's unquestionable
womanliness. A 1949 Life article entitled, "Mae's X-
Ray" offers some fruitful evidence for those who
discount West's viability as a (male) female
impersonator, or for those who wish to quash the
annoying rumors that "Mae was really a man." West
performed this bit of publicity work to "set a good
example," as it were, and encourage people to get chest
x-rays for the early detection of tuberculosis. The
writer of the article was well aware that a "detection"
of another sort was really the occasion for the
reference to West's anatomy. However, the findings of
the medical imprint only revealed what everyone already
suspected to find under those laced corsets: a shocking,
scandalous extra roll of fat pinched neatly between her
waist piece and bra.
Not surprisingly, critical opinion of West's place
in the star system, as well as her popularity with camp
and cross-dressing devotees, points to a fundamental
ambivalence about West’s femininity. That Mae West was,
and has been heralded as a camp phenomenon is
indisputable. But her comedy was mediated, not
necessarily in(vest)ed in her clothing and mannerisms,
in her "camping." To be "camp," as Booth states is to
"present oneself as being committed to the marginal with
a commitment greater than the marginal merits"; Booth
sees the "primary type of the marginal" as the
"traditional feminine, which camp parodies in an
exhibition of stylized effeminacy" (Camp 18-19). One of
camp's chief values is indeed its gender parody. West's
persona depended on the idea of an excessive sexual
desirability, and, at the same time, a control over that
desirability. A combination of this control, and other
marks such as the "phallic" or manly tenor of West's
voice suggests that West's gender parody steered away
from the "stylized" effeminate. "Mae West" debunked the
traditional feminine more through the excess of
(feminine) flesh and an outright enjoyment of sexuality.
The "excesses" of Mae West's persona differ from those
belonging to the whole of her comedy. The distinction I
wish to make mirrors the difference between West's heady
claim to "sole" self-creation and the warring signs of a
62
more diffuse creative process: the persona— complete with
ambivalent gender and guises, and found so attractive to
spectators who wished to shake up the sexual status quo—
must act within, and with specific genres of comedy. West
may have "created herself," but she was also created. Mark
Booth writes that "where the aesthete makes his life a work
of art, the camp person tries to do the same with his
personality" (Camp 27). Of course, the "creation" of a
personality is as much a convention of vaudeville (not to
mention Hollywood's star system) as it is part of the camp
aesthetic. Despite the traces of "maleness" or excess that
pegged West as a female female impersonator, the way in
which her persona is played out in the genres of her plays
and films necessitates the full recognition of the "woman"
underneath.
WHERE THE ONE BECOMES THE MANY
I decided to go back to vaudeville before I
had all the young men in the neighborhood
playing at gang warfare. I saw the pattern of
my relationship with the male sex that was to
recur throughout my life, where the one becomes
the many, and without so much as my having to
lift even my voice. This is not ego saying
this; just a fact.
— Mae West, Goodness Bad Nothing To do With It
Freud's Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious
appeared in 1905, the same year in which Dora: A Case
History, and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
were published. James Strachey reports that work on
Jokes and the Three Essays "proceeded simultaneously."
Drawing from a report by Ernest Jones, Strachey cites
the amusing fact that Freud kept the two manuscripts "on
adjoining tables and added to one or other according to
his mood" ("Preface" Jokes 5). It was uncertain which
was published earlier. Lying side by side, the two
books— on sex, on jokes— connect, merge, and spill over,
one into the other.
The seductive charm of these speculations makes
Freud's influence on Mae West imminently credible. "I
did not perhaps treat the subject as seriously as
Havelock Ellis, or as deeply as Sigmund Freud . . . but
I think if we all could have sat down and discussed the
subject fully, my ideas would have been listened to with
some sense of awe" (Goodness 73). It is likely that
64
some conception of the "popular" Freudian inflected
West's comedy. The idea of fundamental bisexuality
seemed evident in her knowledge of her gay fans, and in
her autobiography: "behind the symbol I was becoming,
there was much good material for drama, satire and some
kind of ironic comment on the wars of sexes" (73;
emphasis mine). Even here, West's tone rings with
irony, and bravado, not the least because her use of
"sexes" implies that more than two sexes were at war.
The multiple lovers that show up in the pages of
Mae West's autobiography appear in the pages of her
plays, and, of course, in the canon of her films. The
idea of the "multiple nature of female desire and
language," and the sexuality that is "always at least
double . . in fact plural" likewise appears in the pages
of Luce Irigaray's essay, "This Sex Which is Not One"
(Essential Papers On the Psychology of Women 348-349).
Hdlene Cixous has also suggested that female sexuality
and desire resist the strict dichotomy of bisexuality
posited by Freud, and instead place themselves in a
realm more fluid. West's sexual fluidity— the ambiguity
of her persona's gender— seems countered by the
attraction of many men.
The theme of multiple lovers functions as a genre
convention as well as a sign of sexual excess. When
Tira (Mae West) encounters a fortune teller in I'm No
Angel (Paramount, 1934), he tells her that he sees a
"man in her life." She replies, "What, only one?" Her
one-liners thus represent the intersection of the
persona's work on the genre; she predicts and "plots"
the course of her own films and "future." In this
section, I will examine the theme of many lovers, first
turning to psychoanalytic theories of narcissism, and of
jokes and the comic which help to explain West's power
and threat as the enticing but unyielding humorist in
both her plays and films. Secondly, I will continue the
investigation of parody, arguing that the excesses of
West's (parodic) persona lead her into forms of generic
excess, best explained by Peter Brooks' work on
melodrama.
Inverting film and gender theories' idea of
masquerade, I earlier referred to Mae West's "man-scare-
ade," which is linked to an excess of sexuality, and a
compounding of West's womanliness. This excess, while
exquisitely and abundantly feminine in flesh, threatens
in the sense that the "Bad Girl" always threatens.
Regina Barreca writes, "If the quality associated with
Good Girls is control, then the quality most explicitly
associated with Bad Girls is excess" (They Used To Call
Me Snow White 46). Furthermore, to be a woman who tells
a joke that is not self-effacing is to be a woman who
has access to power. Barreca quotes certain
66
psychologists' findings, stating that it is the "witty
person" in a "natural group" who is "among the most
powerful members of the group" (110). She calls the
"equation that makes women's humor subversive" that
equation between "women using humor and women using
power" (111). Thus, the power of the punchline becomes
a form of control.
"Mae West" exuded control both by punchlines and
those other types of "lines." Witness the "control" of
those "lines" through the metaphor of the corsets she
popularized, the tight struggle against her body that
was redeemable for her own uses. The excesses that
threatened to overtake her formed her parody of gender.
"Mae West" evolved through figures of the golddigger,
the "femme amourese" and the prostitute, Diamond Lil,
all of these requiring an "excess" of paramours, thus
parodying or modifying comedy's traditional closure in
(singular) marital union. The persona had to negotiate
the fine line between self-parody and gender parody, in
addition to overcoming— or attempting to overcome— the
demand from both studio and genre to close her
negotiations in marriage. Though the Hays code was
largely responsible for attenuating the pasts of West's
protagonists, the allusion was clear. Arguably, to
speak of a "strategy" of multiple lovers is to speak of
67
a strategy of rewriting and recasting the prostitute
into a figure of power instead of exploitation.
The premise for West's unpublished first play, The
Ruby Ring (1921), is based on the multiplicity of guises
that its golddigger protagonist can assume. The blond
haired toast of the party, Gloria, makes a bet with the
frustrated Irene and Alice, promising them that she can
make five different men propose to her in five minutes
apiece. But Gloria, like most of the later West leads,
is generous, and willing to show Irene and Alice "how
it's done." In this game of "Go Fish," Gloria and Irene
barter emblems of bondage— Irene's ruby ring against
Gloria's bracelet. Gloria attracts her first "victim,"
"Young Reggie Muchcash," by pretending to lose a diamond
solitaire ring. He is elated when he learns it is not a
wedding ring, and she, in turn, further effaces its
presence by forgetting that she did not have it on in
the first place. Gloria successfully performs five
different "acts," using everything from contemporary
popular culture's canon; she reads Booth Tarkington and
Harold Bell Wright as the ingenue, and she gushes over
the "giant of finance," John Broad Wall, and his
"ability to do things— big things!" Gloria's puns and
malapropisms supply no small part of the play's funny
"lines"— both in the sense of seductive linguistic
strategies, and in the proverbial "punch" of the joke.
68
She claims she can imagine the cowboy Alonzo with a
"lariat" around his neck, then replaces it with a
"banana" (not "bandanna"), and finally asks him to save
her from the "stockade" (not "stampede"). Gloria wins
her bet, though none knew she was married all along.
Within the marital parameters symbolized by the ring and
bracelet, she assumes "multiple" guises. When Gloria's
handsome husband beckons her home, she shows him her new
ruby ring— the ring of "adulterous intention" that
replaces the ring of marital fidelity.
In collaboration with Adrienne Leitzbach, Mae West
authored another unpublished play, The Hussy, which
incorporated the same "bet" premise of The Ruby Ring.
The female protagonist of The Hussy falls in love with
one of her victims, however, and West thus shifts "her"
character closer to the Diamond Lil prototype— the
"whore with a heart of gold." Gloria of The Ruby Ring
is the most unfeeling of the early West heroines; she is
also the most "faithful" to her husband, and works
completely within the circle or closing off of the
marital contract. She "plays" at being a golddigger,
and wins her bounty from another woman, although her
"gaming" suggests the superficiality of her legal
liaison.
With Margie Lamont in Sex, West moves her
authorship and characterization (both written and
performative) into the (il)legitimated place of the
waterfront prostitute. The Ruby Ring and The Hussy may
be seen as further attempts by West to "break in" to
legitimate vaudeville (such as Keith's "Sunday School"
circuit) or even Broadway. Significantly, even in her
apparent bids to "legitimate" authorship and theater,
West did not sacrifice the heroine's own bid for the
play of/among multiple lovers. Nora Ramsey of The Hussy
ultimately plays into the "true love" marriage contract,
as does Margie Lamont of Sex. But Margie's past is
undisputed, as is the greater melodrama involved in her
sacrifice: instead of marrying the socialite's son and
improving her lot, Margie chooses to marry her sailorboy
lover, largely out of kindness to the matronly socialite
who has already unjustly accused Margie of conspiracy to
drug and rob her. Margie's marriage in the end hardly
co-opts or lessens the "power" of her position as
prostitute; the majority of the humor in the play comes
from precisely this social-ethical "position." At the
end of a series of articles syndicated in 1933, feature
writer Martin Sommers quotes one of the court-deigned
"objectionable" exchanges between Margie and one of her
"vultures" in Sexi
ROCKY: Where's my collar button?
MARGIE: They're your collar buttons. Find them
yourself. Who do you think I am— your wife?
Mae West's timely exploration and production of
homosexuality in The Drag (1927) may have been an effort
to "normalize," "save," or empower the prostitute
protagonist of Sex merely by virtue of her
heterosexuality. The Drag opened in Connecticut on
January 31, 1927, and thus played concurrently (if not
in proximity) with Sex. In The Drag, West openly
confronts the subject of male homosexuality, a far more
controversial topic at the time than the "'oldest
profession'" (Ward 14). Carol Ward writes about Sex,
"Though she is not really punished for her sins of
prostitution, Margie is 'healthy' in her sexual
preference for men, even if she desires several men
without the benefit of marriage."
The 1928 play, Pleasure Man was a telling reversal
to the multiple lover theme. Based on the lurid back
stage romances of a vaudevillian actor, the play paid
homage to a man's desire for several lovers (and the
production to West's penchant for multiple variety-type
acts). Yet Rodney Terrill's skills at, and "unleashed"
passion for seductions only lead to his castration and
death. In a New York review of Pleasure Man entitled
"They Don't Come Any Dirtier," Robert Littell reveals
his more than abundant disgust at the antics of the
"female impersonators," and at the "revolting innuendo
of perversion" (New York Times 10/2/28). Several
decades later, West rewrote the short-lived production
(it only lasted three days) as a novel, Pleasure Man.
Gone are the much touted "seventeen real live fairies"
on stage, and in fact, any homosexual character. Rodney
does not die, but lives on "successfully" as a eunuch.
Nevertheless, most of the humor in the book is at his
expense. West had printed her own handwritten "quips"
at the end of each chapter of the book. After the
dastardly act has been committed, Mae comments, "Rodney
used to do it any way— now he can't even do it the right
way;" and, at the conclusion of the book, "And Rodney
Terrill was as cocky as ever, although now he had
nothing to back it up with . . .{Pleasure Man 251).
Many of the contemporary Variety reviews of West's
early plays Sex, The Drag, Pleasure Man, and The Wicked
Age, scathingly condemned their profanity and
"grossness," but most grudgingly acknowledged West's
"camp" and her "inimitable" stage presence and value as
an entertainer. Though it may be easy to dismiss these
reviews as overly "moralistic," it might be better to
read them as indeed, "gross" and "shocking" and
different: part of West's project may indeed have been
"sensational" and lewd. But insofar as it was, it was
also "fitting"; it provided the prostitute heroine with
the grist for the negotiation of her desires and the
arbitration of her power. Not only was the desire for
72
several lovers part and parcel of the "lewdness," but by
contrast with the profanity, lower class characters, and
various manifestations of homosexuality, an
understandable (heterosexual) urge only exaggerated.
The later plays— specifically Diamond Lil (1928),
The Constant Sinner (1931), and Frisco Kate (1930)— were
incorporated into screenplays and then into films, and
thus entail a textual history different from the early
plays. Revision and adaptation of these plays did not
eliminate the multiple lover theme. In West's films,
the desire for (multiple) liaisons is allowed to
flourish, even though she might temporarily favor one
("the best") over another. This partially explains the
continual return to the Diamond Lil clone. Her
generosity is stereotypical but lends her promiscuity an
ethic (never take another woman's man, for instance),
and a delight, rather than a self-effacing, self-
destructive search for intimacy or gratification. The
"razor edge" of this "delight" comes in the power she
bartered and controlled through humorous innuendo. An
exchange from the film adaptation of Diamond Lil, She
Done Him Wrong (Paramount, 1933), illustrates the chosen
and "choice" ambiguity of Lady Lou's profession. Lady
Lou "rides into" the film in an open carriage, receiving
upturned noses from the ladies on the sidewalks. She
disembarks and is met by a mother and child:
73
POOR IRISH MOTHER (holding hand of her little
boy): Lady Lou, you're a fine gal, a fine
woman.
LOU: Finest woman that ever walked the streets 1
And a few minutes later, inside Gus Jordan's saloon,
Lady Lou meets one of Jordan's new associates:
SERGEI: I've heard so much about you.
LOU: Yeah, but you can't prove it.
The ambiguity of Lou's "secret" profession—
unfilmed in the sense that we never see her receiving
"clients,"— is the very thing that makes her innuendo
possible. The censorship of Freud's superego
contributes to the laugh mechanism of tension and
empathetic release; we laugh when the suppression of our
suspicions (of Lou's reputation) suddenly becomes
unnecessary. Incipient film censorship and West's
attempt to "clean up" the play version was already
apparent in the name change of her character. Diamond
Lil became Lady Lou, the prostitute that wasn't— quite.
The banter and barter of jewelry, part of the golddigger
ethos, reappears in Maudie Triplett's reply to the
hatcheck girl in Night After Night (1932): "Goodness
had nothing to do with it, dearie," or Ruby Carter's
comment, "I was calm and collected" in Belle of the
Nineties (1936).
74
In the 1930 novel, The Constant Sinner, and
unpublished play, Frisco Kate, however, nearly all such
ambiguity is absent; notably, so are the one-liners and
innuendo. Instead, we are embroiled in the "lurid"
environs, habits, and desires of a small-time hooker who
makes good; or, of a famous "Frisco Doll," who, having
reached the height of her profession, courageously fends
off sexual attack to "save" herself for the one she
loves. West rewrote The Constant Sinner for the stage,
expurgating much of its original dialogue and plot.
Part of the 1930 story line was also repeated in Belle
of the Nineties (Paramount 1936). But in this film, the
prize-fighters' hooker Babe Gordon, becomes more like
the singing and dancing Diamond Lil. Ruby Carter has
the ostensible sign of a (high-class) prostitute
displaced on to her name, but gone is any indication of
the novel's explicit prose, "Babe was eighteen and a
prize-fighters' tart, picking up her living on their
hard-earned winnings" (The Constant Sinner 9).
Nevertheless, something of the following passage— a
discourse of desire, as it were— is arguably manifest in
all of the Mae West characters:
Babe was born a femme amoureuse. Her idea
was that if a man can have as many women as he
wants, there is no reason why a woman should not
do the same thing. She was one of those women
who were put on this earth for men— not one man
but many men . . .(15-16).
Babe is compared with her companion, Cokey Jenny,
who merely "tolerates" men because they were necessary
for money and drugs. Though Babe is a "daughter of joy"
(Constant Sinner 15), she is also earthy and cynical.
The "non-moral" Babe undergoes the metamorphosis into
the more ethical, bigger-hearted Ruby/Diamond Lil
performer. Yet, even in Frisco Kate, where the famous
"doll" gives up her "career" for a conventional family,
the circulation of desire for multiple lovers remains.
However, the subject(s) of this desire are
differently placed. Beginning with the first act of
Frisco Kate, men are the desiring subjects; the play
opens with Spanish Joe crooning to a guitar, driving
his sexually starved crewmates wild with the memory of
the "hookshops" (2). Rumors of a naked woman on board,
"white like a ghost" (10), stir their tension up into a
frenzy. Looking for her clandestine lover, the first
mate Stanton, Kate had wandered on board only to be
drugged by the Captain, who had immediately fallen in
love with her. The street-smart Frisco Kate manages to
cow and fend off the Captain quite well, even convincing
him that her lover Stanton is her brother. The real
threat to Kate, and indeed, her buried, inverted desire
in this play, comes with the crew's unleashed passions—
with the possible sexual overpowering by the many. The
Captain warns her:
76
There'd be a mutiny if the crew saw you.
Your brother and me couldn't hold 'em off.
Can't remind you often enough about that. And I
don't want the real doll to break like a statue
(II, 14)
Exchanges like these occur frequently throughout
the play until she is recognized by the crew. Kate's
presumed naivetd about the crew's motives seems all but
discarded once she reveals her true identity to the crew
and the duped Captain. Persuading them to let Stanton
lose after she has killed the Captain in self-defense,
she propositions each of the principal crew members,
adopting a true hooker's banter. "I'll be a sweet mama
to you," she says to crewman Swanson, and to the
Captain's Chinese valet she queries, "You like your
tarts blond don’t you?" (Ill, 20). However, the
dedication of her love for Stanton seems equally as
sincere as her naivetd seems disingenuous. In the
welter of fear and crashing waves, Stanton, Kate and a
couple of the "good" crew members are the only ones
saved before the ship sinks in the third act. Kate
finds conventional happiness in marriage and family with
Stanton.
In the film Klondike Annie (Paramount, 1936), San
Francisco Kate becomes Rose Carleton, the "San Francisco
Doll." Still a woman "with a past," she boards a boat
headed for Nome, Alaska, escaping Chan Lo and her
confinement as his captive performer. We later discover
that she had to murder Chan Lo in order to do this; the
murder scene in which she stabbed Chan Lo with his
treasured kris was cut from the film. Bull Brackett
reappears as ship Captain, falling in love with the
Doll. She thus has leverage with him when she hides
from the law, impersonating a settlement worker (Annie
Alden) who had died aboard the ship. Of course, the
policeman assigned to bring her to justice isn’t fooled,
but falls in love with her, adding to the picture's
quotient of lovers (interestingly enough, all three men
were in love with the "Doll," not the Doll as settlement
worker). Klondike Annie is then allowed to do good in
the community in which she had first planned to seek
anonymity and refuge. Her decision to return to San
Francisco to clear her name is also a decision to choose
Bull Brackett, rather than the more respectable avenue
of marriage with the policeman. Thus, the redemption
operative in the film does not compromise West's
prostitute persona; that is, to the extent her liberal
sexual practice is allowed to go unhampered. She is,
however, required to make amends for her murder in self-
defense, even though the victim was a notoriously shady
and immoral villain.
In an article entitled, "Mae West as Censored
Commodity: The Case of Klondike Annie," Ramona Curry
78
argues that the "case history of Klondike Annie makes
evident that it was West's unconfined enjoyment and
control of her sexuality, rather than the depiction of
outlaw sexuality itself, that was received as
transgressive" (77). Curry's argument addresses the
reasons for Mae West's declining box office success,
pointing out that her devaluation as a "star" around
1936 was undertaken "within the industry," largely
through the agency of the Production Code Administration
(57). In so many words, "Mae West" had become an
ideological threat to dominant political and economic
hegemony (77).
The prostitute figure central to Mae West's films
became the instituted, stereotypical agent of perverse
enjoyment; the "legitimate" illegitimate practitioner of
excessive sexuality. Unlike the oppressed prostitute,
West's character was narcissistic, reveling in, and
joking about her excessive admiration. The epitome of
this narcissism is popularly accounted in the anecdote
of the mirrors that lined the ceiling of her Rossmore
apartment boudoir. "I like to see how I'm doin'," she
would quip, and biographical accounts only confirm the
more or less steady stream of sexual partners to this
venue. Theories of narcissism may also explain the
mechanism of fusion whereby the image of the persona
becomes indistinguishable from the image of the
79
actress/performer. Defending her authorship of Diamond
Lil, Mae West stated, "I have five men in love with me
in 'Diamond Lil' and most authors can’t keep up one love
interest" (Mae West 81). In this statement, the
conflation between the Mae West persona, the character
Diamond Lil, the actress Mae West, and the "author" or
playwright Mae West is so complete as to be vertiginous-
-a veritable whirlwind of identities.
Drawing from previous clinical practitioners, Freud
defined narcissism as "the attitude of a person who
treats his own body in the same way in which the body of
a sexual object is ordinarily treated" ("On Narcissism"
Stand. Ed. 73). However, the idea of the "narcissistic"
or "ego-libido" was discussed earlier in his "Three
Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (Freud on Women 134).
The subject that fails to transfer his original
narcissism to an object other than himself— who fails to
sexually over evaluate or fall "in love"— thus becomes
prey to a secondary narcissism. The "type of female
most frequently met with" serves to illustrate and
inhabit the narrative of the arch narcissist ("On
Narcissism" 89). She does not need to love, but to be
loved.
West’s persona may be read as just such a type.
The "intensity" of her self-love is manifest in the
ubiquitousness of her lovers. It is as if West had read
Freud in her youth, instinctually realizing "the
importance of this type of woman for the erotic life of
mankind" ("On Narcissism" 89). Freud, in turn,
anticipated the appeal of a Mae West. Recognizing the
"charm" of the self-contented and inaccessible, he
writes that "great criminals and humorists, as they are
represented in literature, compel our interest by the
narcissistic consistency with which they manage to keep
away from their ego anything that would diminish it"
(89). The panoply of West's comedic strategies, as well
as the threat she posed in the enjoyment of sexuality,
seems rooted in her attainment and perpetuation of that
"unassailable libidinal position which we ourselves have
since abandoned" (89).
In Sarah Kofman's reading of Freud, man finds the
narcissistic woman so attractive out of a nostalgia for
his own primary narcissism, that "lost paradise of
childhood" (The Enigma of Woman 52). "The humorist,"
she writes," has in common with the great criminal the
fact that he has succeeded in conquering his ego and
holding it in contempt, thanks to his superego . .
•humor is particularly suited for freeing and exalting
the ego" (55). A woman humorist often poses a double
threat: she is not only content in her "unassailable"
self-containment, but jokes about it.
81
The threat (and attraction) of Mae West's "man-
scare-ade" comes not only in the prostitute's enjoyment
of sexuality, but in her appearance of complete self-
sufficiency. The West persona greatly desires men, but
does not need them. The narcissist's desire for men may
also exist apart from any "need" to compete with them,
or to posses what they have. In Karen Horney's
discussion of penis envy in her 1926 essay, "The Flight
From Womanhood," she agrees with Freud that the "wound"
suffered in the lack a penis is a "narcissistic
mortification of possessing less than the boy" (Feminine
Psychology 63). However, Horney still queries if it is
"just the attraction to the opposite sex, operating from
a very early period, which draws the libidinal interest
of the little girl to the penis" (68). Horney mentions
the "admiring envy" that leads to love, but one begins
to wonder, along with Horney, how much the term "envy"
becomes eclipsed. She refers to the "analytic
discovery" Freud mentions in The Taboo of Virginity,
reminding us that:
. . .in the association of female patients the
narcissistic desire to possess the penis and the
object libidinal longing for it are often so
interwoven that one hesitates as to the sense in
which the words 'desire for it' are meant (68-
69).
That traits of narcissism and heterosexual desire
can exist side by side in a female subject is nothing
82
particularly startling, and in fact, seems to coincide
with popular cultural stereotypes of women who fall
somewhere in between representation as Lola in The Blue
Angel and the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction.
Nevertheless, Horney's puzzlement remains suggestive of
the elusiveness and illusiveness of Mae West's self-
desiring, and desiring self.
The theme of many lovers, though suggestive of a
potentially unfavorable narcissism, celebrates sexual
enjoyment and desire. Though the source of much of
West's humor, such enjoyment— as powerful and
threatening as it may be to the male spectator— still
may be politically questionable. Luce Irigaray writes
that woman cannot resort "to pleasure alone as the
solution to her problem"; somehow, she must overcome her
position as site of "rival exchange between two men"
("This Sex Which Is Not One" 350). She asks, "How can
this object of transaction assert a right to pleasure
without extricating itself from the established
commercial system?" In She Done Him Wrong, Lady
Lou/Diamond Lil is immediately "set up" as such an
object in the first minutes of the film. Dan Flynn,
local politician, schemes about exposing saloon owner
Gus Jordan while he looks at a nude picture of Lou; it
is no surprise that his motivation for such conspiracy
is the attendant reward objectified in the picture. In
I'm No Angel, circus owner Barton "frames" Tira as a
"taken" object, discrediting her with her upper-class
suitor Clayton (Cary Grant), primarily in order to
insure her continued performances for Barton. In both
film scenarios, the Mae West character becomes an object
of exchange between two men— usually distinguished by
class and thereby, wealth or status. For in the end, it
is the Cary Grant character, the undercover FBI agent
who "gains" Lady Lou from low-class, petit bourgeois Gus
Jordan, and Clayton who gets Tira from Barton.
Arguably, the West character always extricates
herself from the "commercial" system, avoiding
objectification by always remaining the active, desiring
subject. For it is indeed Tira who "wins" back Clayton,
defeating Barton's scheme, and Lou who plays Flynn
against her former lovers, enabling the Grant character
to "win." His attempt to handcuff her at film's end
ironically refers to the manipulation which made him the
object of her desire. Lou objects to the cuffs, stating
she "wasn't born with 'em." Captain Cummings (Grant)
counters, "all those men would have been a lot safer if
you had," and Lou replies, "I don't know. Hands ain't
everythin.'" It is no coincidence that the "one-liner,"
a form of humor particularly solipsistic— or rather,
apparently so, is among West's most potent allies.
Unlike visual gags, comic business, or comic team
dialogue, the one-liner stands alone. One persona
delivers it. Formally, West seems to need no one else,
which contributes to the discourse of independence,
control, and aggressive sexuality. West's comedy
depends on the repeated assumption of the subject
position, and the accompanying objectification of those
who would objectify her. This does not mean that the
West character is never objectified; rather, she
"becomes" the object in jest, and in mimicry, only "to
become" the subject in a moment of double entendre,
punning, or joking.
As discussed in the Introduction, Freud's theory of
obscene joking requires the woman's (as object)
"inflexibility," or failure to become aroused as a
"first condition to the development of smut" (Jokes 99).
West's characters violate this "first condition" by
assuming the teller's position of "sexually aggressive"
jokes or double entendre, or by deliberately "exposing"
themselves. In She Done Him Wrong, the picture Gus
Jordan has hung in the saloon exposes and "objectifies"
Lady Lou in the most common or traditional sense. Mary
Ann Doane provides an analysis of another such incident
of female exposure in a photograph by Robert Doisneau;
only here the "exposed" female is contained in a
painting which the man "eyes" over the bent head of his
female companion whose gaze is otherwise occupied ("Film
and the Masquerade" 53). A "dirty joke," as Doane reads
Freud, "is always constructed at the expense of the
woman" (53). But rather than laugh at the "exposed"
Lady Lou, we observe what happens when she waltzes in
the saloon. The objectified "subject" of the painting
delivers the first of several double entendres in the
picture ("Finest woman that walked the streets," "I've
heard so much about you"— "Yeah, but you can't prove
it.") Before she leaves the gathering of her onlookers,
she "shows off" some more, passing around photographs of
herself (additional "exposures"), and commenting on
their effectiveness ("A little bit spicy, but not too
raw, you know what I mean?"). In addition to becoming
the spectator of her own image (and, in this way,
simulating the position of the female narcissist), she
has beaten her (male) joke tellers to the "punch" line:
"I gotta admit that painting is a flash, but I wish Gus
hadn't hung it over the 'Free Lunch.'" Lou's quick
assumption of the subject position also controverts the
idea of the woman's supposed "inflexibility"; she makes
no pretense of modesty or embarrassment. Rather than
rendering herself comic in the sense of Freud's
degradation or "unmasking" (201), Lady Lou bypasses a
complicit re-exposure of herself in exchange for an
explicit demonstration of her desire for Sergei.
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Introduced as Rita's assistant, Lou asks him, "Day, or
night work?"
Becoming an "unwitting" object was not in Mae
West's game plan. The persona was always to eschew
marital slavery, and the type of the comic which would
leave her ridiculed, or ridiculous. Building on the
work of Michele Montrelay and Sarah Kofman, Mary Ann
Doane's theorization of masquerade and the female film
spectator explains one crucial strategy which seems
central to West's comedy. Doane's gloss on Christian
Metz's explanation of voyeuristic desire— the
"cinephile's" gap between desire and its object— leads
her to posit the ways in which such a "gap" can be
created. "The effectivity of masquerade lies precisely
in its potential to manufacture a distance from the
image, to generate a problematic within which the image
is manipulable, producible, and readable by the woman"
(55). As noted earlier, contemporary critics such as
Ramona Curry and Pamela Robertson have read this
masquerade primarily as a practice of female female
impersonation, or as a practice of "camp" with which
female spectators may identify. Doane cites the female
spectator's overidentification with the image, the
moment at which the "female spectator's desire can be
described only in terms of a kind of narcissism" (45).
The alternative, of course, is to identify with the male
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spectator's position and eroticize and objectify the
image rather than to "become it."
Interestingly, Mae West does become a "female
spectator" when she- looks at, and comments upon the
pictures of herself in She Done Him Wrong. Her verbal
commentary, and her verbal "joking" create the ironic
distance that separates her from her image. One might
even sight traces of the "man" underneath the persona,
claiming that in her joking commentary she is
eroticizing her own image. But— and it bears repeating-
-Mae West is not a man. The multiple lovers she has
already alluded to in her reference to being the "finest
woman on the street" presage the "big joke" of her
persona, and of most of her films: she is the female
narcissist whose many lovers are the sign of her desire,
not her neediness. She is the persona who attempts to
render the singularity of comedy's closure in marriage
multiple. The comedy that arises from such multiplicity
not only results in the masquerade of femininity, but in
the threat to men, or the male spectator. We are back
to that excess of sexuality that baits and betrays.
It is at this point that the variety of West's
personal excesses— her "camp," masquerade, and gender
parody— begin to merge into generic patterns of excess
and multiplicity. "Mae West" developed through
vaudeville, which depended on multiple acts, a "variety"
of discrete, sometimes "hodgepodge" musical, dramatic
and comedic productions. If we speak of a "Mae West"
genre, we at once risk dilution, bastardization or
conflation of other genres. The films She Done Him
Wrong and My Little Chickadee, for instance, may be
approached as "Western-melodramas" or as "Western-
comedies," but since their narratives are sometimes
rewoven or "broken" to accommodate musical numbers,
approaching them as musicals might be just as
productive. In I 'm No Angel we have a melodramatic
comedy, or better yet, a comedic melodrama, compelled by
the "traumatic" breach of promise thematic. Mae
"always gets her man," which is not only a gender twist
to the western hero's motto, but a rescripting of the
traditional heterosexual union that ends most comedies;
for implied in West's "man," is more accurately, "men."
Markers of melodramatic, as well as parodic excess
often occur in West's films. In She Done Him Wrong,
Russian Rita (Rafaela Ottiano), the corrupt and
imperious dark haired co-conspirator of Gus Jordan,
attempts to knife Lady Lou over a diamond brooch given
her as a token of Sergei's "love." The scene is
highlighted by the passionate jealously of Rita, Lou's
cool spite, and the brooch pinned strategically on Lou's
right breast. In fact, Rita, with her low-cut black
gown and long black hair may be read as West's equally
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chesty, dark double. In the melodramatic encounter,
Rita "falls" on the knife, now in the possession of Lou,
and dies. In a routine adapted from the play, Diamond
Lil, Lou flips Rita's long hair over her face and
pretends to be brushing it when Gus Jordan enters a few
moments later. The Production Code file for She Done
Him Wrong contains some countries1 objections to the
violence of this scene, or to the "exposure" of Rita's
breasts. The knifing certainly suggests a serious
(although mock) phallic penetration, even if the
melodramatic battle may read as a "cat fight" and thus,
comic. Lou's macabre act of hairbrushing the dead woman
is an act of mediation— an acceptable gesture that
repeats Lou's earlier ministrations to Sally, the young
girl Lou helps, and in a sense, "mothers." The act also
suggests Lou's ingenuity, and the visible calming of her
agitation. But why would "Mae West," whose clever wit
has already been proven in her comedy, need a further
sign of her resourcefulness? And why indeed, would we
need a sign of her guilt?
In The Melodramatic Imagination, Peter Brooks
studies the genre of melodrama with a subsequent
application of his study to the novels of Balzac and
Henry James. In the process of defining the genre,
placing its origins "within the context of the French
Revolution and its aftermath" (14), he identifies
melodrama as the "principal mode for uncovering,
demonstrating, and making operative the essential moral
universe in a post-sacred era" (15). Brooks also states
that the "melodramatic mode" exists "to locate and to
articulate the moral occult," a "domain of operative
spiritual values which is both indicated within and
masked by the surface of reality" (5). In short,
melodrama speaks the cosmic; the formulation of the
"moral occult" includes then, the manichaeism of the
universe, and a rhetoric which depends on figures of
"hyperbole, antithesis, and oxymoron" (Brooks 40). When
Russian Rita and Lady Lou clash in the knifing scene,
the graphic representation of evil in the blackness of
Rita's garb, and of good in Lou's sparkling white
evening gown is evident. Borrowing heavily from the
conventions and the mode of melodrama, this scene
disambiguates Lou's moral character. Brooks discusses
the "sign of virtue," claiming that the "expressive
means of melodrama" all "correspond to the struggle
toward recognition" of this sign (28). Lou's virtue has
already been put into question from the inception of the
film; yet, this scene sharply clarifies just what type
of virtue is to be privileged in this particular "moral
universe." The struggle for the diamond broach results
in Lou walking away from Rita and declaiming her
indifference to Sergei; her erstwhile willingness to
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return the broach and live up to her ethic of fair play
has been exhausted. Rita's accusations wrong Lou,
bringing Lou's innocence into sharp relief.
Furthermore, Rita pulls the knife while Lou's back is
turned, and by no premeditation of her own, the now
clearly "good" Lou dispatches the "evil" Rita.
What is often pejoratively classified as cheap
melodrama, or the sensationalism of Mae West's rather
rickety "star vehicle," is actually part of a popularly
and historically legible genre. Though the majority of
West's films are commonly classified as comedies— or
more accurately, though she is commonly understood as a
comedienne— the rhetoric of excess often works in a
purely melodramatic mode. Peter Brooks describes this
rhetoric as necessarily maintaining a "state of
exaltation, a state where hyperbole is a 'natural' form
of expression because anything less would convey only
the apparent (naturalistic, banal) drama, not the true
(moral, cosmic) drama" (40). His argument then moves on
to elaborate on this rhetorical mode, and the verbal and
physical signs which typify it. Melodrama's abundance
of "false faces," or theatrical "asides," make the stage
enunciation of signs inherently dualistic. That virtue
can be misprized, and evil disguised leads to a
"conflict of signs" that Brooks notes must be "resolved
in public trial" (45). Therefore, he calls the
"tribunal scene a recurrent motif" in the "proto
melodramas of the Revolutionary period" (45). Trial
scenes, or rather, courtroom scenes in which a judgment
is rendered are also common to comedy, and specifically,
to West's films. To be sure, in their absence,
substitutions are made, such as the conflict between
Rita and Lou; both serve to "locate and articulate" that
"moral occult." Through such scenes, we can
differentiate the "excess" of melodrama from the excess
of parody, or from that which works in and through the
multiple lover theme.
The excess in parody— basically, but not
exclusively, understood as comic exaggeration— works
differently from the excess in melodrama; the latter
seeks to articulate a "truth," the former to render that
"truth" ludicrous, or possibly, through some complex
maneuver, to render the "truth" impossible. The
judgment of the trial scene in My Little Chickadee is
parodied by Flower Belle's sham marriage to Twillie.
The Judge of her home town court has earlier exiled her
from the town, ordering her not to return until she "can
prove that [she is] respectable and married." She
fulfills this command through a comic framework which
allows her to flout the law and small-town morality.
Attempting to "have" Twillie and his abundance of (fake)
currency, Flower Belle asks a con-man to pose as a
minister and marry them aboard a moving train. Their
vows are comically obscured by the blowing of the train
whistle. In I'm No Angel, however, the trial scene at
film end is a parody of inversion. Not only does it
mock a court of "justice," but it works melodramatically
by "prizing" virtue in Tira. At the same time, the
trial scene parodies and deconstructs that concept of
virtue.
If in the most basic of its senses, parody is
simply "repetition with critical difference" (Theory of
Parody 20), that "critical difference, " I would argue,
is often marked by acts, or discourses of excess and
exaggeration, which in turn may serve to invert, or to
twist. As alternatively stated and implied by both
Hutcheon and Butler, parody invokes the idea of an
original and an imitation. Melodrama, according to
Brooks's definitions, works through excess in order to
"capture" and express the original— the "quotidian"
moral occult imbued with the resonance of cosmic truth.
Melodrama does not necessarily seek to call attention to
itself— to demarcate its conventions, its gestures, its
plots as "imitation." If ever it does, that is, if ever
it does not succeed in convincing its audience that it
is engaged in cosmic expression, it likely crosses over
into the exaggeration of parody. The audience laughs—
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or yawns— and the idea of an "original," or of "real
life" is thus revisited.
The Production Code Correspondence for She Done Him
Wrong indicates that the censors were expressly
concerned in reducing the references to the number of
men in Lady Lou's life (and past) (Letter, 1932). The
trial scene in I 'm No Angel critiques this aim while
parodying and inverting diverse forms of patriarchal
authority. Tira brings a breach of promise suit against
Clayton, who had left Tira before the wedding when he
had discovered the pajama-clad Slick Wiley lounging in
Tira's apartment. Neither Clayton nor Tira know that
Barton had sent Wiley over there to discourage Clayton
and keep Tira as a performer. Tira chooses to prosecute
the case herself, while the defense chooses to seat, and
line up a string of Tira's old boyfriends in the front
row of the courtroom audience. While Tira is on the
stand, the defense’s attorney points out the several men
to Tira. She appears to recognize them, surprising her
own (advisory) lawyer and causing him to later
remonstrate with her. Nevertheless, the following
exchange suggests that Tira's lawyer has also missed the
point:
BOB: You've been on friendly terms with several
men • • *
TIRA: All right, I was the sweetheart of Sigma
Psi, so what?
In a popular summary of Mae West's career, Michael
Bavar describes West's dress: "a simple floor-length
black gown, a long strand of pearls (the touch of
simplicity that gives class), a fur wrap and a chapeau
of feathers" (Mae West 54). The attempt Tira makes to
appropriate "class" is made visual, as well as aural.
Not only does she appear to be the woman who has no need
of the money she seeks, but she "puts on" the role of
(male) attorney. As if it is not enough that the ever
present Brooklynese belies her appearance, Clayton's
attorney, Bob, asks the court to "warn the jury not to
be swayed by any theatricalism on the part of the
plaintiff." Tira saunters up to the stand, and
rightfully belittles the testimony of Brown, the man
whose diamond ring had attracted her in the beginning of
the film. She does the same to Kirk Lawrence, who had
pursued her with expensive gifts. Clayton's attorney
objects, calling the questioning "most irregular." The
Judge allows Tira to continue as before, and Tira
replies, "Thanks, Judge, you're regular. I'm doing my
best to be legitimate."
Thus far, Tira's smart-witted prosecution
guarantees and marks her control of the court and the
inversion of gender roles, while her Brooklynese and
blatant nonchalance about the multiple men in the front
row mark her defiance of class and social mores. She is
doing her best not to be "legitimate," but to be
"illegitimately" legitimate. The excess of the multiple
lovers and her friendly acknowledgment of them operates
parodically, as does the excess involved in the
contradiction between dress/role and class/gender (that
"twist" which often enters into acts of excess). Both
Tira and Clayton suffer from mistaken assumptions— those
"knots" of confused identity which comedies always
untie. Read melodramatically, however, these "knots"
suggest that Tira's virtue has been "misprized."
Questioning Slick Wiley, Tira reveals that he has spent
most of his recent time behind bars. Clayton's attorney
objects, and claims she is "harassing the witness." She
replies, "Who's harassing who? I'm just askin’ for a
square deal. Don't take the word of an ex-convict
against an honest, innocent, good woman."
At this moment, Tira has appropriated the rhetoric
of melodrama, while at the same time "expressing" what
is strictly true according to the "facts" of the plot:
Tira is innocent of "cheating" on Clayton. This
statement is not humorous or funny when it is read in
this context; it is melodramatic— the moment at which
Tira's Brooklynese and "substandard" diction, among
other things, express the "truth" of her rightfully
appropriated position of "wronged innocent." But in
view of the men seated in the front row— the analogs of
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film spectators, the subjects of the gaze, as well as
the objects of her desire— how can she be "innocent"?
It just so happens that the most melodramatic moment of
the scene is also its most parodic. Virtue has been
"misprized," as well as "mis-prized" (overvalued,
discarded or dismissed as an uncertain or irrelevant
quality). A reporter asks Tira what she plans to do,
now that she has "won" her case; Tira answers, "Carry on
the same as before." In addition, one of her most
famous one-liners parodically repeats the dialectic
between the censors of She Done Him Wrong and its star:
REPORTER: Why did you admit knowing so many men
in your life?
TIRA: Hmm! Well, it's not the men in you life
that counts, it's the life in your men.
Through trial scenes, Peter Brooks tells us, melodrama
begs the clarification and resolution of signs. Much the
same thing may be said of comedy, and of romantic comedy
especially. Yet, parodic and melodramatic excess work
throughout the conventional trial structure. In most Mae
West films, excess— that "too much" which by definition
begs the question of original, imitation, and exaggeration-
-is often "signed," but not entirely subsumed by
multiplicity and themes of the multiple. In fact,
multiplicity becomes a generic strategy as well as a
strategy of humor insofar as it allows the simultaneous
play of several, discrete genres. In comedy and melodrama,
trials function not only as mediators of the "moral
occult," or unravelers of comedic knots, but as signs
themselves— indicators of the "legitimate," the "real."
Parodic excess within comedy may seem to suggest that the
"non-excessive" exists, that the "original" parodied is the
"true" or "real." On the other hand, in the examples
discussed above, and in most West films, simply by being
rendered "signs," trials or other such institutions of the
"real" are seriously questioned. The excess which "writes"
or enacts "Mae West" might also render her body as "sign."
It is finally in this sense that Mae West engages in "self-
parody." Through various signs of excess, she becomes the
"woman's woman," who, as we know, cannot exist without
ambiguity, scaring men off even while they desire her.
Because West’s films continually straddle and redefine the
lines between comedy and melodrama, and because these
genres also rely on excess, they are well suited to the
masquerade that, in "Mae West's" "hands," becomes a man-
scare-ade.
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Chapter II
Little Men And Big Women: James Thurber, Sexual
Parody, and the American Humor Tradition
"Nurtured by a free press, native American
humor has always been a purge for worries and
tribulations— the struggles of a democratic
nation to get going, frontier hardships, wartime
tragedies, the upheavals accompanying the shift
from an agrarian, rural society to an
industrial, urban society. In that sense, Day,
Benchley, Thurber and Perelman write in an old
and honorable tradition."
— Walter Blair, Native American Humor
"My humor has been about one thing: beaten-down
married people."
— James Thurber, "Interview," Max Eastman
THE "HOME" OF THURBER'S HUMOR
Besides the fearless but phallically deprived
Walter Mitty, James Thurber's fiction and drawings are
peopled with tiny, bemused men and large, menacing
termagants. In one sense, they are the modernist man's
worse nightmare. There are characters such as Mr.
Monroe, who runs around naked, wildly screaming "Wool
Wool" when he fails to prevent the hot water tap from
flooding the bathroom. There are characters such as Mr.
Preble, who tries to kill his wife by inviting her down
into the cellar, only to be bossed around by his
intended victim. His women are sizable creatures who
generally "loom" in the background, or alternatively,
smart "little" women who competently manage the
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mysteries of domesticity. But perhaps the epitome of
these characters’ struggles is depicted in Thurber's
untitled drawing, later named "Home" (see illus. 1). A.
little man cowers before the steps of what we presume to
be his house, gazing at the awesome and frowning woman
who forms its back side, and who glares at his little
shape angrily.
This cartoon is well known to Thurber scholars and
fans, detractors and critics alike. It even appears in
various psychological studies. In "Failure to
Understand Humor," for instance, Jacob Levine and
Frederick Redlich report the findings of a study in
which they showed a "competent professional woman" a
cartoon she did not understand (561). She failed to see
the large woman attached to the house, and once it was
pointed out to her, she "was obviously disturbed by the
humor, and saw nothing funny in it" (361-62). Levine
and Redlich explain that the woman's "blocking out" of
the woman was deliberate, produced by her wish to avoid
her "hostile, competitive feelings toward men" (562).
The purpose of Levine and Redlich's study is to
demonstrate that "When a joke is not understood,
investigation often shows that the point of the joke is
missed because some essential detail is overlooked or is
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Illustration #1 "Home"
Used by permission. Copyright 1943 James Thurber.
Copyright 1972 Helen Thurber and Rosemary A. Thurber.
From Men, Women & Dogs, Harcourt Brace and Company
misperceived" (560). However, who defines the
"essential" and how it is defined and identified is not
discussed by the authors. Indeed, their analysis
suggests that it is they who do not "get" the joke.
Embedded in the assumption of female hostility towards
men, they take it for granted that a woman would
understand such an obvious and "essential" detail as a
big, scary cartoon woman. Thurber's cartoon exaggerates
men's fears, arguably questioning that such huge women
exist. It is possible that her "missing" the woman
resulted from her harboring no such assumed hatred of
men, and thus not seeing it represented and caricatured.
To such a reader, the gender parody which disputes
sexual stereotypes may seem superfluous since she
already eschews them. On the other hand, the doctors'
implied understanding of the cartoon demonstrates why
many feminists have read Thurber's humor as largely
misogynistic. But here it is Levine and Redlich's study
that perhaps operates on misogynistic assumptions.
For this reason, as I will argue, it is critically
unsound to dismiss Thurber's humor categorically as a
simple mockery of women, or a violent reactionary
defense of threatened men. Thurber's texts parody
gender, but must be constantly re-examined and re
evaluated in opposition to, and in dialogue with the
"traditions" in which both certain feminist and
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modernist interests have placed them. My goal in this
chapter is to redefine and rethink the "seriousness" of
Thurber*s humor, which leads modernist critics such as
Walter Blair to participate in the redeeming act of
placing Thurber into an "old and honorable tradition."
Secondly, my goal is to examine the "trivial" humor and
realm of Thurber*s "war of the sexes"— the lives of
"beaten-down married people"— as a type of sexual
parody. If this parody may be read as something as
radically weighted as Butler's gender parody, then our
understanding of Thurber*s effect on the American humor
"tradition" must substantially change. If not, then it
is time we examine what effects Thurber*s parody does
have on American humor.
THE LITTLE MAN AND MODERNISM
Both recent and early scholarship recognizes that
James Thurber did not "create" the little man figure of
modern American humor. Thurber is seen as one of the
"refiners" of the little man figure rather than one of
his "originators." Thurber*s most immediate and
influential predecessor is Robert Benchley, who scholars
such as Hamlin Hill and Charles Holmes argue did most to
shape the humor of the twenties and thirties (America 's
Humor 433; The Clocks of Columbus 101). Indeed, in
"placing" Thurber, scholarship seems particularly
burdened by the citation of Benchley as immediate
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mentor. Thurber is often quoted as suffering from that
particular "anxiety of influence," as he describes his
fear (and the "younger" generation's fear) that he was
writing something done faster and better by Benchley
years before. "Our problem was the avoidance of
imitation" (Thurber, 1949, qtd. in Blair, 427). In
distinguishing Thurber's little man from Benchley's,
critics note that Thurber added greater interiority to
the character. Charles S. Holmes following remarks
epitomize much of sixties' and seventies' placement of
Thurber:
Benchley's protagonist is usually the well-
meaning bumbler, either as harassed father and
husband or as lightly stuffy businessman,
politician, or scientist. Thurber took over
this figure and reshaped it to express his own
temperament and personality, making it into a
darker, more neurotic and complex character than
Benchley's (101).
And in the eighties, Robert Long compared Thurber and
White's work, noting this same "darker" difference:
"Thurber explored the inner dynamics of personality,
with an emphasis upon isolation and inner suffering
(James Thurber 194). Long calls Thurber "the preeminent
humorist and satirist of his age" (1) evidently because
of the dualism in his comedy; "the deep strain of
pessimism that underlay even his most exuberant comic
imaginings" links him to Mark Twain (1).
The interpretation that Thurber's little man was
marked by a "darker interiority" than Benchley's is
important for the strength it lends to certain modernist
discourses about the nature of humor, comedy, and its
relationship to the "serious." Long's reading suggests
that the split between the "funny" and the "serious,"
the "trivial" and the "important" in modernist
evaluations of humorists such as Thurber was still
operating well into the eighties. In addition to Long's
work, Catherine McGehee Kenney's 1984 study, Anatomy of
Confusion attempts to "trace" the "figure of seriousness
in the carpet of Thurber's humor" (3). Kenney attempts
to break down superficial differences between tragedy
and comedy by emphasizing Thurber's "tragicomic vision."
She writes, "One of the chief reasons that a writer like
Thurber must wait for critical attention ... is that
humorists are not considered 'serious' . . ." (3). Her
effort to reclaim Thurber as a "serious artist" worthy
of scholarship also draws upon Thurber's gloss on
Wordsworth's famous maxim, "Humor is a kind of emotional
chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect" (qtd.
from Eastman n9, 3), and on Thurber's comment that
"humor is a serious thing" (n8, 3). So while Kenney
breaks from modernist tradition by questioning the
slight of comic forms, she does so through a comparison
of Thurber to a "serious," high culture artist such as
106
Wordsworth. It is not enough that the comic can contain
the tragic and thus become important or serious, but
that terms such as "serious" or "important" be
critically assessed and deconstructed.
In the critical gesture of "placing" Thurber in a
"tradition," Kenney, Long, and earlier critics ask
questions bound to get predetermined answers. It is no
coincidence that values deemed "serious" both ties
Thurber to greats of the past and allows him to surpass
his contemporaries. If seriousness is understood as
that which cannot be dismissed, then the necessity of
seriousness for tradition comes in its self-perpetuity.
The serious will last, the non-serious will become
obscure, except insofar as it marks and grounds the
"serious." In their efforts to redeem Thurber from the
obscurity of humor, or to affirm his eminence in spite
of, or even because of his popularity, critics
necessarily subscribe to the hierarchy of "serious"
values.
What begins to emerge from Thurber scholarship are
the inevitable ties the little man, alias comic anti-
hero, has with certain modernist conceptions of "man,"
and specifically of the "hero," or the "individual."
Peter De Vries 1943 essay, "James Thurber: The Comic
Prufrock," is one of the first scholarly discussions of
this connection. De Vries writes:
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It is hard to think of anyone who more
closely resembles the Prufrock of Eliot than the
middle-aged man on the flying trapeze. This
preoccupied figure is Prufrock's comic
counterpart, not in intensity of course, but in
detail. There is, for instance, the same
dominating sense of Predicament. The same
painful and fastidious self-inventory, the same
detailed anxiety; the same immersion in wary
minutiae, the same self-disparagement, the same
wariness of the evening's company. And the same
fear, in summary, that someone— in Thurber's
case a brash halfback or maybe even a woman—
will 'drop a question on his plate'" (38).
De Vries alludes to the "brash halfback" in Thurber
and Eliot's 1940 play, The Male Animal, but both the
manly character and the "womanly" one can simply be
understood as the little man’s arch nemeses throughout
the Thurber canon. In The Male Animal, Joe Ferguson is
the great football hero once engaged to the wife of
Professor Tommy Turner. Ferguson and Mrs. Turner begin
to renew old ties and the professor gets nervous. In
the short story, "Mr. Monroe and the Moving Men," it is
the rough and burly movers who make little man Monroe
feel abashed, as they competently make the decisions
that he, without the help of his wife, cannot. Robert
Long also notes the influence of Eliot's "Prufrock" and
Joyce's Dubliners on Thurber's Mr. and Mrs. Monroe
stories (52), and other critics have discussed the
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relationship between Walter Mitty and Conrad's Lord
Jim.1
However, the official sanction on Thurber's place
within modernism came from Eliot himself. Eight years
after De Vries' essay, T.S. Eliot wrote the following
about Thurber's work:
It is a form of humor which is also a way
of saying something serious. There is a
criticism of life at the bottom of it. It is
serious and even somber. Unlike so much humor,
it is not merely a criticism of manners— that
is, of the superficial aspects of society at a
given moment— but something more profound.
[His] writings and also his illustrations are
capable of surviving the immediate environment
and time out of which they spring. To some
extent, they will be a document of the age they
belong to (qtd. in Holmes 289).
In 1952, Thurber claimed that Eliot gave the "best
estimate of his work." ("Interview with Harvey Breit,"
Conversations With James Thurber, 31). Charles Holmes
includes this quotation in his discussion of Thurber,
and also cites Thurber's pride in Auden and Eliot's
detailed knowledge of his work (The Clocks of Columbus
289, nl6). The accolade in Eliot's criticism comes
chiefly in the verdict that Thurber's humor is, once
again, "serious," and therefore will last.
1In addition to Morsberger (James Thurber, 44-45) and Holmes
(Clocks of Columbus, 121), see Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth
Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979), p. 324, and Robert
Secor, "Walter Mitty and Lord Jim," English Language Notes (Sept.
1987): 74-76.
In his later years, Thurber's observations on humor
stressed its close affinity with the darker side, the
tragic. In the "Case for Comedy," Thurber writes, "The
true balance of life and art, the saving of the human
mind as well as of the theatre, lies in what has long
been known as tragicomedy, for humor and pathos, tears
and laughter are, in the highest expression of human
character and achievement, inseparable." (Lanterns and
Lances 119). Thurber questions the ancient prejudice
against comedy, stating that it is "more serious" in its
approach to truth than is tragedy (119). Thurber's
understanding of humor and his appreciation of Eliot's
evaluation both point to a desire for his humor "to
last," to be a part of a "tradition." At the same time,
Thurber's comments suggest a turning away from the
values which undergird the "high/low" culture split. We
have to recognize that such "warring" discourses are
complicit in the figure of the little man as they are in
modernism itself.. The best part of Eliot's idea of
"tradition," for instance, resembles postmodern ideas of
intertextual reference; he writes, "No poet, no artist
of any art, has his complete meaning alone" ("Tradition
and the Individual Talent," qtd. in Levenson 187, n47).
This statement suggests that we construct our
understanding of the poet or artist through our
knowledge of other poets and artists. If we were to
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replace the "poet" with "the text," our resulting
statement would mirror a basic "postmodern" tenet.
Nevertheless, it is not surprising that critics of
the forties took up Thurber with Eliot, and that the
poet himself attempted to explain Thurber's success in
terms of his most famous theoretical paradigm. However,
the concept of "tradition" may be more of a theoretical
smoke screen than a paradigm in light of other
affinities Thurber's humor shares with modernist
discourse. In No Man's Land, Gilbert and Gubar examine
the "battle of the sexes" within modernism and cite
Thurber's "The War Between Men and Women" as a parodic
continuation of the "theme of gender strife" within
earlier writers and poets such as Eliot, Joyce, and
Hemingway (43). De Vries notes that Thurber's little
man is afraid of the women who "drop questions on his
plate," but does not discuss it further than in its link
to Eliot's Prufrock. Eliot's remark that Thurber's
writings "will be a document of the age they belong to"
is ironically accurate; as well as enlisting Thurber in
the great tradition, he seems to obliquely and
unknowingly validate the (hidden) misogynist fear that
makes up that tradition.
Thurber's work is serious in the sense that it
should not be dismissed, not in the sense that it has an
elusive, politically-implicated aesthetic "seriousness"
Ill
to be valued for its own sake. Eliot's evaluation of
Thurber raises, rather than answers the question of
Thurber's place in tradition. He states that his work
is "profound," but does not specify how. Nor does he
venture to state why Thurber's work will last. Critics
follow in Eliot’s wake to the extent that they begin
with the prima facie assumption that Thurber is
profound. It is in this sense that "seriousness"
becomes the question and answer, and the blind spot
afflicting the criticism and evaluation of humor.
THURBER'S FIRST QUESTION OF SEX
What makes the study of parody so central to James
Thurber is the fact that his texts epitomize what some
critics see as the proliferation of, and change in
parody during the modern period. Terry Caesar argues
that, by 1930, parody was absorbed into literature and
effaced from criticism ("Literature and Criticism" 47).
Although he acknowledges that the type of parody
practiced in the 1930's was not exclusive to that
decade, Caesar argues that the "termination of the
process by which parody became exclusively literary"
(47) was. Modern literature such as Joyce's Ulysses, or
Eliot's The Wasteland hosted parody "so generously that
its imitative basis emerged as constitutive for much of
what was poetry and what was prose" (50). Literary
criticism had no "discursive space" in which parody
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could "retain some significant purpose" (47). The gist
of Caesar's argument is that in the 1930's, parody
became literary and literature became parodic. Shortly
before that decade, and during it, anthologies of parody
ceased to be published and the "Victorian practice" of
parody in which parody remained outside of literature—
in that parasitic relationship condemned by Leavis and
others— gradually gave way to something else.
Thurber engaged in parody and parodic practices
throughout his career, favoring, as Catherine Kenney has
noted, the parody of the scientific or pseudoscientific
treatise next to that of the literary parody (Anatomy of
Confusion 128). So while Thurber wrote humorous
parodies of James M. Cain's "The Postman Always Rings
Twice," ("Hell Breaks Loose Only Once"), or of Henry
James's "The Beast in the Jungle" ("The Beast in the
Dingle"), his most frequent target during the thirties
were the popularizers of sex, self-help and psychology.
Of these, Is Sex Necessary? co-authored with E.B. White
in 1929, is the longest, and for the purposes of my
argument, the most significant. If, indeed, we hold
with Terry Caesar that parody changed by, and into the
1930s, then Thurber and White's book represents a
prototype of Thurber's extra literary parody, as well as
an introduction to a more radical parody present in so
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much of his "battle of the sexes" short fiction and
drawings.
F.R. Leavis may have classed Thurber with Max
Beerbohm, and the "cult of parody" (Caesar 48), rather
than with high modernists such as Joyce, Pound and
Eliot. However, Thurber's parody may very well have
followed the general trend Caesar notes, moving from an
external or "formal" parody to an increasingly
internalized or "intratextual" parody in the guise of
the little man thematic. The apparent downplay of the
"parasitic" relationship of "original" and parody
fostered such an internalization, self-sufficiency, or
radicalization. On the one hand, Thurber was conforming
to the little man tradition of Benchley and others—
rewriting it with the accepted individual variation—
and, on the other hand, Thurber was "seriously"
questioning it, taking it "into" discourse itself; or
rather, "out" of the textual and "into" the "real world"
of sexual relations. The problems of theorizing such
boundaries as "in" and "out" of the textual, of course,
have been addressed most persuasively by Barthes some
years ago, but for the present, suffice it to say that
the bulk of Thurber criticism has paid little attention
to these problems.
Charles Holmes evaluates Is Sex Necessary? with the
following statement:
114
The success of the book lies in the fact
that it offers the reader more than parody, or
at least parody of such a high order as almost
to transcend the limitations of the form. It
not only mocks the literature of popular
psychoanalysis, it also offers a wonderfully
comic view of courtship and marriage in the
modern world. . . .It looks at sex as neither
romantic mystery nor scientific problem, but as
embarrassment, trap, predicament, or
battleground (114).
With his statement that Thurber "transcend[s] the
limitations of the form," Holmes suggests that Thurber
overcomes, or nearly overcomes his debt to the original,
or the stigma of parasitic imitation. Such parody goes
"beyond" imitation of its original and joins the rank of
the parodies Caesar describes; parody which becomes
literature, parody wherein "imitation often seems to be
carried beyond the point of parody" (Caesar 50). Holmes
places this "beyond" in the book's "wonderfully comic
view of courtship and marriage in the modern world." In
other words, Is Sex Necessary? does more than mock, but
presents a "view." One is lead to believe that this
"view" is somehow outside the immediate concern of
imitation, and out into a realm lacking any mediating
text— that is, any conventionally accepted or popular
text, such as Joseph Collins's The Doctor Looks at Love
and Life (1926), Gardner Murphy's An Historical
Introduction to Modern Psychology (revised 1930) or
Joseph Krutch’s The Modern Temper (1929). The
115
conventional understanding of Thurber and White's book
is that it comments upon the "social phenomena" of
"marriage" and "courtship" as it exists in realm beyond
textuality, the "modern world." And what is more,
marriage, courtship, and hence sexuality are best
"played out" metaphorically in terms such as
"battleground" or "predicament." According to this
view, parody is more of a technique which Thurber uses
to mock popular psychologists, and less of a mode
through which gender and sexuality are represented.
Published in 1929, at the hypothetical moment
before the decade within which parody ceased to be known
exclusively "outside" of literature, Is Sex Necessary?
is the first major publication of Thurber's. Not only
does the book parody the popular self-help treatises on
philosophy, psychology, and sexuality, but it also
introduces Thurber's "take" on the gender negotiation
and representation peculiar to the little man, "big
women" theme. "The "Foreword" to Is Sex Necessary?
reads, "During the past year, two factors in our
civilization have been greatly overemphasized. One is
aviation, the other is sex." Neither "diversion" touted
in the last year is "entitled to the space it has been
accorded" (xix). Such an understatement sets the tone
for the bathetic move from the significant to the banal,
blowing the air out of the sails of the grandiose styles
116
of Krutch and Collins, but more importantly, repeating
the equation between woman and mechanics as two of
"modern" or little man's most threatening menaces.
In The Doctor Looks At Love and Life, Dr. Joseph
Collins writes, "Man is usually the determining cause of
matrimonial incompatibility; woman the contributing
cause" (The Doctor 36). Collins's rather liberal and
extraordinary charges include the following:
Man does not grant his wife the liberty of
action that he insists upon having himself. He
maintains that it is his wife's duty to bear
children, bring them up, order and administer
his home; if she has any spare time, he does not
protest against bridge, picture-puzzles, or
ladies' lunch parties but he does against
occupations or efforts at self-expression that
interfere with what he considers her duties"
(36).
Collins also claims that "Man considers it beneath him
to try to understand either love or passion. He is avid
to experience them, but loath to study them" (37).
Elsewhere in the chapter, he comments upon the "great
change" in the world since the turn of the century. He
states that one can predict the "result of woman's
economic independence, of her use of the ballot" (44).
If there is any great change to be made, it will be
"wrought by her position of absolute equality with man"
(44).
Thurber and White's elevation of woman to a
position beyond equality, to a kind of exaggerated
superiority is the very heart of the parody of Collins's
world view. Thurber's first chapter, "The Nature of the
American Male: A Study of Pedestalism" mocks the turn
of the century adoption of Victorian cult of ideality,
which supposedly associated "Woman" with the ethereal,
or the "great and beautiful part which the stars, and
infinite generally, play in Man's relationship to women"
(35). The title of the chapter suggests that Thurber
was inspired by yet another of Collins's proclamations,
that "Self-love is the pediment and pedestal of man but
he is told he must love his neighbor as himself and he
never succeeds save when he identifies his neighbor with
himself" (The Doctor 54). Once again, it is man (read
"men") who has the tendency to be the selfish and self-
absorbed. It is he who puts himself upon the pedestal.
In Thurber's chapter, men's worship of women led to
their exalted status, leaving men behind as maladjusted,
incompetent, and bemused buffoons, vying for women's
attentions, and then finally, withdrawing to themselves
in frustration. "It was the epoch of the den in
America" (Is Sex 44).
In keeping with the parodic strategy of inversion,
Thurber counters Collins's charge that men are "loath to
study" love and passion, with the "scientific"
observations of a first person narrator who "discusses"
several "case histories" of little men figures. Here,
of course, Thurber and White are also parodying the
numerous case histories recounted in psychology manuals
and outlines— a subtext comprehensible to a much wider
readership. The case history of "George Smith, aged 32,
real estate operator" describes the breakdown of a
frustrated suitor who has become obsessed with pigs-in-
clover puzzles. This ludicrous sublimation of his
amorous instincts results in his rounding up dogs in
neighboring cities to see if they can solve one of the
puzzles. Accidentally breaking one one day, he finally
figures out that he did not "have to roll the balls into
the openings, but could push them in with his finger"
(58). Once freed from his complex by the "Gordian Knot
principle of complex release," he is able to "feel
worthy of the woman with whom he was in love" (58).
What Thurber recounts, then, is the story of low self
esteem, in which the male's supposedly overblown ego is
comically understated and replaced by a neurotic
complex. Fixed on the puzzle, the object of the man's
imbalance alludes to the charges made by Collins.
According to the Doctor, men have consigned their wives
to the "spare time" pursuits of "bridge, picture-
puzzles, and ladies' lunch parties" (The Doctor 36).
Obsessed with pigs-in-clover, George Smith is driven to
an all-encompassing fury for one of to the trivial,
humdrum activities forced upon wives.
Collins's presentation of his studied and
philanthropic observations may be an easy target because
of his inflated rhetoric and gross generalizations.
Nevertheless, his advocacy of women's equality— though
not without its contradictions— serves as an even
greater target for Thurber and White. If woman is the
victim in Collins's book, she is certainly the victor in
Thurber's and White's— or, at least, that is what the
parody jokingly wants us to assume. Thurber spends
little time in directly attacking women's suffrage or
their increasing "economic independence" (Collins 44),
but instead retreats to the mythos that, somehow, gosh
darn it, women had always had the upper hand, especially
within the household, and men's exaggerated admiration
of them only strengthened their position. In Chapter 7,
"Claustrophobia, or What Every Young Wife Should Know,"
Thurber introduces the state of affairs common to his
successive casuals and short fiction, particularly the
Mr. and Mrs. Monroe stories. This is woman's, or the
wife's, inordinate love of and expertise in all things
domestic, much to the bewilderment, paranoia, and
chagrin of the husband. Describing the "typical
American marriage," the narrator of Thurber's chapter
claims the following:
A woman's desire to potter about her own
home goes back a long way, so far back that the
urge often remains when economic necessity no
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longer exists. Women like to do their own work.
They even build up ingenious excuses for doing
it, such as claiming that the maid or the handy
man didn’t do it right (Is Sex? 144).
The narrator later describes the "legitimate" cause
for the paranoia of husbands. In yet another case
history, a "patient" is found to have been actually
"rolled up in a rug" by "two burly men" whom the wife
was superintending during a house cleaning (150).
Thurber, of course, repeated the little man’s fear of
the house in the later short story, "Mr. Monroe and the
Moving Men," as well as in the widely recognizable
cartoon, "Home" (see illus. no. 1). The hen-pecked
husband is an all too common theme in American
literature to merit much mention at this point, but it
does serve to remind us that twentieth-century readers
not familiar with Collins's book could very well
understand the humor here, which, by the way, is
supposed to be created by the incongruity of the "head
of the household" under the dominance of the "weaker
vessel."
It is one of the projects of this book to play off
the silliness of men who let themselves be cowed by
women, and as Thurber writes in the "Preface," by a
myth:
It is inconceivable that a myth as strong
as this belief in the ineffability of Woman, as
deeply rooted in the soils of time, can ever be
completely eradicated ... To destroy it would
121
be to put the female properly in her place, as a
plain, unadorned unit in the senseless but
unending pattern of biological continuity"
(xxix).
Thurber, or rather his literary persona, Le Boutellier,
claims that this myth has "subordinated" man to "Woman,"
(xxix), but it is no accident that he retains the
capital letter. The women in Thurber and White's parody
are far from the goddess-like creatures of mystery that
so beset silly men, and are also not the logically
classifiable creatures of habit that men tend to be, or
wish they were. Le Boutellier's comment in the preface
suggests that there is a need for simplification. If
women could only be the "plain, unadorned unit[s]" that
he wishes them to be, the bare "facts" of biology could
be clearly seen. In other words, wishful thinking plays
a big part in the book. The wish to blow away that
nimbus of ineffability surrounding women and reduce them
to objects simply understood as part of a biological
schema is, of course, as ludicrous as worshipping them
in the first place. No direct mention is made of the
"great changes of the past twenty years" which Collins
calls attention to; with a few exceptions, most of the
book harkens back to an idyllic (but silly) age just
past, when female worship in America was supposedly at
its height.
But in 1929, the "nimbus of ineffability" began to
look more like a cloud cover. In "A Discussion of
Feminine Types," Thurber's scientist does refer to a
"phenomenal modern type, a product of these strange
post-war years" (Is Sex 91). This is a "girl who gets
right down to a discussion of sex on the occasion of her
first meeting with a man," but cannot tolerate the
thought of marriage. This "'I-can't-go-through-with-it'
Type" is the epitome of Thurber and White's contemporary
era; she represents the prolific but ultimately
ineffective flood of sex manuals which they parody. The
scientist's advice to the man who meets this type is to
"reach for his hat. Science does not know what is the
matter with these women, or whether anything is the
matter" (91). Once again, not knowing the subject of
investigation is the real problem, these "modern types"
elusive to modern "science" are just as puzzling to man
as were the mysticized women to men of generations past.
A case can, and has been, made that the big to-do
about the mystery of "Woman" in Is Sex Necessary? is
Thurber's effort to lay to rest his own romantic and
naive idealization of women during his younger years
(Clocks of Columbus 116). Several letters written to
Elliot Nugent while Thurber was in his twenties contain
references to the "One," the girl of his dreams, Eva
Prout, for whom he carried a torch since junior high
123
school. Biographers comment that his purple prose about
Prout was rather embarrassing and immature for a man of
his age. Biographical discourse aside, the exaggerated
inflation of women and the pointed and comical deflation
of men hints at a parody which seems outside of, or at
least different from the parody of Collins, and the
other "sex" and psychology doctors.
Read in its "conservative" impulse or voice, the
parody of Is Sex Necessary? reassures and amuses male
readers by portraying the exaggerated foibles of their
fathers as if very much the same thing were happening in
their day. The little man, the bumbling scientist,
George Smith, and the young husband trying to escape
from his wife's interior decorating all figure as
characters over which the reader may feel superior. At
its worst, the book paints a rosy, escapist picture that
distorts any real fears of the perceived change in
women's economic and political status, and vicariously
allays them through shooting down the superstitions of
days past. But read with attention to its various
parodic inversions and exaggerations of sexuality and
gender, Is Sex Necessary? destabilizes gender roles. If
"Woman" was the fabrication of mixed-up, Moon-gazing
men, then the arbitrary assignability of behaviors and
"traits" becomes apparent. To the extent that a male
reader laughs because he identifies with the dilemma of
124
a George Smith, or a newly married husband, but does not
have to undergo it, he at once locates its possibility
(in a likeness to "real life," to himself) and
recognizes its absurdity (why should men have to escape
the house and women be endlessly delighted in them?)
Read in either fashion, Is Sex Necessary? does more than
spoof popular psychology. It follows the generic or
modal conventions of a parody of an "original" text or
texts, but it does so through Thurber and White's
appropriation of the little man theme.
THE GENDER PARODY IN MITTY, MONROE, AND THE MRS.
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) remains
Thurber's most paradigmatic use of the little man theme,
if for no other reason than that it has been widely
anthologized and has received the most critical
attention of any of Thurber's short fiction. Walter
Blair notes a "recent biographer's" claim that this
story's reprint permissions "brought the author more
money per word than those for any other story, serious
or humorous, ever netted by any other writer" (America's
Humor 448).
The implied magnitude of this text's audience is
vast, indeed. Partly because of this, Walter Mitty has
been read as the epitome of Thurber's little man, while
characters such as Mr. Monroe, Mr. Bidwell, and Mr.
Preble have been read as his prototypes in the Thurber
canon. Arguably, Chaplin's Tramp and Thurber's Mitty
have superseded the popularity of their predecessors,
and are certainly more recognizable to audiences of
today. Immersed in the private sphere of his own
imagination, which, in turn, is so riddled with and
informed by the public discourses of popular
melodramatic film and literature, Mitty represents a
comic extreme. Had the texts of his clichdd fantasies
not suggested the banality and shoddiness of his dreams,
his withdrawal into himself may have been read as an
existential retreat. In this sense, Mitty would have
been not only as "inscrutable" as his implied model Lord
Jim, but also as mysterious and ironic as Bartelby the
Scrivener and his preference "not to."
Aspirations to greatness are part of the comic
anti-hero's ethos. Critics such as Carl M. Linder note
Mitty's likeness to Rip Van Winkle and Tom Sawyer, whose
story book imaginations strive to be untrammeled, but
are comically frustrated by wife and mother figures such
as Dame Van Winkle ("Thurber’s Walter Mitty— The
Underground American Hero" 283-284). Linder notes the
violence in Mitty's "visions," and the life and death
heroic response which "allows the ultimate in symbolic
action in which the questions of self can be answered
and personal values defined" (285). What is most
telling, however, is Linder's speculation about the
126
familiarity of such a violent ethos. The familiarity of
"heroic responses"— whether it be "inherent in the
national unconscious" or recurrent "in the national
literature"— suggests "alarming possibilities concerning
the American male mentality in a time when football and
military force provide over-simplified moral and
physical confrontations" (285). As well as pointing to
the study of the origins and morality of male heroism in
American literature, Linder's comment reveals the
pressures of hypermasculinity within the ethos of heroic
violence. Competent military and football heroes are
scattered throughout Thurber’s fiction, either as foils
to their lesser counterparts (such as Joe Ferguson in
The Male Animal), or as embellished self—perspectives
(such as Commander Mitty). Linder notes that the
frustration of Mitty's dreams is a kind of "repeated
stifling of each psychological orgasm" (287), but it is
not until 1982 and 1986 that critics such as Ann
Ferguson Mann and Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet begin
fully to examine issues of gender and sexuality in
Mitty's fantasies.
In "Taking Care of Walter Mitty," Mann focuses on
Mrs. Mitty, arguing that her behavior can be understood
"as a response to, and not a cause of, Mitty's fantasy
life" (352). Mann links Mrs. Mitty to the recurrent
"paradoxical enabler-scapegoat role" of female
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characters throughout American literature. Tying her to
a tradition that includes such termagants as Dame Van
Winkle, and such "upstarts" as Eve, Mann does a feminist
rereading of the story that ultimately casts Walter
Mitty as "one of those people whose lifestyle and self-
image depend on the presence of the OTHER, on whom all
life's problems can be blamed" (357). Relying on the
revisionary perspectives of Judith Fetterly, Mann thus
states that characters like Mrs. Mitty "do not make
sense as real women but only as male fantasies of women"
(356). The "Walter Mitty's of this world" will
therefore "remain 'little men’" because of their
"limited view of themselves and others" (357).
Mann's conclusion reinterprets the "little man" as
a flawed role, a psychologically unviable "outlook" for
"individuals who shun responsibility for their own
failings and often for their own lives" (357). Even
though much of Mann's argument attempts to shift the
blame from Mrs. Mitty, and to remark on an oppressive
anti-feminist tradition, it ultimately ends on a
humanist note, not unlike the arguments of previous
critics such as Tobias and Yates, who find Mitty's mock-
heroic victories "limited" or "private." Though Mann
refers to the Eves and Mrs. Mittys as "attempts by the
male to account for the problem of mortality" (355-56),
or as "male fantasies of women," the caveat we are to
take from this reading applies to the universal
individual. In a later reading of the story, George
Cheatham takes up Mann's application, extending her
momentary elision of gender. Cheatham explicitly
discards the "male" attempt to explain death in favor of
the greater dimensions which issues of mortality
supposedly entail. Not satisfied with Mann's "gloss" on
the "problem of mortality," Cheatham centers on Mitty's
search for "transcendence," and the "eschatologically
patterned subtext of true Hell" that the fantasies
supposedly offer ("The Secret Sin of Walter Mitty,"
609). But Mann finally addresses both the gendered and
universal subject when she aligns Mitty with Hemingway's
heroes, stating that for both Thurber and Hemingway the
"enemy is, in its least avoidable form, the biological
fact of existence" (357). She quotes Frederick Henry's
statement in A Farewell to Arms, feeling that Mitty
would agree that "You always feel trapped biologically"
(Hemingway 139). Both Mann and Cheatham privilege,
although to different degrees, the life and death
thematic of epic heroism.
Ultimately, Mann begs the question of sexual
positioning and identification. By referring to Mrs.
Mitty as a "male fantasy," readers can infer that the
consciousness constructed throughout the story is, at
times, if not all the time, primarily "male." However,
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by quoting Frederick Henry's statement, Mann opens up
the possibility of another reading of Mitty's dilemma:
rather than being trapped by the "biological fact of
existence," Mitty is "trapped" by the biological "fact"
of sexuality. In the passage from A Farewell to Arms,
Catherine has just told Frederick that she is pregnant.
When she attempts to assuage her fears, the following
exchange takes place:
"You aren't angry are you, darling?
"No."
"And you don't feel trapped?"
"Maybe a little. But not by you."
"I didn't mean by me. You mustn't be stupid. I
meant trapped at all."
"You always feel trapped biologically."
She went away a long way without stirring or
removing her hand (139).
In the midst of the Italian and Austrian war,
Catherine and Frederick have been sleeping together in a
clandestine, unsanctioned marriage. The inevitable
likelihood of her pregnancy runs in tandem with the risk
of his death. Is not Frederick trapped equally by the
physical consequence of heterosexual desire, paternity,
and gender itself? His responsibility of a new life as
"father" reinforces his vulnerability and helplessness
in the face of his likely death as an ambulance driver
in the Italian-Austrian war. Mitty might indeed agree
with Henry, reading the ambiguity of the biological trap
as the pressure of heterosexuality (in his case,
frustrated) and "maleness." Or, in what becomes a
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frightening twist to Thurber's earlier parody of the
cult of purity, Mitty may read the trap as women
themselves, those "plain, unadorned unitfs] in the
senseless but unending pattern of biological continuity"
(Is Sex Necessary? xxix).
For as Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet have argued,
Mitty's fantasies amount to a series of sexually
symbolic acts, in which the little man's guise of
impotency is humorously reinforced, in "Coitus
Interruptis [sic]: Sexual Symbolism in 'The Secret Life
of Walter Mitty,'" Blythe and Sweet detail the "phallic
nature" of Mitty's fantasies, stating that "in most of
his daydreams the phallic symbol is exaggerated in size
to compensate for this real-life inadequacy" (111). The
big joke, of course, rests not only in the innuendo of
the phallus, but in Mitty's continued inability to reach
sexual orgasm. Mitty is continually fixing large
machinery in the fantasies, and at one point, replaces a
"faulty piston" in a complicated medical device with a
small fountain pen. Here, and in their notation of
Mitty's "Webley-Vickers 50.80," a gun belonging to Mitty
in his courtroom fantasy, Blythe and Sweet point out two
of the more salient symbols. Drawing from James Ellis's
reading of the story, they cite his observation that
such a gun does not exist. If it did, it "would have a
barrel whose diameter would measure something more than
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four feet" (112). Of course, in Mitty's final fantasy,
he stands before the firing squad "'erect and
motionless' as full phallus unable to fire" (113).
Interrupted throughout by the blows of Mrs. Mitty,
ridiculing women, and cocksure young men, Mitty never
has his fun.
Like Is Sex Necessary? published a decade before
it, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" can, and has been
understood as primarily a parody of another text or
texts. Like James Ellis, most critics acknowledge its
allusions to popular fiction, news scandals, and
melodrama. Robert Secor ties Walter Mitty primarily to
Conrad's Lord Jim, explaining that "Jim and Mitty are
versions of the modern antihero, but Mitty is a
reductive, comic version of Jim because he shares none
of the stature of Conrad's protagonist" ("Walter Mitty
and Lord Jim" 76). Secor's observation follows in the
wake of Peter De Vries's interpretation of Thurber as
the "comic Prufrock," which Secor notes. Yet even in
Secor's comment the doubleness of the parodic voice is
apparent; Mitty does not share the "stature" of Jim
because he is another "little" man. And, as has become
increasingly obvious with Blythe and Sweet's critique,
size, with its ties to gender and sexuality, has
everything to do with it. Secor writes that Thurber may
have been acknowledging the "source of his method" in
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alluding to Jim's "wretched cur" comment outside the
courtroom. "So much more real to him is Jim's inner
life than the ordinary world around him, that the very
phrases of the ordinary world are made to serve his
solipsistic sense of himself and his importance" (77).
However, while read as a conventional though
enormously popular literary parody of Lord Jim, "The
Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is more likely to be read
as yet another tale of the "little man." Through the
"little" man themes, the parodic voice articulates the
binaries of virility and impotence, or of ineluctable
biology and escapable social roles. Mitty's daydreams
are not only a sign of his solipsistic inner world, but
of the tenuousness of gender. Mitty dreams about
gender, about sexuality. In his dreams, gender and
sexuality can be stretched to incredible and laughable
lengths, or shrunk over and over again to diminutive
shadows of themselves. The question is, by what means
may the reader detect these dreams as a type of parody
of gender, and toward what political or social end?
The principle of inversion, long standing with the
little man theme, is based on the idea that a less than
"masculine" man, and a more than "masculine woman" is
incongruous with traditional gender stereotypes and thus
amusing, but to whom? To a "modern" reading audience of
the thirties, despite the changes in lifestyles and wage
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earning patterns, the idea that women were the "weaker
vessel" was common enough to avoid today's scholars'
having to defend its place in the popular consciousness
of the time. The "joke" or inversion upon which the
little man theme rests could not work unless a certain
set of behavioral traits were associated with being a
woman, or with being a man. In short, "feminine" and
"masculine," "man" and "woman," and most importantly,
"husband" and "wife," were the operative binary
opposites within many of Thurber's texts.
One way to understand the parody in Mitty's dreams
of huge guns and machinery, beautiful women, and feats
of heroic prowess is to read in them Mitty's
subscription to traditionally expected (if not "real")
sexual traits and gender roles. Rather than
compensating for his "real life inadequacy" (Blythe and
Sweet 111), Mitty reproduces clichds, blowing them up to
fantastic dimensions, such as with the Webley-Vickers
gun, or the tiny fountain pen. The story is also
dependent upon the boundaries apparently suggested or
violated by the behavior of other men and women than
Mitty, real or imagined. In fact, there is a sense in
which positions of mastery and of subjugation are
"roles" to be slipped in and out of. And, it is no
coincidence in the little man theme that these positions
are associated with gender.
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For Mitty's daydreaming is his private performance
in a theatre much like that constructed in the fantasies
of Sir Alfred de Carter in Preston Sturges’s
Unfaithfully Yours (discussed in Chapter 4). Sir Alfred
believes his wife has been unfaithful and thus imagines
elaborate schemes of revenge while he simultaneously
conducts an entire orchestra. Both performances involve
considerable feats of courage, cunning, and "male"
prowess. Both are also performances of gender, much in
keeping with Butler's idea that the "gendered body is
performative having no ontological status apart from
various acts which constitute its reality" (Gender
Trouble 136). The Mitty texts emphasizes the difference
between "reality" and "fantasy," or between inner life
and outer world, as well as the problems that the lack
of their differentiation entails. Mitty's role as "hen
pecked" husband is as much a performance as are the
myriad roles within his daydreams. Both as "little man"
and "superman," Mitty is parody. The thematic and
linguistic strategies within the text that compel Mrs.
Mitty's terse domination compel Walter Mitty's
frustrated submission. Men and women in Thurber's
stories play roles which bounce off each other according
to Lacan's "failed model of reciprocity."
I am not implying that readers can infer through
comic exaggeration and deflation that Thurber was
135
parodying popular gender stereotypes with a radical or
even proto-feminist agenda in mind. The parody Thurber
employed did extend to that of gender, though it may be
closer to the truth to say that those performing the
"masquerade" were more often male characters, and it was
their dilemmas and comedies that Thurber emphasized.
Although Thurber never wholly gave up the parody of
literary or popular texts during the thirties, the
parodic mode in the short fiction, casuals and drawings
published in the years between Is Sex Necessary? and
"Walter Mitty" became increasingly visible in its
construction of little men, big women and all that they
implied.
In the Mr. and Mrs. Monroe stories, originally
published in The New Yorker and later collected in The
Owl In the Attic in 1931, Thurber introduces Mr. Monroe,
one of his first little man characters. These texts are
replete with Mr. Monroe's daydreaming, gesturing and
posturing, and represent some of the earliest casuals
involving the relations between the sexes. In "The
Imperturbable Spirit," Mr. Monroe comes across the word
"imperturbable," which he wears as the banner of his
imaginary command over the world, and most specifically,
over his wife: "When imperturbability was at the flood
in Mr. Monroe, his wife's nature took on for him a
curiously dependent and childlike quality, not at all
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annoying, considerably endearing, and wholly mythical"
(Owl 8).
The philological mask Monroe dons is from the
beginning entirely visible as a mask, and what is more,
as the faulty lens through which we see Mrs. Monroe.
"Little Mrs. Monroe," it turns out, has illegally
smuggled in several bottles of Benedictine and hidden
them in her hat box. It is Mr. Monroe's responsibility
to retrieve the contraband, and he reacts by summoning
up an imaginary courtroom drama, not unlike Mitty's, but
with an important difference— he is proven to be more
despicable, rather than more heroic, than he is. Much
to his horror, the prosecuting attorney presents a
"damning letter," which "was in his own handwriting"
(Owl 11).
With one possible exception, all of the Monroe
stories depend on Mr. Monroe's laughable and more than
obvious pretensions to be a "man's man." In "Mr. Monroe
Outwits a Bat," killing spiders for his wife "gave him a
feeling of power, and enhanced the sweetness of his
little wife's dependence on him" (Owl 15). Monroe's
inept handling of movers in "Mr. Monroe and the Moving
Men" is prefaced with the comment that Monroe "didn't
really have any character" (25), and inevitably shows
him imagining himself in charge. "He loved himself in
that role, and was often in it, in his day dreams . .
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."(28). And, again, in "Mr. Monroe Holds the Fort," we
see cameos of Monroe's elaborate but clichdd masking,
which not only enacts an exaggerated virility, but also
carves out a diminutive space for his wife:
At moments and in places like this, he
enjoyed giving the impression of a strong,
silent man wrapped in meditation. He stared,
brooding, into the fire. Mrs. Monroe, looking
quite tiny and helpless, sat on the floor at his
feet and leaned against him (39).
Thurber allows Mr. Monroe to age, and in "The
Middle Years," the 35-year-old man's fancies have
strayed from conquering his wife to engaging in
clandestine affairs. When a "lovely lady" gives him an
almost imperceptible sign, he gloats over his savoir
faire. Rather than stammering or turning color,
he did manage at last, as became a man of
the world, to give her a subtle (as he felt)
recognition of the dizzy little moment ... He
merely favored her with an intense and wonderful
glance (or so he believed it to be), paving the
way for a charming sequel without spoiling it
all by seeming too youthfully impetuous" (35).
With Mrs. Monroe away, Monroe plans a tryst with the
lady, planning and picturing all of his romantic
gestures. As the day wears on, he finds one or another
reason to postpone the rendezvous. Finally, late at
night, he lays out the full regalia in which he plans to
make his visit, sets the alarm to awaken him a couple of
hours later, and goes to bed. The alarm goes off, but
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the middle-aged man, in reality, just goes back to
sleep.
The comment at the beginning of "Mr. Monroe and the
Moving Men" is particularly revealing. In Mr. Monroe's
inexperience with movers, the narrator states "we have
here, then, the makings of a character study— or would
have except for the fact that Mr. Monroe didn't really
have any character" (Owl 25). Mr. Monroe, does not, in
fact, have any "character" other than that constructed
through his various facades. He does, however, have a
"lack" of character, and through the innuendo already
established, a "lack" of sexuality. His gender is
assigned through the customary, unimaginative salutation
of "Mr." As he ages, he cannot even assume the mask,
only lay out the trappings of his virility upon the bed.
Mrs. Monroe, deigned "little" by the clearly laughable
patronage of Mr. Monroe, ostensibly has more "character"
(read courage, efficiency, and even virility) than Mr.
Monroe. Because she is "little," meek, and sometimes
threateningly capable in domestic matters, Mrs. Monroe's
sexuality is sublimated by her alternating likeness to a
mother or a child. In "Mr. Monroe Outwits a Bat,"
husband and wife have separate beds in adjoining rooms.
When a bat flies into his room, Monroe has trouble
getting rid of it, and notes that his wife's soothing
words had the "tone" of a "mother addressing a child"
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(18). She invites him to join her in her bed, but he
becomes even more determined to get the bat out and
sleep in his own.
It is interesting to note that in the only story
told through the perspective of Mrs. Monroe, female
sexuality is represented as a threat to Monroe, but not
in the person of his wife. The story begins, "Little
Mrs. Monroe met the challenge of the very blonde lady
with all of her charming directness" (Owl 20). The lady
"challenges" Mrs. Monroe by being the "other" woman whom
Mr. Monroe thinks he has. But the greater challenge is
to Mr. Monroe himself. Though Mrs. Monroe comes to
inform the lady of certain things about Mr. Monroe, her
ingenious method of attack is to reveal Mr. Monroe's
absurd lack of competence with machinery, easily
understood by both the lady and the reader, as a lack of
knowledge with the real "mechanics" of sex. She calmly
relates (posturing almost imperceptibly) an incident in
which Monroe's inability to turn off a shower facet
forced an engineer to turn off the water in an entire
university. Once again, machinery is inextricably bound
up with the menace of sexuality. In "Sex Ex Machina"
from Let Your Mind Alone, yet another parody of popular
psychologists' theories, Thurber openly disputes the
idea that the menace of the machine can be attributed to
a phobia of sex. Such a satiric take on this
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association suggests that references to it in earlier
stories may have been deliberately parodic. However,
the sexual innuendo in Mrs. Monroe's advice to Miss
Lurell is obvious. Mrs. Monroe tells the (alluring)
Miss Lurell that at the climatic peak of his confusion
during this incident, Mr. Monroe started to yell "'Wool
Woo!' like a child" (21). She explains,
He always goes 'Woo! Woo! when things go
wrong with machinery. Of course he writes
beautiful sonnets, which I am sure you
appreciate perhaps more deeply than I do, and of
course mechanical things are of no importance,
but one must know what to do with him in a case
like this" (22).
It is hard to overlook the contrast of courtly love
and routine eros in Mrs. Monroe's implicit comparison of
her "knowledge" of Mr. Monroe with Miss Lurell’s. At
one point in Mrs. Monroe's tale, Mr. Monroe runs across
the hotel hallway into her room "stark, raving naked,"
still making that "'Woo! Woo! noise'" (23). Mrs. Monroe
responds by throwing her negligde over him before he
runs back across, making his effeminization complete.
His "trappings" have, in this story, become a woman's
clothing, rather than the suave dinner jacket he later
plans to don when he meet with his secret lover in "The
Middle Years." Miss Lurell tells Mrs. Monroe that she
now knows "exactly what to do" with Mr. Monroe. The
double entendre of Mr. Monroe's "wooing" depends on both
the ladies' command of the situation. Not surprisingly,
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as Mrs. Monroe is leaving, Miss Lurell asks her if she
plays bridge. "Oh, very badly," she replies, "’unless I
hold a perfect grand slam'"(24), which, in this story,
she does.
Mrs. Monroe's allusion to the "upper hand" fuels
-the metaphor established by Thurber criticism. In the
"battle of the sexes," either position is clearly
demarcated, with a battery of principles and personality
traits aligned accordingly. In the Monroe stories, Mr.
Monroe is the inferior cipher, puzzled by all that he
doesn't understand or cannot defeat; Mrs. Monroe is his
near complement, "little" in the imaginary sense that he
is "big," or capable of being that ever elusive "man of
the world." She, of course, is proven again and again,
for all of her "helpless" gesturing, to be immensely
more capable. She understands domestic mysteries and
the logistics of everyday life. All of her "dependence"
on Mr. Monroe is pointedly of his own imagining. In
fact, most of what the reader sees of Mrs. Monroe is
undeniably filtered through his perspective. When she
acts "on her own," such as she does in "The 'Wooing' of
Mr. Monroe," she appears cunning, despite her "charming
directness." It is difficult to separate her from the
subtext of the previous stories which are again,
dependent on the character (or lack of character)
profile of Mr. Monroe.
In short, the Monroe stories give us a man and
woman engaged in a kind of tightly regulated version
Lacan's heterosexual comedy. The "masculine" and
"feminine" positions they assume are "token," though
overtures are made in the direction of Mrs. Monroe's
"essential" mystery and efficiency. In this complicated
caricature of gender roles, Mr. Monroe is the one
characterized by lack of power, while Mrs. Monroe is, in
fact, characterized almost wholly by her non-lack (she
seems to "possess" the Phallus, not "become" it). It is
difficult to say that the simple role reversal involved
in these stories actually destabilizes gender, or in
Butler's discussions, the very notion of an "original"
gender or sexuality from which certain qualities or
traits emanate. Arguably, however, gender is parodied
to the extent that Mr. Monroe calls attention to popular
notions of "maleness" as just that— preposterous
notions.
In other stories published shortly before and
shortly after "Mitty," the violence engendered between
the sexes increases— or, in keeping with the battle
metaphor, the hostilities escalate. In "The Cat Bird
Seat" (1942) and "Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife"
(1935), the premise is attempted murder, and in "Death
in the Zoo" (1937-42) and "The Whip-Poor-Will" (1941-
42), the premise is madness leading to murder. In "The
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Breaking Up of the Winships" (1937), "The Private Life
of Mr. Bidwell" (1935), and "A Couple of Hamburgers"
(1935), the premise is marital strife leading to divorce
or ongoing estrangement. While it is simple and fairly
accurate to group all of these stories under the heading
of "The Revenge of the Little Man," such a
classification elides some crucial subtleties in the
working out of the parody.
What happens in these later stories is not a
radically fluid transference of gender identities
through cross-dressing, nor the complete obfuscation of
a "true" or "original" gender. Rather, the polarities
set up in the Monroe stories and Is Sex Necessary? have
increased. The husband, or "male" position is firmly
entrenched as the freedom-seeking agent, whose
imagination may be inclined towards madness, and thus
somewhat stereotypical notions of "greatness"— at least,
in his eyes. The wife, or "female" position is
generally aligned with the stereotypical "feminine,"—
domesticity, security, and banal logic. The stories
differ according to which position seems to be favored.
The alternation between favored "female" positions and
favored "male" positions in the stories inevitably fires
the battle metaphor.
This alternation also, as I will argue, has another
effect: it shifts the emphasis from one of "winning"
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sides and binarism, to one of the arbitrary nature of
momentary supersession or ascendancy. Almost without
exception, trivial difference impels the dialogue
between the "sexed" positions, whether such dialogue
encompasses death or divorce. Although some may argue
that the "trivial" can have no absolute value outside of
immediate context, the humor and comedy of these stories
often depend upon the fact that such an absolute value
is constructed— perhaps only as a premise— if not
maintained. In one of his late interviews, Thurber
claimed that "humorous writing" treats the "remarkable
as if it were commonplace (Plimpton and Steele, 114).
Robert Morsberger, on the other hand, paraphrases
Thurber as saying that he and his characters were
"preoccupied with the smaller enormities of life" (James
Thurber 24). For different reasons, whether or not a
parody of gender may work within the confines of what is
ostensibly, a (failed) "heterosexual comedy," also rests
on the study of the "trivial" in Thurber's texts.
In "The Breaking Up of the Winships," Marcia and
Gordon Winship "break up" their marriage after a series
of arguments about the film star Greta Garbo. Raving
about Garbo during dinner after the show, Marcia Winship
stirs her husband into a reverie: "It was his feeling
that detachment is a necessary thread in the fabric of a
woman's charm. He didn't like to see his wife get
herself 'into a sweat' over anything (The Thurber
Carnival 85). According to the anonymous friend who
narrates this story, Marcia "responded . . a little
loudly (they had gone on to Scotch and soda), that a man
who had no abandon of feeling and no passion for
anything was not altogether a man, and that his so-
called love of detachment covered up a lack of critical
appreciation and understanding of the arts in
general'"(86). When Marcia asks him who he believes
surpasses Garbo, he answers "Donald Duck." The narrator
does not think Gordon is being serious, and he is right;
he is being trivial. The two at first make up, and then
later, at a party, Gordon jokes about the fight to a
lady novelist. Gordon is supposedly being good humored,
but Marcia is humiliated and makes the appropriate
accusations. The disagreement develops into a major
rift, and the two end up separated, on the verge of a
divorce.
Marcia's belief in Garbo was a thing she could not
deny "simply for the sake of living under the same roof
with Gordon Winship" (89). Furthermore, she adds, "The
whole thing was part and parcel of her integrity as a
woman, and as a, well, as a woman. She could go to work
again; he would find out" (89). Gordon proclaims that
he "cannot conscientiously live with [Marcia] again," if
she "persists in her silly belief that that Swede is
great and that Donald Duck is merely a caricature" (88).
At one point, the narrator tells Marcia not to get upset
about "a trivial and nonsensical matter" (89). It is
interesting, that, as part of the hyperbole that
inflates the dispute, each ties the other's opinion into
the essence of gender. Gordon sees Marcia's admiration
of Garbo as excessive, and in violation of the
"detachment" that is the "charm" of a woman; Marcia sees
Gordon's "shallowness" as indicative of his
unintelligence and lack of virility. Each is seen as
defective by the other, and as not wholly a "woman," and
as not wholly a "man." What the reader sees is the
failure of their attempts to build the trivial into the
essential; the parody comes in the imitation of couple's
attempt to essentialize their gender, and the
exaggeration that is necessarily entailed in this
Herculean (and rather ridiculous) effort.
In "The Private Life of Mr. Bidwell," George
Bidwell, direct predecessor to Walter Mitty, is bored
with his marriage. Rather than escaping into the
chimeras of popular culture, he practices trivial but
annoying acts immediately perceptible to no one but Mrs.
Bidwell. Mrs. Bidwell, one of the many direct
predecessors to Mrs. Mitty, calls him a "goop" when he
deliberately inhales and holds his breath for long
periods of time (Middle-Aged Man 71). Like Ulgine
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Barrows in "The Catbird Seat," and the wife in "A Couple
of Hamburgers," Mrs. Bidwell has maddening linguistic
habits, a common trait of many "Thurber women." Once
Mrs. Bidwell has threatened to leave him, Mr. Bidwell
"loses interest" in holding his breath and starts
multiplying numbers in his head. This activity leaves
Mr. Bidwell a "free man," and he is last seen,
unmarried, walking along a beach, trying to see how many
steps he can take with his eyes closed.
The "private life" of Mr. Bidwell is really very
dull, and most importantly, exceedingly trivial.
Because the mental activities of Mr. Bidwell are so much
less colorful than those of Walter Mitty, this story,
"The Private Life of Mr. Bidwell," calls attention to
freedom for freedom's sake, or old Dr. Collins's urge
for "self-expression," no matter how absurd the
expression. Mrs. Bidwell's implied lack of imagination
(she reads the novels of Mr. Galsworthy), and her
instinctual need for command are also common to Thurber
women. In this "conflict," however, both parties win.
Mrs. Bidwell marries again, and Mr. Bidwell gets his
way. The pursuits of both sexes in this marriage are
trivial, but unlike the those of the Winships, they seem
to be qualities, "instincts," crystallized traits
unadulterated by alcohol or pretense. Mr. Bidwell is
quite deliberate in his use of his "private life,"
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however, and we get the feeling that it is more of a
strategy to break free of his wife. Yet his continuing
to practice his own brand of self-expression after the
divorce suggests that it was a characteristic "there" to
begin with. If by these innate "signs" Thurber is
trying to show us essential maleness, then all we have
to do is to reflect on their arbitrary nature. Why, for
instance do we attribute freedom-seeking to male
"nature"? Moreover, if the release of this "male" trait
leads to such absurdity and anomie, what does Mr.
Bidwell's victory really mean?
In "A Couple of Hamburgers," the married couple
driving a long distance home cannot agree on a place to
stop and eat. Before they have even reached what seems
to be the central conflict of the story, however, they
have already argued about expressions such as "dog-
wagons" for "diners," "stay our stomachs" or "stick to
your ribs." The wife claims the husband is "vulgar" to
use expressions like "sow belly," the husband defends
them by calling them "Good old American expressions"
(The Thurber Carnival 93). The wife says she hears a
"funny" sound in the engine. The husband doesn't hear
the sound and thinks she is trying to make him angry.
It works. The husband ignores his wife and finally
stops and eats (not at a "cute" diner). The story
culminates as the husband sings songs his wife hates,
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and the wife sits back "content to wait" for the now
louder "ominous" noise to have its effect on the engine.
In "Smashup," Tommy Trinway is a less confident
studious type who has been traumatized and stigmatized
by a former driving accident with a horse and carriage.
His wife, Betty, can drive very well, "with an assured
set to her mouth and a certain glint in her eyes" that
"dismays" him (The Middle-Aged Man, 196). When he must
drive the two back from vacation to New York City, he
sweats through the ordeal, but is fairly successful,
until he narrowly avoids hitting a woman who has run out
into their path. Back at the hotel, instead of
congratulating him on his fine driving, Betty points out
that they both would have been killed if she hadn't
pulled the hand brake. With new born defiance, he
"tosses off" a Scotch, "lounges" over to the desk, and
asks for two single rooms for the night. The upper hand
is his as he walks "jauntily out the revolving doors
into the street, whistling” (200).
In the "Breaking Up of the Winships" and "A Couple
of Hamburgers," the causes of conflict are more trivial
than those of "The Private Life of Mr. Bidwell" and
"Smash-Up." The Winships1 exaggeration is patent; the
separation effected less a result of a major
philosophical, political or theological difference than
of simple stubbornness. No separation occurs in "A
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Couple of Hamburgers," but someone gets the last word.
In the "Private Life of Mr. Bidwell," and "Smash-Up" our
understanding of the absolute value of the "trivial" is
questioned. Are the "trivial" matter of driving skill
or holding one’s breath simply signs of a deeper
incompatibility? Clearly, to foreground profound
marital problems such as wildly antithetical life goals,
or abuse, or infidelity would likely take these
"casuals" out of generic range; change them into dramas
rather than comedies, even if they are "dark." Tommy
Trinway dreams about driving a car well and fast, much
like Bidwell and Mitty are given to their fancies.
Study of these stories, and of the meaning of the
trivial in them, leads us to ask if the "irreconcilable
differences" of the men and women in them are due to
incompatibility as persons or as persons of "set" or
opposing genders. In "Smashup," Betty's failure to
"toot her husband's horn," so to speak, borders on the
trite but serious dilemmas of men's bruised egos and
selfishness on the one hand, or women's lack of sympathy
and understanding on the other. As long as the text
highlights the trivial, or the reader expects the
humorous rather than the tragic, the profound and the
mysterious "essence" of innate genders and their utter
differences are less likely to surface. The trivial is
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not the essential; it is much more likely to be the
associated or assigned.
The function and meaning of the trivial slips and
blurs even more in the Thurber casuals in which murder
is planned or accomplished. In "The Catbird Seat," "Mr.
Preble Gets Rid of His Wife," "Death in the Zoo," and
"The Whip-Poor-Will,” the male "combatant" murders, or
plans to murder his female foe. The cases in which an
actual death occurs either throw the "trivial" impetus
into high relief or unseat it entirely. In "The Catbird
seat" and "Mr. Preble," actual murder does not take
place, but the premeditation of the act is just as
effective. Mr. Martin of "The Catbird Seat" is
considerably more competent than is Mr. Preble, less
arrogant and obnoxious than Gordon Winship, but
ultimately as smug and "victorious" as is Tommy Trinway.
Mr. Martin's carefully planned decision to "rub out" the
infamous Mrs. Ulgine Barrows is unavoidably and
brilliantly changed into a scheme to dupe, and have her
fired. Martin's job and command of the filing
department becomes threatened by the designs of Mrs.
Barrows, but it is Martin's courtroom dramatization of
the conflict that reveals the real threat:
He must keep his mind on her crimes as a
special adviser, not on her peccadilloes as a
personality . . . The faults of the woman as a
woman kept chattering on in his mind like an
unruly witness. She had, for almost two years
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now, baited him . . . she was constantly
shouting these silly questions at him. ’Are you
lifting the oxcart out of the ditch? . . .'Are
you tearing up the pea patch? . . . Are you
sitting in the catbird seat?1 (The Thurber
Carnival 10).
Martin plays out this trial metaphor ending it in a
plea for the death penalty. Though he is forced to opt
for something less severe— turning the tables on her
much as does the husband on his wife in "The Unicorn in
the Garden"— Mrs. Barrows becomes a kind of deserving
victim. Though she is universally disliked, and exerts
an undue influence on the president of the company, the
visible cause for Martin's animosity is tied to her
"faults as a woman." These "faults" just so happen to
be the carping tone and annoying idioms common to
Thurber's linguistically impaired women. Martin himself
calls them "silly," but are they trivial? Has Ulgine
Barrows acquired these traits or is she just an
inherently despicable person? Better yet, would she
have been as despicable had she been a man?
The irony and very great humor of "Mr. Preble Gets
Rid of His Wife" is that Mr. Preble doesn't get rid of
his wife— at least, not within the confines of the text.
Mr. Preble is "a plump middle-aged lawyer" who has
arbitrarily decided to run off with his stenographer.
Even she treats the matter as if it were a trip to the
grocery store, and calmly points out that he would have
to get rid of his wife (The Middle-Aged Man 81). Mrs.
Preble, another dominatrice in the tradition of Mrs.
Bidwell, Mrs. Mitty, and Mrs. Barrows, claims to have
had figured out his lame attempt to get her in the
cellar long before he impatiently confesses it to her.
Her loudly voiced objections are not to the murder,
however, but to the way in which he tries to commit it:
"Brr," said Mrs. Preble, starting down the steps. 'It's
cold down here! You would think of this, at this time of
year! Any other husband would have buried his wife in
the summer" (85). She continues to help him, telling
him that his idea for a murder weapon stinks. She tells
him to "Go out in the street and find some piece of iron
or something" (86). Mr. Preble consents, but not
without commenting that "Women always expect to pick up
a piece of iron anywhere" (86). Murder and infidelity
become the subject of simple spat, another in an long,
boring series of tedious domestic squalls.
Because "Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife" is so
absurd, readers can hardly miss the parody of oft-
repeated hen-pecked husband scenario. Because of the
wry understatement of the story, and Mr. Preble's
familiar incompetence, the fact that the murder may
actually happen (with Mrs. Preble criticizing him until
her dying breath) is not terribly disturbing. But
could, or should it be? Is it, in fact, unsettling that
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it is not disturbing to readers? Apparently, the murder
has been successfully trivialized. But where does that
leave our understanding of its causes? Mrs. Preble may
deserve to die simply because she is a Thurber wife. If
this is so, then some construct called the "Thurber
wife" has become reified, and with it, possibly, one
reading of female gender.
Was, in fact, her gender the cause of Min the polar
bear's death at the hands of Big Bill, the male polar
bear? "Death in the Zoo" is one of the "casuals" in
which the Thurber "I" calmly speculates on this death,
anthropomorphizing as he goes along. "What she said and
did in the next few minutes we shall reconstruct later.
At the end of it, Bill rolled out of bed and killed her,
after which he dragged her thirty feet to a pool of
water and held her under for several minutes, to make
sure" (My World and Welcome To It 68). Min's offenses
were the epitome of the domestic and the trivial: she
"would fiddle with doilies, empty ash trays, wash out
his briar pipe with soap and water, open the window if
it was shut and shut it if it was open" (70). when she
believes he is sick, Min sticks a thermometer in Bill's
mouth, repeating (or foreshadowing) Mrs. Mitty's phallic
threat to Walter. Her final act is to hang "his ties on
a patented nickel-plated cedarwood tie-rack which
clasped them in such a way that you couldn't get them
off unless you know how to work the automatic clip-shift
release" (70). Bill then "finished her off" and the
thermometer for good measure. Although the narrator
explains that Bill is picky, the implication is that
there are not too many attractive female polar bears out
there. A previous mate of Bill's "put starch into
everything she washed and cheese into everything she
cooked" (69). He kills her, too. The anthropomorphizing
is funny because of the simultaneous "strange"
incongruity of a wild bear cooking, and the "familiar"
triviality of a "domestic" wife annoying her husband.
So might an interpretation loosely based on the comic
theories of Freud and Bergson read. But entertaining
the theory that animals share characteristics with human
beings raises the familiar nature versus nurture
question. Does the silliness of their shared traits
undermine the plausibility that these "traits" are the
consequence of an innate, biological gender? Or does the
transfer from species to species simply reinforce
stereotypes of "being female"? If the latter is true,
then "being too female" is as good a reason for being
killed as any other.
Because Thurber's narrator sympathizes with the
unfortunate female polar bear, it becomes even easier
for the reader to dismiss any misogynistic humor. But
in "The Whip-Poor-Will," death comes to an "innocent"
wife, and married servants. A whip-poor-will calling
outside his window deprives Mr. Kinstrey of sleep,
causing him to "lose it" and kill his wife, Madge, their
two "colored" servants, and finally, himself. Of
course, the cause is "trivial" once again— a
"brazenbreasted bird murdering sleep out there along the
fence line somewhere" (My World 19). Discussions of
"The Whip-Poor-Will" usually refer to Thurber's
depression and illness in 1941-42, brought on by the
gradual dimming of his eyesight and by the series of
operations attempting to correct it. While the "dark"
tone of this, and other stories written during this time
certainly has some grounding in Thurber's health, it is
also true that such biographical discourses may work to
diffuse the parodic or ironic voices of the text.
Kinstrey not only consciously thinks of MacBeth, but
parodies of Poe and "The Raven" creep in as well. In
fact, in the best Poe tradition, Kinstrey finally comes
to believe that his wife and the servants are in
conspiracy, pretending not to have heard the bird. His
animosities are mostly leveled at his wife, however,
with the servants Margaret and Arthur standing by as
gloating on-lookers. Madge, another in the long line of
eminently practical wives, was the kind to tell
Kinstrey, "Don't let your nerves get the best of you.
157
Use your will power" (10). Kinstrey finally provides
this analysis of Madge:
It struck him that perhaps Madge had no
subconscious. When she lay on her back, her
eyes closed; when she got up, they opened, like
a doll's. The mechanism of her mind was as
simple as a cigarette box; it was either open or
it was closed, and there was nothing else,
nothing else, nothing else . . . (26).
Kinstrey parodies the Whip-Poor-Will's call as well
as Poe's refrain from "The Raven." Madge had complained
about his "tantrum" over the bird on the night before,
stating that she never "heard such a spectacle" (26).
Another female in need of a usage lesson, Madge is
"coldly" informed by her husband that "you can't hear
spectacles" (26). When he finally confronts her with
her "open or shut," "black or white" thinking, she
responds, "Well, I like that" (19). Wrong answer. For
after waking from a harrowing dream, Kinstrey goes into
the kitchen for a snack, and comes out with a bread
knife. Margaret's superstition that a whip-poor-will
calling near your house meant death was right on the
money.
Despite Kinstrey's admonitions to himself that he
"mustn't build it up" (27) he does, and the trivial
slips into the significant. For as much as Kinstrey
makes of the bird, as much as the grotesque dreams and
quotations from Shakespeare and Poe do, in fact, "build
it up," Madge Kinstrey's "open and shut" mind does its
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share in putting him over the edge. Admittedly,
Kinstrey's is an exaggerated response to Madge's
patronizing cynicism and near stupidity. But death for
being a heavy sleeper? It is possible that Kinstrey's
evaluation of Madge is undermined by his oversensitive
ego, a trait as stereotypically "male" as Madge's
likeness to a doll is stereotypically "female?"
Ostensibly, however, it is his madness that is the
excuse. Still, this or his overly fragile ego does not
give all readers substantial reason to dismiss the
possibility that Madge "got it" because she was
inexorably "female," and the servants, accomplices in
her strategies of humiliation.
There is no doubt that terms such as "trivial" and
"little" are themselves "smoke screens" for their
opposites. When the "remarkable" is treated as the
"commonplace," readers are privy to the machinations of
the text. Razing the significant and erecting the
trivial, or "raising" the trivial up into the imposing
may be seen as the same operations. According to the
same logic, while we focus on the "little man" in
Thurber's stories during the thirties, we will
ultimately see Superman, the "man of steel," another,
perhaps "the" other, comic (book) figure so immensely
popular at the time. In our efforts to stabilize or
somehow capture the trivial before it does its magic
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sliding act into the significant, we can glimpse other
opposites such as the "essential." The possibility of
gender parody in Thurber's fiction appears to rely on
the sustained exaggeration of binaries, and by
association, of one or another gender ontologies
(assigned or inherent).
Of the texts discussed in this chapter, "The Secret
Life of Walter Mitty" exaggerates and parodies romantic
and popular conceptions of gender the most clearly. The
imagery which propels Mitty into a phallic superman can
arguably never erase the impotent "little man" he
remains, even at the end of the story, where, in his
expansive imagination, he is "inscrutable to the last."
But whereas there is a glimmer of hope that the labors
of the reader and text will be able to deconstruct the
"male" positions in these stories, there seems to be
only an ongoing, and increasingly violent "hold" on the
"female" positions. In 1968, Jesse Bier wrote the
following:
And when the apologist elaborates Thurber's
opposition of a masculine fantasy principle,
loving and peaceable, to a female reality
principle, cold and hostile, the defense
disconcerts us. For such misogyny has become
indeed too systematized and unhealthy in Thurber
. . .("The Rise and Fall of American Humor"
159).
Bier's uneasiness comes not through his reading of
"Thurber" but through the efforts of other critics, or
"apologists." Is, then, the reader or critic ultimately
the one responsible for "systematizing" and therefore
"entrenching" the misogyny in Thurber? I think I have
to agree with Linda Hutcheon, who theorizes that some
inference of the "encoder" (in this case, Thurber) must
be made in order for parody to be possible. Blocked off
from this inference, the reader is much more likely to
"miss" the parody, reading Thurber's work as rifled with
only a unilateral misogyny. In so many words, Bier
seems to be lamenting such (mis)readings. Yet, how does
one learn to make the appropriate inferences and thus
figure out the parody? In the case of reading Thurber,
all that is necessary for the "decoder" may be a text
which is oppositional to a dominant reading such as the
one Bier describes. The reader may always glean some
hint, some suspicion of a positive "female" position in
the discourse surrounding Thurber before coming to any
specific text by Thurber. For example, in "The
Destructive Forces in Life," the cynicism aimed at yet
another pop psychologist's characterization of women is
evident. The case history of one Frank Fulsome
illustrates the tyranny of a husband taking his job
frustrations out on his wife. But rather than tremble
like sensitive souls, Thurber writes, "the little ladies
most of us know would, instead of putting their hands to
their faces and fleeing from the room, come right back
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at Frank Fulsome" (The Thurber Carnival 73). Thurber's
use of "little ladies" is an example of his typical
irony; the women who are so admirably tough are closer
in psychological stature to those "big" women of his
drawings. Once again, Thurber seems to at once
compliment women and participate in the fear of them.
But rather than launch a deliberate and sustained attack
on women, or the "female," Thurber's texts of the
thirties and early forties simply fail to create many
viable subject positions for women.
However, this "sin of omission" must be judged in
light of the operations of gender parody; in other
words, men may be the primary "subjects" of Thurber's
fiction but observe how they are treated. Belittled but
admittedly belittling, the "little men" in Thurber seem
to alternate between exaggerated positions, the see-saw
effect eroding a sense of their "real" selves. In
addition, when the difference between "female" and
"male" depends on the value-laden and volatile
oppositions of the "trivial" and "significant," or of
the "little" and the "big," the possibility for
destabilizing gender cannot be ignored.
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Chapter XXI
Being and Dying As A Woman in The Short Fiction and
Poetry of Dorothy Parker
Being a funny person does an awful lot of
things to you. You feel that you mustn't get
serious with people. They don't expect it from
you, and they don't want to see it. You're not
entitled to be serious, you're a clown, and they
only want you to make them laugh.
--Fanny Brice
I never see that prettiest thing--
A cherry bough gone white with Spring--
But what I think, "How gay 'twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree."
— "Cherry White," Dorothy Parker
LOCATING THE "LITTLE WOMAN": CRITICAL APPROACHES TO THE
WORK OF DOROTHY PARKER
In an article entitled, "'Fragile and Dumb'" The
'Little Woman' in Women's Humor, 1900-1940," Nancy
Walker launched an instructive comparison between James
Thurber's "little man" and his counterpart in women's
humor, the "little woman." She writes:
The 'little man' finds the world absurd, but the
'little woman' finds herself absurd in a world
which presumably makes sense to someone. The
essential difference, in other words, is the
locus of normality . . .he is the guardian of
the social order . . .[she] remains insecure,
certain that other people are coping better than
she is (24-25).
Walker's tracing of this counter figure is a means
of creating solidarity among women humorists of the
twentieth century. Walker uses this type as part of a
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wider project, stating that "the female humorists who
created the 'little woman' were concerned with the
distance between the ideal woman of social mythology and
the real woman who was influenced by it" ("Fragile" 25).
Though Parker's work is certainly concerned with
the exposure of woman's various "posturings," reading
the entirety of her work through the figure of the
"little woman" has its particular disadvantages. First,
the attempt to expose the discrepancy between "ideal"
and "real" falls subject to the familiar
feminist/postmodernist criticism that the "real woman"
is just as "constructed" as the "ideal." Deciding just
who is the "real" self and the fictional in Parker's
work is difficult, especially when one considers the
persona of Dorothy Parker herself: despite her personal
struggles, Parker spent most of her life working, having
access to company and professional advancement that
other women of her era simply did not have. In another
essay, Nancy Walker notes that "At no time during the
1920s were more than 30 percent of married women in the
labor force, and by 1930, less than 4 percent of married
women held white-collar positions ("Toward Solidarity"
72). The "real" women of Parker's fiction often didn't
work, but there is a sense in which "realness," as
defined in stories such as "The Waltz," also refers to a
kind of doubled-edged sarcasm typical of the Parker
persona. Characters struggling to be their "real"
selves in Parker's work speak in "ideally" sardonic,
witty and articulate voices. It is this sense in which
the "real" is just as constructed as the "ideal," and
that among discrepancies between the two that we should
consider, is that between Parker and most other women.
In a sense, Parker was and still remains popular because
readers have the opportunity to wish that they were
indeed that clever. By the same token, arguments can
and should be made for the themes of the "realness" of
the suffering and oppression woven throughout Parker's
poetry and prose. This process of identification, and
the oppositional sentiment of much of Parker's humor—
though voiced by "ideally" witty women— also has its
place in reading Parker's work.
However--and this is my second criticism--reading
Parker's work through the "little woman" figure is
clearly not enough. I think that such typing, like all
such typing, has the danger of leading us to simplistic,
monolithic reductions of gender and self in both Parker
and Thurber. Common to the little man, if not crucial
to the idea of this type as developed by critics, is his
overwhelming sense of inferiority; his machinations,
schemes and dreams may be seen as manifestations of the
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battle he is waging to keep ego intact. In reading
Parker, the view that the "little woman" is so basically
insecure mutes those powerful satiric and parodic voices
that speak throughout the texts and that are directed at
the world and at others. In short, the "little woman"
figure does operate in Parker's texts, but not simply as
the terribly insecure locus of absurdity. As with the
"little man" figure in Thurber's work, the "little
woman" exaggerates the dictates of her stereotypical
role in an excess of "littleness" only to throw that
role off.
The tendency to read Parker though the filter of
biographical texts and discourse also has its
disadvantages. Readers can assume that the very famous
women expended herself in verbal wisecracking, party
repartee, and heavy drinking, wasting resources
otherwise better spent in "serious" work. In You Might
As Well Live, John Keats discusses to the round of
parties and late nights so attractive to the New York
crowd. Comparing Parker to Hemingway, he stresses the
"artistic" streak in both that was better nourished in
solitude--an artist must work alone. Parker was "cozy"
with the amusing and familiar faces, yet sharply
critical of them, insecure and ultimately aloof (Keats
126). At one point in her life, she confessed to
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Beatrice Ames, the wife of Donald Ogden Stewart and one
of her few woman friends, that she was "wasting her
talent," drinking not writing. From such comments and
others from her friends, biographers such as Keats
suggest that she suffered from the angst of a "true"
artist. "She was a terrified woman and a terrified
artist," Vincent Sheean said. "Among contemporary
artists, I would put her next to Hemingway and Bill
Faulkner. She wasn't Shakespeare, but what she was, was
true" (Keats 124).
Reading poems (or "light verse"), short fiction (or
"prose sketches"), and critical reviews (or "magazine
journalism") in such an interpretation thus becomes the
act of reading "Dorothy Parker," or what Dorothy Parker
could have been. As reasons for her scant and "trivial"
output, however, the signs and symptoms of "real"
suffering cannot be wholly displaced. In the
interpretation of her work, Keats equates Parker's life
with that of her characters. He mentions 28 "specific
attributes" that Parker shares with Hazel Morse of "Big
Blonde," including running to alcoholic fat in the
middle thirties" (146). Such a method of emphasizing
women's problems as "real" may have its advantages in
understanding the particular poignancy or acerbity of
Parker's humor. Her identity as a woman, for instance,
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was riddled with contradictions. Opposed to Thurber's
"anxiety of influence" in the wake of Robert Benchley's
achievements, Parker experienced a pressure not so much
to exceed and overturn, as to "fit in." Later in her
life she said, "It was the twenties, and we had to be
smarty. I wanted to be cute. That's the terrible thing.
I should have had more sense" (Keats 58). Parkpr sought
out the company of men, amusing, charming and emulating
them with the sharpness of her wit. To a degree, she
was considered "one of the guys"; in addition to keeping
up an equal position in her banter with Benchley,
Sherwood, and the occasional company of Algonquin round
tablers, being "cute" marked her off as a woman.
However, biographers believe that her continual
socializing and "life of the party" mentality succeeded
in glossing over the severity of her troubles, even as
her repeated suicide attempts called a kind of
exaggerated attention to them. In the end, John Keats's
comments on the unwanted pregnancy and abortion
following her affair with Charles MacArthur are very
revealing. Keats writes, "no one can know" if Parker
suffered any trauma. "Perhaps Dorothy's friends were
right to presume she had the mind of man imprisoned in a
woman's body" (You Might As Well Live 90-91).
One wonders at her later attempts to diminish the
importance of her humor--perhaps this, also, was a way
to "fit in," especially as a "serious" (modernist)
artist. In a Los Angeles Times interview, she is quoted
as saying "Why, I'm not even an amateur humorist. I am
very serious, and quite hurt when people laugh at some
of my most earnest endeavors" (Times 9 Sept. 1934, qtd.
in Calhoun, 13). Her increasing interest in political
activism also lead her to discredit her reputation as a
wit. In a 1937 article, she discusses a recent trip to
war-torn Spain and her subsequent efforts to raise money
for its children. "I can't get any pleasing variety
into this talk," she writes. "I can't tell you amusing
anecdotes of the boys in the trenches. I don't think
there are any such stories" (Portable Dorothy Parker
592).1 Her story, "Soliders of the Republic," a
poignant tribute to the band of Spanish soldiers she
encountered in a small tavern, partially documents this
"darker" perspective. This is "serious" work, after
all. She began denigrating her reputation as a humorist
as early as 1934, and by 1939, wrote "A humorist in this
world is whistling by the loneliest graveyard and
whistling the saddest song. There is nothing funny in
the world any more" (Time 16 January 1939:55). She
1All further references to this text will be cited
internally as "PDP."
169
writes that she was once part of a "not especially brave
little band” that "hid its nakedness of heart and mind
under the out-of-date garment of a sense of humor" (POP
589). She now knows that "ridicule may be a shield, but
it is not a weapon" (PDP 589).
And yet, as I will argue, Dorothy Parker's
"position" as woman humorist is precisely a means of
locating her work as the doubly trivial; "trivial"
because it is humor, and "trivial" because it concerns
the lives and perspectives of women. If, indeed, the
"little woman" serves to locate absurdity, this is not
the absurdity of a Camus or a Beckett. It is my
contention that Parker's writing is involved in a gender
parody, enacted through masks and the strategies of
literary satire and parody. The "little woman" type is
a mask continually donned, removed, and redesigned; but,
it is only one mask. Cynicism, and death are others.
Because Parker's masks represent a problematic duality,
and because her female characters seem caught in a see
saw strategy of assertion and erosion, understatement
and exaggeration, it is difficult to say that such a
working out of gender (or humor) is ultimately akin to
Judith Butler's radical parody of the notion of the
original. There is a sense of claustrophobia in the
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either/or choice of being, or just "playing" a real
woman, a little "lady," or the "female."
The way out of this claustrophobia is death; the
way out of the see-saw of gender avowal and disavowal is
through nihilism. Parker’s humor draws its strength
from both whimsical and cynical fantasies of escape
through death. Yet even this linear analysis may be
deconstructed if we simply return to the idea that such
nihilism is another ploy, a mask. If her characters are
"trapped” in women's bodies, with "women's" feelings,
then their misery and isolation in the heterosexual
matrix (to use Butler's term) may be summarily stopped
going through the "black door." But how is this escape
effected? Through a kind of death in life, a pretense
that words of death make "dead" bodies. Her prose and
poetry feature characters who seem to wonder if death is
androgynous or "gendered." (Do only women die when the
going gets tough?) The elusive universal does for Parker
what life could not— she becomes one of the "dead,"
possibly, more a part of the "serious" tradition. And
it is in Parker's poems of death and in her gallows
humor that gender is suspended in the sense that bodies
become just bodies; so much food for the worms. On the
other hand, the epitaphs--"writings upon" (bodies)--
often reinscribe gender. Parker's "Epitaph for a
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Darling Lady" (later discussed) is just such an
inscription. There is also the deferential irony of the
epitaph, "Excuse my Dust," and the quotation of male bar
room etiquette--"This is on me." The paths to death are
grounded in that same heterosexual matrix of gender,
sexuality, and power. My task in the following chapter
is to trace the thematics through which Dorothy Parker's
prose and poetry variously situate this matrix, and to
consider the types of parody by which they attempt to
undermine or escape it.
GENDER PARODY AND THE "TIDY MOCKERIES OF ART"
The easiest way to make things laughable is to
exaggerate to the point of absurdity their
salient traits. It requires no more ingenuity
than is possessed by the multiplication table .
. . For this reason parody, which may be
described as the exaggerated imitation of a work
or style of art, ought to be judged more
severely than other comic forms.
--Max Eastman, The Enjoyment of Laughter, 1936
Dorothy Parker was writing in a time when the
parody of such proto-postmodern texts as Joyce1s
Ulysses, or T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland began to
complicate the use of the simple parodies condemned by
Eastman. Critics and reviewers who classify Parker's
work as "light verse," or "prose squibs" similarly
suggest that there is an unflattering simplicity to her
work. Parker, however, self-consciously adopts and
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deploys such critical opinion of parody and women's
writing in poems such as "For A Lady Who Must Write
Verse," in which she cautions "ladies" to "Show your
quick, alarming skill in / Tidy mockeries of art" (PDP
238) .
But there is more at stake here than another
example of Parker's attempt to overturn accepted,
sometimes "stodgy" critical mandates. The gender parody
in Parker's work is an often complicated type of
"regulatory fiction": "female" characters and voices
"play" women, although towards ends which may involve a
different political and social agenda from Butler's
radical rethinking of the "heterosexual matrix." As
discussed in the introduction, such "playing" is
fundamentally "dramatic," in the sense that characters
adopt different roles, or don different masks.
Parker's work also makes use of simpler kinds of
parody, but does so in an ironic fashion. The formal
parody of classical Greek and Roman verse, for instance,
is not only the crass distortion of "salient traits,"
but also the smart appropriation of "male" (though in
the case of the Greek poet, Sappho, once "female"),
"high" culture forms (31). Critics who emphasize
Parker's acerbity and satire tend to view Parker's
parodic strategies in a manner more typical of
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Eastman's, a manner Margaret Rose characterizes as the
"modernist reduction." More specifically, a "modernist"
reduction or definition of parody conflates it with a
type of burlesque which emphasizes mockery or ridicule,
rather than the production of comic effect. Rose adds
that injudicious application of terms such as "high" and
"low" burlesque to ancient and modern parody have "not
only applied an eighteenth-century concept of burlesque,
and division between form and content, to ancient parody
in an anachronistic and divisive manner, but have also
led to a modern distinction between heroism and
baseness, the high and the low, being applied to all
types of works" (65). Leading to ideas of leveling
(from Ian Donaldson and Bakhtin), Rose claims this
application "particularly inappropriate" where authors
have used parody to reduce such high/low distinctions
("and the very canonisations upon which they are based")
or have ignored them (65). Also characteristic of the
modernist thought is the splitting off of parody’s
critical aim (to attack an "original" or "authoritative"
text) from its artistic function (to "transform it into
something new" through "heightening" of imitation) (172-
173) .
Critics and scholars of the American humorist
tradition often pay little attention to distinctions
between parody and satire; and as I point out in the
Introduction, sometimes the intersection of the two is
an inevitable, and perhaps even desirable thing. But
Norris Yates summarizes Parker's contributions as
satire, regretting that the brief space which he devotes
to her work cannot "fully illustrate how she can
satirize the language of the idle, middle-class female"
(The American Humorist 272) . He also mentions her
"acidity," which "bit most often into the gilt and brass
of a certain type of American personality, the self-
absorbed female snob" (266). While a great deal of
Parker's work may be said to extend outwards to "types"
and thus be read as satire, there is reason to believe
that the comedic and comic effects of her fiction and
poetry operate through the parodic practices described
by Rose and Hutcheon. As a starting point for my
analysis, then, I will retain this preliminary
distinction between parody and satire, holding that the
former incorporates another textual (linguistic or
artistic) form into itself, and the latter mocks or
ridicules "norms" and macro-systems external to itself.
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"I WANT TO DO THE STORY THAT CAN ONLY BE TOLD IN THE
NARRATIVE FORM": PARODY AND RADICAL DIALOGISM IN
PARKER’S SHORT FICTION
The difficulty of retaining the distinction between
satire and parody is as great as the difficulty of
maintaining an illusion of the purely "monologic." With
Parker's "A Telephone Call" and "The Waltz," the satiric
and the parodic run together, and the speech monologues
and dialogues so important in Parker's fiction challenge
us to consider Bakhtinian theory and its relationship to
speaking "as" a woman. Parker's yearning for narrative
rather than "conversational" prose, partially if not
wholly inspired by her "artistic" success with "Big
Blonde," also suggests that she was growing
uncomfortable with the soliloquies and dialogues that
seem to represent such an unmediated "speaking."
Published in January 1928, "A Telephone Call" is
one of Parker's first critically acclaimed monologues,
particularly interesting because it has been and still
may be read as "satirizing" social norms (namely,
showing the silliness of women’s dependencies). At the
risk of once more confusing the distinctions, such
satire may also be read in terms of gender parody--
particularly insofar as "being" a woman in this story
means "being" so silly. Along with "Big Blonde, 1 1 this
was the only other prose piece by Parker to be published
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in The Bookman, a literary magazine which was reputed
for its selection of only the most promising "artistic"
works. Seward Collins, editor of The Bookman and
"discriminating patron of the arts" (Keats 105), was
struck by Parker's growing reputation as a wit and
conversationalist. (A few years later, he was also
"struck" by Parker herself and traveled to Europe with
her). This story combines what was then still a
novelty— the "modern" woman's soliloquy--with undoubted
expertise at "capturing" the language of the day and
deploying yet another satiric blow at the distaff side
in the battle of the sexes.
The title, "A Telephone Call," is misleading. What
occurs in the text is not a conversation by telephone,
but a discourse on such a call. The text begins with a
less than stately invocation: "Please, God, let him
telephone me now" (POP 119) and ends with a similar
request and an ellipsis. The speaker of/in the text
bargains with God throughout the piece and one of her
"deals" is to count to five hundred by fives as a way to
wait for a call and to ward off the temptation to make
the call herself. The "monologue" thus "ends" with the
count, "Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty,
thirty-five ..." (124), presumably heading off toward
five hundred— or, rather, infinity, since closure,
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although implied, is still not evident. What is implied
is a continuous circle, a loop of infinity. Our speaker
has tried this counting routine twice before and of
course, has failed both times, breaking off into
desperate pleas or curses to God. In essence, the
monologue is eternal, ongoing; it is about waiting and
strategies of waiting in the everlasting "now."
"Please, God, let him telephone me now, " the speaker
begins.
In a later piece, "The Little Hours," Parker takes up
another soliloquy that begins with yet another "now:" Now
what's this? What's the object of all this darkness all
over me? They haven't gone and buried me alive while my
back was turned, have they? (POP 254)
Parker's apparent subject is insomnia and the strategies
of falling asleep. The speaker ruminates on the bon
mots of such culturally revered gurus as La
Rochefoucald, Verlaine and Thomas Carlyle. For all its
humorous reference to an uncomfortable but hardly life-
threatening situation with which most of us can
identify, the "story" is really about waiting and the
absurdity of waiting. Even more so than "The Telephone
Call," this text edges on the elusive universal of
"every man." Only one clear reference is made to the
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gender of the speaker, and even then there is room for
escape.
People needn't feel they have to change
their ruinous habits and come my way . . .1111
go theirs. If that isn't the woman of it for
you! Always having to do what somebody else
wants, like it or not. Never able to murmur a
suggestion of her own (PDP 256).
The choice to follow, to submit, is the
stereotypical "woman's" way. Using the expression, "the
woman of it," the speaker both describes and identifies
herself with "womanhood" and distances herself from it.
The definite article, "the" implies an "other" from
herself, an abstraction, or a role she can refuse or
adopt. Parker's other monologues are much more
definitively grounded; in "Just a Little One," "Lady
With A Lamp," "From the Diary of a New York Lady," and
of course, "The Telephone Call," the speaker is clearly
a woman. "She" is identified through situational,
thematic and linguistic clues common to other texts by
Parker in which the subjects are women— or more to the
point, playing at "being" women.
There is much in "A Telephone Call" that makes the
process of identifying with the "woman of it" a humorous
one. The situational "clues" or rather "cues" that
identify unnamed speakers in Parker's monologues as
women also serve as a basis of identification and
sympathy for readers. Regina Barreca comments that in
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"A Telephone Call," Parker "holds a mirror up to our
self-delusions, forcing a laugh on us even when we're
miserable" (They Used to Call Me Snow White 120).
Barreca's discussion includes an account of her own
experience waiting for a phone call from a would-be
boyfriend in college. As she waited, a college roommate
read "A Telephone Call" and they laughed uproariously.
When she finally received the phone call, she read part
of the story to her boyfriend over the phone. He not
only did not laugh, but told her that it was ""kind of
sad that this lady had nothing else to do besides wait
for the phone to ring'" (120).
Barreca centers in on the disparity of response
between male and female readers, and certainly, in "A
Telephone Call" we can argue that spaces for specific
gendered readers are created. Near the beginning of the
monologue the speaker tells us that she had phoned the
man earlier, and that he
couldn't have minded my calling him up. I know you
shouldn't keep telephoning them--I know they don't
like that. When you do that, they know you are
thinking about them and wanting them, and that
makes them hate you. But I hadn't talked to him in
three days--not in three days. And all I did was
ask him how he was; it was just the way anybody
might have called him up (PDP 119) .
The statement, "just the way anybody might have called
him up" refers to a situation that "anybody" may be
familiar with; namely, the simple social call and the
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exchange of phatic communication such as the implied
"How are you?" Yet as the response of Barreca's male
friend seems to illustrate, that "anybody" in this
context does not always refer to any (male) body.
Barreca's unsmiling boyfriend may have detected what was
legitimately there all along--for certainly, there is
sadness in the situation of waiting and its implications
of political and social dependency. Norris Yates calls
Parker's troubled women speakers, "largely self-
victimized" "victims" (American Humorist 268). Does
that mean, therefore, that these "victims" have no one
to blame for their troubles but themselves?
Margaret Rose cites French scholar F.J. Lelievre's
explanation of the ambiguity of the prefix "para,"
denoting both nearness to the parodied text and
opposition to it (Parody 8) . This ambiguity also
operates through comments such as the one quoted above,
wherein identification with the specific, situational
troubles of women is elided or omitted. ("Self
victimized victims" have no specific gender; or at
least, cannot tie their victimization to their gender.)
Surely, the speaker's use of the word "anybody" and the
allusion to a common social situation is representative
of other gestures the women in Parker's stories make to
cover up or somehow "universalize" their gender.
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Biographers describe the apprehension of all but
Parker's closest friends, who suspected the worse in
verbal attacks from her the moment their backs were
turned. Moreover, acquaintances mention her general
dislike for women, and make a point of naming Lillian
Heilman and Beatrice Ames as Parker's only true female
friends. Joseph Bryan writes, "She didn't care a damn
what women thought of her or her appearance. What men
thought, yes, but not women. She didn't like women"
(Calhoun 153). Bryan also reports that Parker
surprisingly "turned" on Ames, making a woman like her
the "butt of a cruel short story" (153).
But even if Parker did not seek out the company of
women in her lifetime (as didn't Mae West), a sympathy
and an ambivalence towards "being" a woman are
significant themes running throughout Parker's prose and
poetry. This ambivalence is manifest not only through
characters' dialogue, but through her choice of parody
as an informing metalinguistic strategy. Rose, among
others, explains how parody is "ambivalently dependent
upon the object of its criticism for its own reception"
{Parody 51). A wholly unsympathetic and satiric
treatment of women is not what occurs in even such an
acerbic piece as "From the Diary of a New York Lady" in
which the "protagonist" may seem all but vapid imbecile;
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instead, Parker takes up that meaning of "para" which
Rose quotes from Fred W. Householder's 1944 article. In
putting words into her characters mouths, or in creating
characters from words or narratives, the authorial magic
"conjures up" simulacrums of women; the "para" in these
"odes" means "'like, resembling, changing slightly,
imitating, replacing, spurious'" (Parody 8). Parker's
women always tend to be like "real" women in some
regard, while at the same time, techniques of hyperbole,
repetition (linguistic and thematic), and performative
posturing render them blatant imitations.
The ambivalence towards "being" a woman--when it
means "performing" as a woman— is one such theme, and
occurs throughout "A Telephone Call." Certain
discursive junctures in the speaker's monologue mark the
boundaries between "acting" (as expected) and "feeling"
(as one's "true" self). One of these junctures occurs
when the speaker decides to count, another happens at
the statement of others' (namely, men's) thoughts,
expectations, or in some cases, rules. After the
invocation and the decision to count comes the first
"law" of social etiquette. "I know you shouldn't keep
telephoning them--I know they don't like that" (PDP
119). It is followed by the results of its violation,
"When you do that, they know you are thinking about them
and wanting them, and that makes them hate you" (119).
In fact, the entire third paragraph centers on the
statement of this rule and of the speaker's attempt to
justify her violation of that rule. Technically, there
is no direct expression of her desire; her wish is to
"let him telephone her," her desire is to be wanted, not
to want. She mentions "wanting them" only as the
implication of phoning them (which she has, after all,
done). Her frantic excuse "but I hadn't talked to him
in three days— not in three days" is the attempt to
erase or diminish that wanting. Of course, it does just
the reverse, as we realize that not being able to live
three days without a phone call hardly speaks of a
casual indifference.
The statements of "rules" begin to splinter off in
to the speaker's own self-regulatory, imperative
statements. After two more paragraphs spent pleading
with God, she says, "I must stop this. I mustn't be
this way" (PDP 120). Such imperatives occur at the
beginning of five more paragraphs. Following the third
such repetition of "I mustn't" comes another "rule:"
"He’ll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They
don't like you to cry" (PDP 121). Only, within this
paragraph, the speaker’s expression of feeling is
direct, and for the first time in the monologue, she
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gets angry at him (not the "ugly, shiny" phone, which
she cusses out earlier): "I wish to God I could make him
cry ... I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor
and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him.
I wish I could hurt him like hell" (121) .
The next paragraph repeats the same "rule" about
crying, only elaborates upon it to the point where a
seeming climax or crisis is reached:
They don't like you to tell them they've
made you cry. They don't like you to tell them
you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they
think you're possessive and exacting. And then
they hate you. They hate you whenever you say
anything you really think. You always have to
keep playing little games.
The speaker's words echo, foreshadow, and feed into
the experiences of Hazel Morse in "Big Blonde." She
spends her nights out with men, who "liked you because
you were fun . . . Men liked a good sport" (PDP 187).
They are repeated as well in the thoughts of the wife of
the soldier in "The Lovely Leave:" in writing letters to
the husband, "there had been rules to be learned . . .,
and the first of them was the hardest: never say to him
what you want him to say to you" (PDP 5).
But in addition to the sin of being a "bad sport,"
there is the commandment to play "little games." It's
not only that true communion or expression is being
denied the speaker through the absence of the phone
call, but that such expression is not permitted, is not
possible. The speaker thought that she could avoid the
"games." "I thought this was so big I could say
whatever I meant," she says, but then concludes, "I
guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever
anything big enough for that" (PDP 122). The comic
effect here results from the parody of the love story
cliche, "This thing is bigger than both of us." The
speaker wryly implies that it is the man who is not "big
enough." The "little games" indeed may be understood as
the whole set of rules and expectations that comes in a
woman's performance of her sex and gender. To cite them
this way, and to wistfully pine for the thing that is
"bigger," are both statements of desire, however comic
or undermined by cliche. It is, in capsule, the
expression of the ambivalence of "being" or acting the
woman (whom you dislike and see as sham), of
feeling/being the woman who desires (and who you wish
could truly express this desire).
However, the "little games" and the failure of
expression bring us back to the consideration of
language and the third type of "cue" for laughter, and
the third "clue" of gender. In her rhetorical and
linguistic analysis of "The Waltz," critic Paula
Treichler cites Robin Lakoff's notion of "women's
speech:" "It is full of what Lakoff describes as
'trivializing1 words like 'adore' and 'thrilled' and
intensifiers like 'simply,' 'really,' 'truly,' and
especially 's o thank you so much'" ("Verbal
Subversions in Dorothy Parker" 50). "A Telephone Call"
is a monologue of less than six pages, and the speaker
uses the word "little" at least 21 times. Its usage
varies, but almost as if in deference to the counterpart
of the "little man," what is perhaps the single most
repeated word in "A Telephone Call" indicates that
"little" games are indeed being played. Are they played
to imitate and thus satirize women's linguistic
posturing and false modesty? The speaker says, "I think
he must still like me a little. He couldn't have called
me 'darling' twice today, if he didn't still like me a
little. It isn't all gone, if he still likes me a
little; even if it's only a little, little bit" (PDP
121) .
Rather, such exaggerated use of a "trivializing"
word calls attention to the constructedness of this
women's language; it calls attention to a "speech act"
in quite another meaning of the term. But while such
words underscore the simulacrum of a "silly1 woman, the
laughter of situation (and identification) emphasizes
the speech act's relative truth. In other words, it is,
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in a way, a nervous laughter, for those who laugh know
the situation, or like Regina Barreca, can speak or
write the words which attempt to tell of it.
The realm of women's experiences have traditionally
and quite easily fallen into the cultural discourse of
the minor, the trivial, the "little." The speaker's
prayer to God is for such a "little, little thing"
(119), so little in fact, that she has to amend it by
asking God that it not be "too little" to Him (120).
The speaker also pleads for "just a little bit of
pride," and then turns right around and calls such a
pride a "silly, shabby little thing" (123). Another one
of her "decisions" is that she will be "big," and
"beyond little prides" (123). Of course, the way to
accomplish this is to give into her desire to use the
phone, to initiate. In a way it is being "big," for it
is "being" like a man, a person who commands the art of
casual indifference. "Little" is also the size of the
"bits" into which the speaker promises to smash the
"smug black face" of the telephone because it won't ring
(120). The speaker's use of the word "little" therefore
becomes a linguistic mask of changing features; it is
the essence of contradiction and ambivalence, and of
conformity and solidarity (with other women). It is an
ironic weapon used in anger against authority, and it is
188
a satiric imitation of the facades women use to fool
themselves. Mostly, however, it is part of a larger
strategy which employs exaggerated imitation and comic
effect (including the parody of cliched discourse among
others) to render "being" a woman the linguistic picture
of an act.
Norris Yates calls Dorothy Parker's women "idle"
and "middle-class" as the counterpart to Ring Lardner's
"idle middle-class man" (American Humorist 266) . The
comparison, besides being a part of the larger agenda to
construct a legible history of American humor,
illustrates a conception of the "trivial" common to
modern criticism. Yates writes that Parker's "frequent
use of the diary form, the monologue, and trivial
dialogue" is what "invites" comparison to Lardner's
"idle" man (266). What exactly does such a "trivial
dialogue" consist of, and why are the uses of these
forms the mark of an "idle" woman? The assumption is
that such women are free from the economic pressures of
work, and thus may devote time to such "trivial" (read
non-productive, non-skilled or non-professional)
activities as personal autobiography and talking. Not
that Yates is necessarily critical of such subjects; he
writes, "Sometimes her idle, middle-class females are
smug and aggressive; sometimes they are pathetic like
189
Lardner's 'victims'; sometimes both. Occasionally, they
are more amusing than anything else (266).
"Amusing" is a telling word. It is precisely that-
amusement"— which such "idle" people seek; it may be,
after all, the chief reason we read "humorists." To be
fair, Yates is simply representative of critical and
popular reception of Dorothy Parker contemporary until
the late sixties and the first feminist reevalutions of
her work. Yates's review is not wholly dismissive after
all; he recognizes a "darker vein" in "The Waltz" and
the "Little Hours," in which "the two main characters
are self-victimized by their own giddiness and lack of
perspective" (269). Yet again, to read "The Waltz" as a
drama of self-victimization is perhaps even more
disturbing than its light-hearted dismissal as
"trivial." Clearly, it's time we look at Parker's most
noted "dialogue" through other theoretical lenses.
Simply put, "The Waltz" continues the same
situational, thematic and linguistic concerns of "A
Telephone Call," and, to a lesser extent, the other
"monologues" in the Parker canon. However, "The Waltz"
is unique because it is neither truly a "dialogue," such
as that occurring in "Here We Are," "New York to
Detroit," or "Too Bad," nor is it a "monologue" in the
style or form of "The Little Hours," or even "Just A
Little One, " in'"Which the main character addresses
another (implied) character. Instead, "The Waltz" is a
stylized representation of a dialogue; as such, its
italicized (spoken) language is opposed to the plain
text interior monologue of the speaker. The formal
duality, of course, repeats the ambivalence of "being" a
woman, donning a mask, or performing a gender. Critic
Paula Treichler writes that the monologues "seem to
offer the speaker a space where she may assert and
preserve her private self" (51). The italicized
language, such as "Oh no, no, no. Goodness, no. It
Didn't hurt the least little hit" is meant, by
implication, to represent the public self, or as
Treichler explains it, a "functional commercial language
which takes no risks and gives nothing away" (58). It
"very much represents a language of female survival"
(58). While, as may be predictable, Treichler argues
that this opposition is eventually undermined (and, as I
shall maintain, is unambiguously questioned from the
first), it is the idea of a duality, a masquerade, and a
well-marked linguistic separation that renders such
terms as "trivial dialogue" grossly misleading. That
this "dialogue" occurs on a dance floor (the site of
middle-class, "idle" activities, the realm of middle-
class women's glories and defeats) comes to imply that
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the performance is a battle and is fought on the first
and only ground where it may be conducted and fought.
As such, the speaker reinvests the space of "leisure"
time engagements with political significance.
Treichler states that a "continual subversion" of
what is spoken by what is felt is undermined
"dramatically" by a sudden outburst four-fifths of the
way through the story ("Verbal Subversions" 53). In
this interior exclamation, the speaker says, "I hate
this creature I'm chained to. I hated him the moment I
saw his leering, bestial face. And here I've been
locked in his noxious embrace for the thirty-five years
this waltz has lasted (50)." Treichler claims that
"whatever restraints the story's comic function may have
imposed upon its language, they are broken by these
harsh and violent images" ("Verbal Subversions" 53).
Yet, actually, the first "harsh" remark made in the
story is an unequivocal "I don't want to dance with
him," followed by the "deathly" allusion to his dancing
as "something you do on Saint Walpurgis Night" (PDF 47).
Several paragraphs before we arrive at her confession of
hate, he kicks her and she exclaims, "Ow!" and calls him
an "idiot" (48), and a few paragraphs later, a "hulking
peasant" (49). Treichler also notes that the
expression, "thirty-five years" is "too literal,"
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concluding that it is actually a reference to the
"thirty-five years she has spent chained to her own
body" ("Verbal Subversions" 55). She claims that there
is a "shift" from the "old, easy humor" of the monologue
in which exaggerations are common. However, this
"shift" is dubious, since in the very same paragraph in
which she declares her hatred the speaker is still using
loose hyperbole. Her dance partner does a step which
requires "two stumbles, slip, and a twenty-yard dash"
(PDP 50). And, in the very next monologue she is
complaining about her decision to go on waltzing
"throughout eternity," and wondering if she won't notice
"after the first hundred thousand years" (50). In
short, Treichler may be constructing a specific
climatic "point" where there is none; the violence,
opposition, and "subversion" is necessarily more
diffuse.
On the whole, however, Treichler's 1980 study of
"The Waltz" contains some important feminist rhetorical
and linguistic insights. Though she chooses to see it
as satire rather than parody, arguing that the text
"simultaneously satirizes ritualized social interaction
and embodies it" ("Verbal Subversions" 59), when perhaps
it is more accurate to see this as parody's
incorporation of the "original" discourse of women's
"trivial" speech, Treichler does note specific instances
of parody in the monologue ("Oh!" in the dialogue
becomes "Ow!" in the monologue), and makes a valuable
reference to Robin Lakoff's work in "women's speech"
(50-51). But it is important to remember that "The
Waltz" employs situational, thematic and linguistic
parody that leads to both the questioning of gender and
the comic "refunctioning" of preformed languages.
Perhaps Treichler's own understanding of "women's
writing" as a "search for an authentic female voice"
(60) steered her away from considering less obviously
"feminist" language theorists. "The Waltz" does parody
an excessive femininity, but even more to the point, it
sets up, maintains and deconstructs the analogy between
the illusion of a duality. The idea of a monologue,
especially one in which "true" expression occurs (what
the speaker "really thinks," which, in "A Telephone
Call," is what makes "men hate you"), is an outright,
even if comforting, ruse. Not that all contradiction,
oppression and suffering may be summarily wiped away,
but that what is offered in the process of the text is
much more radically "dialogic".
In an article, "Bakhtin and Popular Culture,"
Mikita Hoy explains Bakhtin's theory of heteroglossia in
an especially relevant way. "Since it is already
composed of weighted uses, grammatical rules, and agreed
conventional lexis, Bakhtin sees all language as
negating the uniqueness of personal experience, and with
it any possibility of maintaining a connection with
value and intention . . (767). Granted, the
"situational" humor of this story already implies that
the woman's "unique" experience is hardly what is at
issue; as in "A Telephone Call," readers laugh at least
in part because the language is their language.
Treichler and other feminist rhetoricians and linguists
of course have written about women's struggle with a
"borrowed" language, but "A Waltz" foregrounds the
possibility of a personal, if not unique language while
simultaneously denying it. Compared to the pedestrian,
frilly "spoken" discourse of "Why, I think it's more of
a waltz," and "you're just being sweet, to say that,”
the language or the monologue is solid, literate, and
clever. It is also unadornedly expressive. "I wonder
what I'd better do--kill him this instant, with my naked
hands, or wait and let him drop in his traces," she says
after receiving a kick in the shin (PDP 48). The anger
is personal, unique and yet the phrase, "with my naked
hands" is borrowed, echoing a score of other graphic
metaphors such as "in cold blood," or "point blank."
Even when she refers to her personal history it is in
195
terms of the cliched "the events of my life are passing
before my eyes" (PDP 51). These events— the "hurricane
in the West Indies," the "day I got my head cut open in
the taxi smash" and the "summer that the sailboat kept
capsizing," are certainly colorful, but hardly unique
life experiences. They are also particularly
"unfeminine" calamities, reminiscent of adventure
stories rather than true romances. The monologue, then,
repeats the other extreme of the hyperbolic range,
parodying "masculine" language just as the dialogue does
so with "feminine" language.
In short, if we consider Bakhtin's theory of
novelization and the exclusion of generic monologue, it
becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion
of consistency, privacy or singularity. Michael
Holquist's well known glossary entry for "dialogism"
states that "there can be no actual monologue" in a
"world dominated by heteroglossia" (Dialogic Imagination
426). Furthermore, Mikita Hoy reads Bakhtin as
insisting on "an interplay of dialogues between what any
given system will admit as literature or 'high culture,'
or art, or 'good writing," and on the other hand all
those texts excluded from these definitions as
nonliterature, 'low culture,' popular culture, or
subculture" (765-766). At one point, the speaker in
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"The Waltz" quotes George Jean Nathan's words, which, if
not of the stature of Shakespeare's or Shaw's, are
certainly "high culture" in their implications:
George Jean Nathan said that the lovely
rhythms of the waltz should be listened to in
stillness and not be accompanied by strange
gyrations of the human body. I think that's
what he said. I think it was George Jean
Nathan. Anyhow, whatever he said and whoever he
was and whatever he's doing now, he's better off
than I am. (PDP 50).
Nathan was an occasional participant in Round Table
lunches, but aside from her autobiographically ironic
loss of memory, the speaker weaves "high" and "low"
cultural reference together in what Bakhtin writes is
the most shared, and universal of languages. "All
writing features this interplay, and therefore all kinds
of language . . .represent important forms of
novelization" (Hoy 766). Not surprisingly, "The Little
Hours" and other Parker "monologues" feature such
interplay. The sleepless speaker takes a comment by La
Rochefoucauld, "if nobody had ever learned to read, very
few people would be in love" (PDP 254), and parodies it
with her own version, "if nobody had ever learned to
undress, very few people would be in love" (254). In
"The Waltz," the speaker comments that her dancing
partner doesn't even know her name, nor what it means.
In the style of Elizabethan English, she claims her name
stands for "Despair, Bewilderment, Futility, Degradation
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and Premeditated Murder, but little does he wot. I
don't wot his name, either; I haven't any idea what it
is" (47). In such a versatile, comic and explicit
parody the speaker uses stylized, sixteenth-century
"tools’ 1 to express her own anonymity and alienation.
But is it truly her own, or simply not his?
If the analogy holds and there truly is no purely
monologic speech, but only the imitation of such speech,
then there is no true "pure" and discrete, private self,
no "real" woman, only the series of parodic comments and
borrowed language that masquerades as unique personal
thought and feeling. The stiff, artificial dialogue
represented by the italicized comments melds into the
more radical dialogism of the heteroglossia and
novelization of the supposed "monologue." But the
feeling that there really is a woman's claim to real
claustrophobia and being trapped— "What can you say,
when a man asks you to dance with him?"— is preserved in
the formal duality of dialogue versus monologue, and in
the illusion of pure performance and pure being.
Dorothy Parker's "Big Blonde" won the 1929 0. Henry
prize for the best short story. Probably Parker's most
critically acclaimed piece of fiction, "Big Blonde"
precedes "The Waltz" by several years, but represents a
significant departure from it, "A Telephone Call," and
Parker1s other prose monologues and dialogues. Parker's
move into a more exclusive narrative format was hardly
something new; the path of her fictional career is not
linear, but zigs zags back and forth between the
conversational pieces she had become most popular with
and the "serious" narratives which usual-ly dealt with
bitter, sometimes sentimental, and frequently satirical
treatments of men and women engaged in some form of
fakery or sham. But thematically, "Big Blonde" is a
sequel to "A Telephone Call" and "The Waltz." It is
also a narrative analog to her poetry's discourses on
life, death and love as a heterosexual woman. When
critics and biographers turn to a discussion of "Big
Blonde," they usually hail it as her most "serious"
accomplishment as a short story writer, and go one step
further by citing Parker's own pride at finally doing
something "artistic" and "lasting." By implication,
"Big Blonde" represents the antithesis and the antidote
to Parker's rash of "cuteness" and "smartiness" which
she believed plagued her early career and the decade of
the twenties in general. By modern critical standards,
"Big Blonde" undoubtedly pushed Parker's reputation up
in the literary world, even overcoming the stigma of the
more "trivial" of her verses and chatty prose pieces.
Yet, ironically, the very same themes or discourses
of her most "trivial" pieces continue in this story.
Paula Treichler writes that in Parker's monologues, "he
first-person pronoun seems to act as magnet for dense
clusters of parody and wisecracking; hence, I believe,
her desire later to move away from soliloquies and
satiric conversations that had made her reputation as a
writer of fiction" ("Verbal Subversions" 59). The
parody and "wisecracking" nevertheless acts in "Big
Blonde," although it is muted in keeping with the often
muted actions and "being" of the story's female
protagonist. Moreover, "Big Blonde" works as
metafictional parody; it is a story about the story of
gender, or rather, a discursive act about acting and
"being."
The first signs of this parody are embedded in
titular forms. The "Big Blonde" in this story is Hazel
Morse, and as such, is at the very opposite end of the
hyperbolic scale from the little woman who figured so
prominently both as a counterpart to the male tradition
in humor, and as the epitome of the submissive, delicate
creature whose chief function was ornamentation or home-
making. In fact, from the very first, Hazel Morse, the
"large, fair woman of the type that incites some men
when they use the word 'blonde' to click their tongues
and wag their heads roguishly," tries to be or act the
"little" part (and, once more, the "little games" of 'A
Telephone Call" continue) (PDP 187). She takes pride in
small feet, and "boxes" her them in "snub-toed, high-
heeled slippers of the shortest bearable size" (187).
The odd, almost editorial voice that concludes the final
sentence of the first paragraph comments that she
"should not have disfigured" her nails with "little
jewels" (187). Her first name, "Hazel," neatly and
poetically indicates the manner in which she lives when
she isn't actively engaged in playing the "little" part.
She remembers little, her "old days were a blurred and
flickering sequence" (187), and once her alcoholism
begins, she cannot "recall the definite day that she
started drinking" (191). She "lived in a haze" of her
drinking (193), or "in her mist" (197) of Whisky-induced
peace.
What becomes clear within the first page of
narrative, however, is that even before Hazel finds her
"haze," her life is divided into the familiar duality of
"The Waltz" and "A Telephone Call." The activities of
her public life are as vapid as the words of the female
dancer to her male partner. She models dresses and
meets "numbers of men" with whom she spends "numbers of
evenings . . . laughing at their jokes and telling them
she loved their neckties" (PDP 187). Hazel thus learns
the "rules" of being a woman: "men liked you because you
were fun," and she thus takes if for granted that "the
liking of many men was a desirable thing. Popularity
seemed to her to be worth all the work that had to be
put into its achievement" (187). The only difference
(and it is significant) comes in an apparent vacuity in
her "private" life. Sharp, literate parodies of
quotations or even voicings of desperate desires are
lacking in the spaces of her "alone" time. She finds
"no other form of diversion," and her "ideas, or,
better, her acceptances, ran right along with those of
the other substantially build blondes in whom she found
her friends" (187).
From the beginning, the narrative suggests that in
place of a monologue, a private life, or some sort of
marker of a "true" woman there is only a cipher, a blank
space--perhaps just a "haze." We never know (nor care
much to know) her maiden name. Before she marries
Herbie Morse, she is just a "Haze-el." She changes her
act from easy-going good sport to wife. "She was
delighted at the idea of being a bride; coquetted with
it played upon it" (PDP 188). The language of this new
role is that of gaming--marriage had been a joke when
proposed by "serious" men from "Des Moines and Houston
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and Chicago . . . and even funnier places" (188). It
still is distanced, a role, an "idea" even when she
decides to take it on.
But because this is, after all, a narrative, things
happen, times passes and pressure is placed on the
cipher of Hazel's private life. She begins to want
things— to "be married" for instance, and to free
herself from the "good sport" role. Yet, even this
desire seems less than genuine, and the "oh such a
pretty picture" description of the couple's new
apartment once again confirms that Hazel is engaged in a
"marriage game," rather than a "love" relationship.
Instead, the emotions that seem to mark her being rather
than her acting are the tears she expends for "kidnapped
babies, deserted wives, unemployed men," etc. (PDP 189).
The narrative weaves back for a moment and we learn that
"even in her good sport days, she had been known to weep
lavishly and disinterestedly" (189). This sophisticated
turn from linear progression does two things: first, it
confirms the illusion of duality between "being" and
"acting," and second, it complicates it, hinting that
this crying is itself part of her act. To her friends
in these "good sport" days, "her behavior at the theater
was a standing joke" (189).
However, the narrative does seem to move forward for
awhile, and the "non good sport" space of Hazel's life
comes "alive" with emotion. She "desperately" wants Herbie
"to want to be with her" (PDP 190), her first "desperate"
desire and the echo of the speaker’s feelings in "A
Telephone Call." The disparity between what is expected of
her (husband, lovers and friends tell her to "cheer up," be
a "good sport" throughout the entire story) and what she
"feels" becomes increasingly obvious. There are moments
when she emerges from the "haze," as it were. But this
narrative is cyclical. No sooner do we recognize a
"private" life or being than we find the her plunged back
into the fog: "She could not recall the definite day that
she started drinking herself. There was nothing separate
about her days. Like drops upon a window-pane, they ran
together and trickled away" (191).
The language of the passage is such that all
conscious decision is erased; there is an illusion of
subjectlessness. This illusion is mimicked by the image
of the raindrops washing away narrative time as the
alcohol washes away a "true" self. The narrative is
cyclical because it returns Hazel to her former role.
Lovers, first rich then not-so-rich, follow the
departure of Herbie, and once again, the imperatives to
be a "good sport" are repeated. She participates
204
willingly, eager to live up to the cardinal rule of
"smile, don’t cry" that she violated so unconscionably
with Herbie. True to the pattern explored in diverse
ways throughout Parker's fiction, the see-saw swing back
to her "real” self inevitably happens as she can no
longer, hold back the tears— for "herself, not for
"strayed cats"--and her current lover loses patience
with her, telling her to "cheer up" by their next date.
Fortunately, however, while still in her
comfortable haze of non-being, she has begun to think of
death. "There was no settled, shocked moment when she
first thought of killing herself" (PDP 201), just as
there had been no clear moment when she had begun
drinking, or even when she put on her first dress and
started going out with men. She "plays" "voluptuously
with the thought of cool, sleepy retreat" just as she
had "coquetted" with the "idea" of being a bride (201).
What begins to emerge is that her "ideas" are indeed
chosen but misted over, and that her marriage, her
drinking and her attempted suicide are "acts" just as
artificial as her much deplored acting for men. She
fails at all her acts, and her acts fail her. What is
left, however, but the "hazy" decision to take up more
acts? Her overdose of Veronal tablets merely angers a
neighboring doctor into the necessity of having to pump
205
her stomach. The maid's discovery of Hazel's overdose
is far less exciting than is the thought that she can
tell the doctor it's a "matter of life and death," which
phrase she has plumbed from the shallow depths of her
"thin store of reading" (207). The final moment of
irony is almost anticlimactic, as the cycle of the story
continues. Once Hazel has awoken from two days of
unattractive stupor, her maid gives her a drink and
tells her to "cheer up." (210).
The act of attempted suicide fails to free her from
the duality of performance, and the disturbing
suggestion is that there is nothing to do, to "be" other
than involved in acts, and in this illusion of schism.
The very pressure of the narrative upon Hazel (to really
be someone) manifests itself as certain points in the
cycle— when she "becomes" a bride, when she begins to
cry, drink, act as a good sport, and, finally, when she
tries to kill herself. The failure of these "pressure
points" is actually the failure to fill up the blank
space of her private life, to decipher the cipher. The
doctor graphically illustrates the action of this cyclic
pressure when he "plunged his thumbs into the lidded
pits" above the comatose Hazel's eyeballs "and threw his
weight upon them" {PDP 207). But Hazel gives "no sign
under the pressure." She remains a cipher, or a
206
selfless mound of flesh, with "thick, white legs" (207)
and "flabby arms" (187) that will not die and will not
wake up. In fact, at this moment in the narrative, the
antics of those who try to revive her are downright
comical The doctor's plunging effort is met by a cry
from the maid, but the elevator attendant watches the
action and "chuckled." "Look like he tryin' to push her
right on th'ough the bed" (207). The doctor pinches the
back of Hazel's legs with "long, cruel nips," but in
answer to the maid's worried cry, "She won't die on me,
will she?" the doctor states unequivocally, "God, no.
You couldn't kill her with an ax" (208).
With Dorothy Parker's turn to narrative form and
the artistry of "Big Blonde, 1 1 we can't help but note the
attempt to end her role as entertainer, or wit. Hazel
Morse, and the speakers in "The Waltz" and "A Telephone
Call" all seem ensnared in Fanny Brice's dilemma of
"Being a funny person" (qtd. in Barreca, 29-30). "Big
Blonde" is not a "funny" story, but neither is it devoid
of the type of gallows humor that appears throughout
Parker's poetry. The narrative is loaded with
situational irony--Hazel wakes up from her suicide
attempt only to receive a postcard from her current
lover telling her, "Cheer up and don't take any rubber
nickels (209).
In addition to the maid's excited use of "matter of
life or death," one of Hazel's lovers tells her that
once he had "a gal" who "used to try and throw herself
out of the window every time she got a can on" (200).
Besides referring to Parker's own suicide attempts, this
allusion is prophetic. Readers familiar with Parker’s
work will recognize the end of one of the characters in
The Ladies of the Corridor, a play Parker co-authored
with Arnaud d'Usseau in 1954. Mildred Tynan, a middle-
aged woman of faded beauty and a new addiction to
alcohol, follows the irritated suggestion of an annoyed
Bell Hop and takes a "running" jump out the window to
her death (II.5, p. 115) As if to emphasize that the
comedy never ends (and, analogously, the performance of
gender), Hazel lies down— to die laughing. "Guess I'll
go to bed," she says, and then rhymes, "Gee, I'm nearly
dead" (PDP 205). She "quotes" herself before slipping
off into her coma, and comments, "That's a hot one!"
(205).
Death in the Parker canon is, at its simplest, an
escape from the act. In "Big Blonde," death is
parodied, and literally "poked" fun at in the somnolent,
drugged body of Hazel Morse. The parody she supposedly
sought to escape is still here, but the difference is
that the hyperbole is not marked by formal elements such
208
as italics, or in the exaggeration of "feminine"
language. The combination of laughter and death is a
historically familiar one, and one well explored by
Parker in her poetry (and in the titles of her
collections). Biographies of Parker usually mention her
penchant for collecting undertaker's magazines, and
critics just as often point out that she derived her
characters' names from obituary columns (Treichler 55).
Hazel Morse's (near) death scene takes on aspects of the
ludicrous, and, especially in the description of her
prone body, even the grotesque:
Mrs. Morse lay on her back, one flabby arm flung
up, the wrist against her forehead. Her stiff
hair hung untenderly along her face. The bed
covers were pushed down, exposing a deep square
of soft neck and a pink nightgown, its fabric
worn uneven by many launderings; her great
breasts, freed from their tight confiner, sagged
beneath her arm-pits. Now and then she made
knotted, snoring sounds, and from the corner of
her opened mouth to the blurred turn of her jaw
ran a lane of crusted spittle (206).
Bakhtin writes that in Rabelais's "grotesque
(clownish) portrayal of death, the image of death itself
takes on humorous aspects: death is inseparable from
laughter ..." (Dialogic Imagination 196). According
to Bakhtin, Rabelais also lists a series of deaths from
laughing (197). As she considers the idea of suicide,
Hazel feels a "cozy solidarity with the big company of
the voluntary dead" (PDP 201). Her final "wisecrack" to
herself alludes to these laughing deaths, indeed, even
the "cheerful deaths" Bakhtin catalogues in Rabelais
(Dialogic Imagination 196). Her rhyme of "bed" and
"dead" is reminiscent of many of her verses, but it also
is typical of the "gallows humor" discussed by Freud in
his Jokes and the Unconscious. The man who jokes about
catching cold from a bare neck as he walks to his
execution exhibits a kind of "magnanimity" in his
"blague," and in his "tenacious hold upon his customary
self and his disregard of what might overthrow that self
and drive it to despair" (Jokes 229). Hazel's
recognition of the comic in the moments preceding what
she thinks will be her death does reveal a kind of
strength, perhaps even a glimmer of "true" self. She
finally is able to voluntarily amuse herself (albeit
with her "voluntary" death), rather than be forced to
amuse the throngs of men who have demanded to be.
And yet, as it is suggested in the story, even
death is unreliable and no sure escape from the endless
performance of gender. The deaths of women remain
problematic. Once dead, they still cannot escape their
gender, and, worse yet, the become "symbols" of feminine
tragedy. Hazel's "decision" to face death gives us the
illusion of a self, the illusion of a will. The death
impulse as radical deconstruction of the gender comedy
210
also runs throughout Parker's poems as does the idea
that death is occasion for a sardonic and gruesome
laugh. But as Gilbert and Gubar have discussed in
regard to classical paragons of female power and
aggression, the "female will-to-battle" is "historically-
rooted in male ideas about female sexuality, specially
in the male notion that dead women are desirable and
live women should not desire" (No Man's Land 6). The
idea that women should not desire (should not tell "what
they really think") is a familiar refrain in Parker
dialogues, monologues and narratives. In "Big Blonde,"
there are also subtle suggestions of male desire for the
dead, as when the elevator boy encounters Hazel's body
and prods her body "so lustily that he left marks in the
soft flesh" (PDP 206). However, for the most part,
discourses of desire--refracted as they are by sarcasm,
cynicism, and parody--are spoken by women for men, or by
women for death.
LITTLE WORMS: PARKER'S POETRY AND THE DISCOURSE OF
DEATH
The poems in Parker's three collections of poetry,
Enough Rope (1926) , Sunset Gun (1928) , and Death and
Taxes (1931)2 are, in the majority, lyrics, or first
person "monologues" in verse. As such, they work as
2These collections will be cited as they appear in their
reprinted format in The Portable Dorothy Parker (PDP).
211
counterparts to the speakers in Parker’s prose, or
rather, co-participants in the discourses of the desire
for death and the shallowness of love. Not
surprisingly, the collections take as their "starting
point" what may be considered at least one discursive
progression’s "end." Although each volume contains its
significant share of poems which seem to center on
death, just as significant are the poems on "love" or
"loving." The allusions to dying and living and loving
as a woman run interchangeably throughout many poems,
displacing apparent centers to the point where one may
say, without too much danger of conflation, that
Parker's poems on love are really poems about dying, and
her poems about dying are really poems about love. And
most importantly, the strategies of literary and gender
parody operate more concisely and perhaps more
recognizably than they do in her prose.
In "Song of Perfect Propriety" (PDP 103), "For a
Lady Who Must Write Verse" (PDP 238), and "Little Words"
(PDP 300), playing one's gender or the "little games” of
being a woman is equated with being a woman poet. "Song
of Perfect Propriety" begins with a wish:
Oh, I should like to ride the seas,
A roaring buccaneer;
A cutlass banging at my knees,
A dirk behind my ear.
212
And, in the second half of the second stanza, the
refrain is introduced as a regret:
Oh, I should like to strut and curse
Among my blackguard crew. . . .
But I am writing little verse,
As little ladies do.
The hyperbole and imagery of the poem is not only
stereotypically picaresque, but parodically masculine.
The phallic cutlass "bangs" at her knees in sharp
contrast to the implied but present "little" pen of the
lady writing verse. But even more significant is the
element of drag parade created by the "strut" she would
like to assume. The third stanza elaborates upon this
display:
Oh, I should like to dance and laugh
And pose and preen and sway,
And rip the hearts of men in half,
And toss the bits away.
Immediately, the caricature of Erroll Flynn antics turns
ambiguous. Although it is still possible that the
speaker is posing as a "gay" femme fatale, the second
half of this third stanza continues the theme of
emotional liberation and couches it in familiar terms:
I' d like to view the reeling years
Through unastonished eyes,
And dip my finger-tips in tears,
And give my smiles for sighs.
The "unastonished eyes" are like those of Hazel Morse,
whose blurred life often led her to find nothing
213
"astonishing" (PDP 193). The "tears" and "sighs" allude
to both the overindulgences of many of Parker's "little
women," as well as to the pervasive stricture against
crying and melancholy.
The last stanza relies on classical allusion and
parody, leaving most of the hyperbole of gender parody
behind:
I'd stroll beyond the ancient bounds,
And tap at fastened gates,
And hear the prettiest of sound--
The clink of shattered fates.
My slaves I'd like to bind with thongs
That cut and burn and chill ....
But I am writing little songs,
As little ladies will.
Instead, the speaker strives to cross boundaries, and
control destinies. It is, after all, expression of a
will-to-power, and not just over fate but over "slaves."
The refrain would imply by contrast that these are
things that men do, since women are still engaged in the
"little" games. But given the ambiguity of the
preceding stanzas, there is the possibility that a
convoluted drag is being performed. A speaker,
presumably a woman, assumes the role of a drag artist--a
man parading his machismo while simultaneously weaving
in the requisite parodic femininity of "posing" and
"preening" and "swaying." Such imitation of an
imitation is what strolling "beyond the ancient bounds"
may be all about--a radical dismantling of gender.
214
However, the "little songs" of "little" ladies smacks
of irony as it alludes to the "trivial" nature of
women's writing, or rather, to the act of women writing.
What, in the end, or who, decides that versifying is any
the more cliched, minor or "trivial" than the self
consciously ruthless activities of a pirate in an
adventure story?
"For a Lady Who Must Write Verse" (PDP 238) also
emphasizes the split between acting and being, art and
nature. The first imperative in the poem is to "Hide
your double birthright well." The lady who would write
is the "brat of Heaven" and the "pampered heir to Hell."
Here, more than in "Big Blonde," for instance, the
"true" self has the possibility of greatness, and this
is in keeping with Parker's reported instinctive
knowledge of her talent, especially when she felt she
was betraying it. The next two stanzas continue with
contrastive metaphors:
Let your rhymes be tinsel treasures,
Strung and seen and thrown aside.
Drill your apt and docile measures
Sternly as you drill your pride.
Show your quick, alarming skill in
Tidy mockeries of art;
Never, never dip your quill in
Ink that rushes from your heart.
The "tinsel treasures" alliteratively stress the
near oxymoron, and in turn verbally and imagistically
echoes the "trivial." The engagement in the act of
215
writing or versifying demands the same duplicity of
enacting one's gender. Marginalized, these acts are
performed and then "thrown aside"; they must be done
well but without calling attention to the fact that they
are, indeed, "done," not "naturally" occurring. As the
third stanza moves into literary and artistic advice,
there is the injunction to concentrate on parody, on
imitation, and on the "act" rather than what is
supposedly original, or "from the heart." The rule of
amusement reigns supreme; never do we seem to stray far
from the hushed and resented realization that "they
don't like you to cry." The last stanza reads:
Never print, poor child, a lay on
Love and tears and anguishing,
Lest a cooled, benignant Phaon
Murmur, "Silly little thing!"
In this poem, Phaon is the arbiter of "high culture" and
representative of male approval. Aphrodite gave youth
and beauty to Phaon because he had shown her respect and
generosity when he carried her across the sea without
payment; at the time, she was in the guise of old woman.
Later, Sappho fell in love with Phaon who rejected her,
and in consequence, she threw herself off the cliff of
Leucas (Howatson 428,506). To pay too much attention to
this Phaon is to suffer the fate of Sappho, thus to
express one's "truest," saddest feelings is to risk
rejection and death. However, in the context of
216
Parker's love for death, this risk may be a desirable
one. On the page following this poem is printed "Rhyme
Against Living:"
If wild my breast and sore my pride.
I bask in dreams of suicide;
If cool my heart and high my head,
I think, "How lucky are the dead!" (PDP 239)
The injunction not to indulge in emotion is also a cause
for irony, for printing "lays" on "love and tears and
anguishing" is precisely what Parker does. In fact,
appearing before "Rhyme Against Living" is "Two Volume
Novel:"
The sun's gone dim, and
The moon's turned black;
For I loved him, and
He didn't love back (PDP 238) .
The poem belittles and mocks unrequited love, as do
"Landscape," "Fulfillment," "The Trusting Heart" and a
score of others in this collection and in Enough Rope
and Death and Taxes. The strategy of belittling is
literally a command to "be little" over and over again,
until the exaggeration of the parody drives the point
home: the "little woman" is an absurd mask that perhaps
even men will begin to see, but most importantly, it is
one which woman need to see. Forever emblazoned on
their mind’s eye should be the image of Hazel Morse
trying to squeeze into shoes of the "shortest bearable
size" as if she were a parodic Cinderella. The
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implication of such a strategy is, of course, that
somewhere beneath this absurd mask lies a "true" woman.
But, once again, as with the radical dialogism of the
monologues in "The Waltz," or with the blankness or
haziness of Hazel's "true" desires, this self under the
mask is more often than not more language, another mask.
In "Little Words" (PDP 300), the writer of the
verse struggles to express from that fount of emotion,
that mark of "true" (but silly) womanhood rooted in
"love and tears and anguishing:"
When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,
Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;
And I can only stare, and shape my grief
In little words.
I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown
The bitter woe that racks my cords apart.
The weary pen that sets my sorrow down
Feeds at my heart.
There is no mercy in the shifting year,
No beauty wraps me tenderly about.
I turn to little words--so you, my dear,
Can spell them out.
The speaker uses a rhetorical strategy of humbleness,
wordlessness— or rather, "little wordness" to convey the
hyperbole of her height of feeling while at once
disguising it with the mask of modesty. This speaker is
not so much "belittling" herself for "truly" having such
feelings as she is belittling her (dead) lover for
expecting them. Indeed, the undercut to his
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intelligence is Parker’s version of the more explicit
undercut to sexual prowess. In this type of "be
littling, " contemporary women humorists or female
comedians rely on such jokes as "Do you known why women
have poor spatial perceptions? Because we've always been
told that this [holds up fingers three inches apart] is
ten inches" (Barreca 157). Regina Barreca also cites a
somewhat apocryphal (but most likely, later version of)
Mae West's "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?
Come up on Wednesday, that's amateur night" (157).
In Parker's poetry, death is not only inseparable
from laughter but is also inseparable from love and
courtship. In "The Trifler" (PDP 76), the conceit of
unrequited love and the unfaithful lover mediates the
speaker's desire for death.
Death's the lover that I'd be taking;
Wild and fierce and fickle is he.
Small's his care if my heart be breaking--
Gay young Death would have none of me.
While it is perfectly possible to dismiss this poem as
just another clever, if somewhat romantically cliched
poem on the longing for death, to do so would be
reductive. The poem's fourth stanza,
I must wait till my breast is wilted,
I must wait till my back is bowed,
I must rock in the corner, jilted--
Death went galloping down the road,
is better understood in light of Parker's oft-quoted
remark in the 1944 essay, "The Middle or Blue Period":
"People ought to be one of two things, young or old.
No; what's the good of fooling? People ought to be one
of two things, young or dead" (PDP 596). This judgment
is not simply glib and easy cynicism, but wistfulness,
albeit sarcastic, consistent with ideas of escape from
the fakery implicitly bound up in living. Most of
Parker's young female characters have an easier time of
playing by the rules, and not simply because their
bodies will fit better into those "small shoes." To be
young is to be the "beautiful little fool" Fitzgerald's
Daisy Buchanon longs for her own child to be; to be
young is to be naive enough to play the game without
tiring. This position is admittedly troubling in its
resignation, and in its conservative maintenance of the
status quo. But Parker's wry and downright comic rhymes
not only make this stance "easier" to swallow (as a
joke, as not "serious"), but also reveals it for what it
is: not death, but gallant personifications of death,
not "love and anguishing and tears" but trite and
overblown approximations of them.
In "Epitaph" (PDP 79) are contrasted two types of
death:
The first time I died, I walked my ways;
I followed the file of limping days.
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I held me tall, with my head flung up,
But I dared not look on the new moon's cup.
I dared not look on the sweet young rain,
And between my ribs was a gleaming pain.
The impervious gait through "limping" days, and the eyes
averted from touching sentiment of nature "new" and
"sweet," both invoke a stereotype; the martyred woman,
tender but brave, is too common to be missed. The "next
time I died" is described in words just as "worn," but
rather than conclude with images of a lonely tombstone
unkempt and unvisited, the speaker veers from the
expected with,
And I lie here warm, and I lie here dry,
And watch the worms slip by, slip by.
The simple rhyme is comic, and we derive the humorous
pleasure Freud refers to as what was expected to be
bland, if not sad, is surprisingly silly and light
hearted. The slippery and morbid worms comically
undermine and parody the stately walk through "limping
days. "
But it is in one of Parker's earlier poems that the
desirability of death as an escape from the sham of
"true" femininity is unmistakably questioned. "Epitaph
for a Darling Lady" was first published in Franklin
Pierce Adam's column, "The Conning Tower" in The New
York World of August 1925:
All her hours were yellow sands,
Blown in foolish whorls and tassels;
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Slipping warmly through her hands;
Patted into little castles.
Shiny day on shiny day
Tumbled in a rainbow clutter,
As she flipped them all away,
Sent them spinning down the gutter.
Leave for her a red young rose,
Go your way, and save your pity;
She is happy, for she knows
That her dust is very pretty (PDP. 83).
The life of this imaginary woman transpires in images of
insubstantial sand; her dress and her desires (markers
of the external and internal, of mask and "true" face)
are "tassels" and "little castles." As Hazel Morse's
days "ran away" in the blur of bewildered nothingness,
so do this woman's, "flipped away" and sent "spinning
down the gutter." But unlike Hazel, the woman is
successful— or is she? The imagery implies that she has
wasted her life with a deliberate act of suicide. The
advice to "Go your way, and save your pity" suggests
that it was a rather worthless act. For in the conceit
that suicide can be done for appearances--that "her dust
is very pretty"--the act of playing the "pretty" little
lady is sustained even after death. If read as isolated
satire, this poem is a simple attack on "female" vanity,
and moreover, a rather stereotypical version of such
vanity at that. It is nothing new for Parker's poems to
bark out an unequivocal "women can be fools," but given
the connotations of suicide in Parker's other poems,
more is at stake here. It seems to be a somewhat
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precious distinction, but what this poem implies is that
there is a "wrong" kind of suicide. That done as an
"act" of trite romanticism ("leave for her a red young
rose"), it is worse than useless. But neither is there
a "right" way to "do" suicide, as the poem "Resume"
humorously suggests:
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren1t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live (PDP 99).
In the end, it is the idea of death that is
beautiful and controllable and at least somewhat
reliable. Once you are really dead, your are free of
the "act." The idea of death, inseparable from the
language of death, is mutable; comic, grotesque,
melodramatic or defiant, it gives the illusion of
obedience. Death's mutability in language is itself a
conceit; language's and the reader's supremacy, of
course, brought about the "death" of the author.
However, language and the reader are no more in control
than was the author. In short, language molds a "dead
body" as it molds us and we mold it. In the case of
"escaping" the incessant act that "being a woman"
demands, the death which "frees" the actor "traps" the
body. Dying as a woman simply results in a "dead
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(woman's) body." The danger and true unreliability of
death is that is becomes language, and a "dead body" can
signify "pretty dust" just as well as it can signify
ruthless defiance. The poem which precedes "Epitaph for
a Darling Lady" in the Portable reprint of Enough Rope
is fittingly entitled "Braggart," and the last stanza
reads:
You will be frail and musty
With peering, furtive head,
Whilst I am young and lusty
Among the roaring dead (PDP 83).
Language makes the "you" of this poem "frail and musty"
with the same ease that it renders the "I" "young and
lusty." But the title, "Braggart," not only suggests a
thumb to the nose, but also a rapier cut to the stomach.
A braggart's boasts are as unstable and full of hot air
as are balloons under the points of pins.
THE "LIGHT HUMOR" THAT DOESN'T FLOAT AWAY
In an article on "conservative anti-realism" and
"light humor," Kathy MacDermott writes, "As a literary
mode which identified the enemy with Life, the Human
Condition and The Way Things Are, light humor was not a
form which produced and resolved social contradictions,
but rather a form which displaced and naturalized them"
(51). MacDermott examines the work of Dorothy Parker,
P.G. Wodehouse, Benchley and Perelman, but her analysis
oversimplifies Parker's antipathy towards life and
living. As I have argued, Parker's poetry and prose
investigates the ambivalence in living as a woman, and
as poetically enamored of "death" as they seem to be,
Parker's first person speakers and characters are as
distrustful of death as they supposedly are of life.
Through hyperbole and parodic discourse, stories such as
"A Telephone Call," "The Waltz," and "Big Blonde"
emphasize the artificiality of women's acts and their
foolishness in acquiescing to the very "social
contradictions" which MacDermott claims such light humor
naturalizes. In her analysis of Parker's "Constant
Reader" essays, MacDermott claims that Parker loves to
bring up the subject of herself, and that this "delight"
is so frequent that "her self is transformed into a
caricature, a convention in the process of defining
itself" (40). If such a result is truly achieved, it is
only consistent with the type of gender parody, and
parody of the notion of an "original" and "true"
referent that Parker's fiction and poetry so often
explored. MacDermott's critical disapproval of
"caricature" is more clearly understood, however, as
part of a larger agenda to discredit the textuality of
what she has defined as "comic anti-realism" and/or
"light humor:"
Thus the role of the reader of comic anti-
realism is not self conscious and writerly in
225
Barthes' sense . . .The characteristic activity
of comic self-consciousness is literary, the
identification of sources and strategies; and
the sources and strategies it identifies are
characteristically textual rather than directly
social . . . they are 'readable' and meant to be
read (42).
The distinction between the "social" and the
"textual" is indeed an important one when we consider
the implications of Parker's parodic humor for the
understanding of gender, and its enactment in texts and
in the "real" world. Mikita Hoy points out an analogous
distinction when she discusses Bakhtin and popular
culture. Despite Bakhtin's apparent openness to types
of languages "outside" of "what traditional scholars
would think of as strictly literary history," Hoy states
that "no text can come closer to carnival than the
levels of description, imitation, and representation"
(780-781) . The "dialogism" of such stories as "The
Little Hours" or "The Waltz," according to Hoy's
observations, would be no more than a "textual
dialogism" (781). The act of engagement with Dorothy
Parker and whatever one may read in "her" texts is then
simply an act of observation; or, as Hoy cites it, the
"'lonely carnival of reading'" (Ann Jefferson qtd. in
Hoy, 781). Neither analysis, however, makes an attempt
to question the assumed distinction between "real" and
"textual." Without addressing what is clearly beyond
the scope of this chapter, I would qualify Hoy's and
MacDermott's conclusions by saying that the realm of
social practice, of day to day living in the
constructedness of gender, the "real," is not unaffected
by language, nor is it unaffected by the "comic,"
"satiric" or "parodic." Dorothy Parker wrote about
living as "a woman," with all the ambivalence that this
specific "social reality" entails. Whenever we quote
these texts, discuss or laugh at them— or, for that
matter, don't laugh at them--we are changing the
"social" with the "textual," just as language and the
textual is changing us.
Chapter rv
227
Sexual Parody in Preston Sturges's Cinema of Mastery
"I saw the theatre as a poor, puny, weak
little old man. . . . Across his pajamas was
printed, "The Theatre."
. . . She wore high-button shoes with white
. tops, a checkered dress, very tight around the
wasistdas, a wide, patent-leather belt, a
feather boa, a big hat with ostrich plumes, and
the self-confident smile of a female who knows
that what she has, they want. Across her superb
frontal elevation was printed The Movies. As I
watched, she turned and winked good naturedly at
the little old man inside the great mansion, a
wink of such vulgarity and epic proportions that
it shattered the plate glass as it went through
the window. . . . She laughed, then noticing
me said, 'Come up and see me some time.'
So I went up and saw her."
--Preston Sturges, Preston Sturges (266)
Leaving behind the New York theater in 1932,
Preston Sturges joined the legion who migrated West to
write for the pictures. Cliched as the allegory may be,
"The Movies" served him well. The busty, Mae West siren
became a popular symbol for Hollywood itself, even
though Sturges more than likely first encountered West
on a New York stage "doin'" Diamond Lil. Nevertheless,
Sturges's caricature captures the sexual parody which
the West persona enacts; moreover, it suggests that, at
some level, at least in the retrospect of his 1959
autobiography, Sturges was conscious of the "high"
culture/"low" art split--the "come-down" from theater to
the movies. Though he maintains that he never stopped
writing plays--never "really left the theatre" (Preston
Sturges 289), Sturges was not unaffected by "smart"
circle of New York intellectuals and longed to be
accepted by them. James Curtis writes that Sturges was
particularly influenced by H.L. Mencken, read his
treatise The American Language, and "refined many of his
personal attitudes with Mencken in mind" (Between Flops
25). Most tellingly, Sturges saw Mencken as the
"spokesman for an entire generation of nimble young
minds," and hoped to count himself "among their number"
(26). Sturges's use of the Mae West metaphor therefore
suggests the archly "superior" attitude of a would-be
cynic and modernist. At the same time, the metaphor is
a distillation of his own brand of sexual parody and
suspicion of stereotypes.
As biographers Donald Spoto, James Curtis, and
critic James Agee have all noted, Preston Sturges's life
and career seem to represent this very "high" art/"mass
culture dichotomy. Raised mostly by his bohemian
mother, Mary Desti, he spent his youth in Europe, and
was educated sporadically in private boarding schools.
He spent a fair amount of time traveling with his mother
and Isadora Duncan's dance troupe, attending Wagnerian
229
operatic festivals, dressing in the Greek tunics Isadora
and his mother favored, and generally "being exposed" to
what Desti and Duncan considered the "best" in the arts.
Under the influence of his adopted father Solomon
Sturges, Sturges also favored the capitalist ethic of
success; in fact, his business efforts in his mother's
cosmetic "empire" occupied his early years before he
turned to playwriting. Most revealing however, are his
own words on the subject. He writes that, in the
absence of his beloved father, the sewing empire
magnate, Paris Singer, became his model:
Although Mother made innumerable sacrifices for
me during thirty-one years of her life and Paris
Singer made none, I wanted to be like him. I
very much fear that this has something to do
with the general esteem in which women are held
compared with men. I know it is stupid and
unfair, but there it is (Preston Sturges 260).
Ironically, the "feminine" in this case is "high"
culture, which is hardly a surprising twist considering
the old "rugged" individualist spirit and its antagonism
to the "refined" (read "effeminate") activities of old
world Europe. Such discourses surrounding Sturges and
his films indicate that the modernism/mass culture
division is already in place in the construction of his
early life, but its terms are differently "sexed."
Considering that Sturges first achieved commendable
success as a playwright of the Broadway hit, Strictly
230
Dishonorable (1929), his antipathy to "high" art is one
way born out, and in another, contradicted, since he did
not shun artistic endeavors altogether.
Despite the sticky postmodern problem of the
"death" of the author, my analysis of Sturges makes the
insistence of some operative notion of a controlling
"creative agency" even more imperative. For this
chapter I have chosen three films which offer thematic
and cinematic treatments of narrative control, and of
visual and audial mastery. Yet at the same time, the
very analysis of Sturges's particular film oeuvre is
marked by an unavoidable collision with the diverse
forms of parody and satire which, among other less
"subversive" effects, question the idea of "original"
genius. Thus, while it is difficult to sufficiently
problematize an unsatisfactory idea, it is virtually
impossible to avoid privileging an increasingly valued
one. The theoretical bind of studying the "satiric
cinema" of Preston Sturges is having to respect the
auteur theory while equally respecting the effacement of
the "original" through parody.
However, most critics who discuss satire or parody
in Sturges's films view it as another sign, albeit
important, of his ”auteurship." In one of the earliest
reviews of his work, Manny Farber states, "he is
231
essentially a satirist without any stable point of view
from which to aim his satire" ("Preston Sturges:
Satirist," 827). James Agee discusses the "cynicism"
which strengthens The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and at
the same time "has it by the throat"; he notes the same
tendency in Sturges's other films and calls them
"paradoxical marvels of self-perpetuation and self-
destruction" (Agee on Film 76, 117) . Indeed, what
begins to emerge from such comments is that the satire
which "identifies" Sturges is sharp but ultimately
irresponsible--simultaneously trashing everything and
letting it stand. Andrew Sarris argues, "His movies . .
. reflect a civilized skepticism about old conventions
without the radical sensibility to create new ones . .
.He made good movies, but not antimovies" ("Preston
Sturges" 84).
Sturges takes his place as satirical, but not
revolutionary, comic auteur. Considering many theorists
understanding of comedy as genre, however, this is not
surprising. Nevertheless, this chapter continues the
work of this study in qualifying comedy's terrible
conservativeness. Sturges's work offers instances and
themes of sexual parody and I examine them using the
work of "serious" theory. Conversely, I begin this
chapter with Sturges's quaint and bawdy (read "low")
allegory because it does in words what Sturges does in
film. It serves as another kind of "theoretical" lens.
Its writer does not "prostitute" himself to Hollywood,
but instead lustfully parodies "her," admitting only to
taking advantage of her outrageous charms. He is in a
position of power, and she? She is Mae West, after all,
and her invitations are her own. She seems to be the
writer's nemesis as well as his willing "victim." Both
"The Theatre" and "The Movies" come to us in terms of
sexual excess or its lack. Like this inscription,
Sturges's parodies and methods of parody in The Lady Eve
(1941), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), and
Unfaithfully Yours (1948) are gendered or sexually
differentiated. And, the balance of "power" between
gendered identity positions have in the films is often
unstable.
Gerald Mast argues that each of Sturges's films
"begins with a parodic premise:" in The Lady Eve it is
"shipboard romance and virginal innocence; in The
Miracle of Morgan's Creek, small-town Americana, the
sanctity of motherhood, and patriotism; . . .in
Unfaithfully Yours, "marital infidelity" (The Comic Mind
268). Although other critics may see them as satiric
rather than parodic, these premises also operate as a
gender parody intimately connected to Sturges's "self
233
parody" as a director or auteur. What one critic called
Sturges's "view of life as some gigantic game of false
pretenses" (Houston 132) is analogous to Butler's
theorization that gender, too, as a type of
"masquerade," may be "reducible to the play of
appearances" (Gender Trouble 47). Conceptions and
representations of Sturges's auteurship therefore vie
with the parodic discourses within "his" films,
alternatively challenging and substantiating the ideas
of origins, and of mastery over those origins.
THE LADY EVE
In The Lady Eve, trusted valet and companion,
Muggsy (William Demerest), tells his employer Charles
Pike (Henry Fonda) that "anybody can put on an act."
Especially in its thematics, The Lady Eve echoes this
sentiment through an extensive parody of originals. The
garden of Eden motif and the convention of mistaken
identity— often eminently conservative forces within
comedy--nevertheless foreground the question of "firsts"
in ways that are not neatly resolved with the end (or
"last") of the narrative. And, as feminist film theory
and criticism has firmly established within the last
quarter-century, structures of identification--
"looking," "appearing," and "being"--within the
cinematic apparatus are inseparable from the
234
construction of gender. What occurs in The Lady Eve is
not only the orchestration of the illusion of powerful
female agency, but the undermining of the illusion of
essential gender.
Sturges1s screenplay is based on a story by
Monckton Hoffe entitled "The Two Bad Hats," and as Brian
Henderson explains the genesis of the final shooting
script, Sturges scrapped much of it and a later version
of it by Ellen Bartlet (Five Screenplays 327) . What
Sturges did retain, however, is the idea of twin
sisters, or rather, the impersonation of a "good" twin
sister by a pretty "con" woman who falls in love with a
snobby and repressed young man. Jean (Barbara Stanwyck)
is the daughter of "Handsome Harry" (Charles Coburn), a
card sharp who, with his English valet/associate Gerald,
travels the seas fleecing rich, unsuspecting cruise ship
passengers. Charles Pike, ophiologist and reluctant
heir apparent to his father's ale brewing dynasty,
boards their ship mid-sea, stopping it with all the fuss
accorded someone of wealth. With a cleverly engineered
pratfall on Jean's part, Jean and Charles meet, and she
seduces him into playing cards with her father. Of
course her stratagems are too good, and she falls in
love with the "poor fish" herself. Thwarting the plans
of Harry, she saves Charles from being severely
235
swindled, but the morning after proposing to Jean,
Charles is alerted to the "true" identity of Jean and
her father and confronts her with it. In his
humiliation and pain, he pretends to have known it all
along, making his proposal to Jean a cruel joke on her.
The ship docks and the two part, but not before Harry
reveals Charles's crumpled check for $32,000. The
swindle has gone through, but Jean is not satisfied.
Soon after, Jean meets up with a fellow con-person,
"Pearlie," who is living next to the Pike mansion as
leisured noble man and bridge-player, Sir Alfred
McGlennan-Keith (Eric Blore). Impersonating his niece,
the Lady Eve Sidwich, Jean captivates the Pike family at
a party given in her honor, causing Charles to fall in
love with her all over again. Jean/Eve plots their
romance, marriage, and honeymoon--during which she
exacts her revenge. Reciting a litany of past lovers,
Jean/Eve so offends Charles that he leaves the train
"mid-mud," as it were, debarking in his pajamas in the
middle of nowhere and falling into the brown mush.
Insisting on a divorce and refusing to talk to Eve, he
departs for Africa aboard an ocean liner, and sure
enough meets up with Jean and Harry again, delighted to
see them. He swears his eternal love to her, presumably
unaware of her connection to Eve. Charles confesses he
236
is married, as does Jean, and as Sturges's screenplay
indicates, "four seconds after" the door to Jean's cabin
has been closed, Muggsy sneakily emerges. "The same
dame," he comments, and we are rewarded with the
picture's famous tag line. Muggsy, whose eyes have been
suspiciously watching Jean ever since they were
bombarded with the apple dropped on Charles head, has
been "wise to her." Or, so he thinks.
Indeed, the near certainty on Muggsy's face as he
looks straight into the camera nevertheless leaves us
with a question. Up to, and including this point, the
film has been elaborately punning upon Muggsy's
credibility as watchman. In a startling and mildly
humorous visual pun, Muggsy becomes the ending "mug
shot" of the film; his comically stern visage is a
reminder of his troubled gaze. Our certainty that Jean
is Eve seems tenable, but that is less important than
our immersion in the themes of identity, identification,
misrecognition and uncertainty. Stanley Cavell states,
"The relation between Eve and Jean is not an issue for
us, but the nature of the relation of both Eve and Jean
to Barbara Stanwyck, or to some real woman called
Barbara Stanwyck is an issue for us--an issue in viewing
films generally, but declared, acknowledged as an issue
in this film by the way it situates the issue of
237
identity" (Pursuits of Happiness 63-64). Cavell rightly
recognizes the importance of identity in this film, and
indeed, notes its importance to the "screwball" comedies
or comedies of "remarriage" discussed in his book. But
contrary to Cavell's reading, the relation of Eve to
Jean is an important issue for us. Eve's and Jean's
names and identities are both linked and separated
throughout the repetition of the Eden theme, chiefly
through the question of "origins" and "original sin,"
Brian Henderson believes that the name "Jean" might
suggest "'Jean d'Arc,' the savior who triumphs over
'Eve'" (Five Screenplays 341). That Jean is Eve's
redemption is supported by the narrative, in the sense
that Charles ends up with Jean, but not necessarily
because Charles believes Jean to be more virtuous than
Eve. He tells Jean that he "doesn't want to understand"
and that he "doesn't want to know" whatever it is Jean
attempts to explain during their final embrace. As
Cavell notes when Charles first finds out that Jean is a
con woman, an "adventuress" on the high seas as she
tells him all woman are, "the ambiguity about whether he
does or does not believe in her difference from herself
is as fixed for us as it is for him (Pursuits of
Happiness 62). The "difference from herself" Cavell
mentions presumably refers to her intention to tell
238
Charles about her "true" identity before she actually
married him. But in her speech to Charles before she
has learned that he already knows, she tells him "you
don't know much about girls, Hopsie: the best ones
aren't as good as you probably think they are . . .and
the bad ones aren't as bad . . not nearly as bad."
In a roundabout way, Jean makes her confession and
adds to the film's discourse about the possibility of
absolute knowledge and knowing the "real." The "fixed"
ambiguity is most notable at the film's end. Even
knowing the "truth" for ourselves--that Jean is Eve and
not really "Eve"--surely leaves us with some ambiguity.
On the one hand, our knowledge as privileged spectators
appears relatively clear in comparison to Charles's
willing lack of knowledge. His desire not to know
Jean's message, especially in the wake of Eve's
scandalous confessions, suggests that he can at least
imagine what it is that he would rather not know. In
fact, a similar but comic disavowal takes place earlier
in the film. The morning after Jean has been frightened
by Charles' pet snake, Emma, she wakes up screaming. As
Harry rushes into her cabin she tells him that she has
been dreaming about "that slimy snake" all night, and of
course, he thinks she is referring to Charles. When she
later meets Charles for breakfast she asks him about
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Emma, "What does she eat don't tell me." The script
indicates that the question is a run-on statement,
without pause in the middle. Stanwyck is true to this in
her delivery, suggesting that she, too, does not want to
know the "gory details."
Henderson congratulates Sturges on keeping the
garden of Eden motif against the advice of producer
Albert Lewin. "Sturges grasped in this respect what
Lewin missed--that the very irrelevance of the snake
business lends the film its delightful absurdity" (Five
Screenplays 339). Even though a "screwball element," as
Henderson calls it, the "snake business," both in the
opening cartoon graphics of the film and in its
thematics is hardly irrelevant. The animated snake
crawling through and around the type of the credits
wears a top hat and is hit smartly in the head by an
apple. Just as Charles returns from the Amazon and
boards the ocean liner, Jean leans over the rail and
drops the apple she has been chewing on his head. The
bits fly into Muggsy's eyes and his first frustration as
"wise eye" is initiated. And so is our ambiguity about
Jean's identity. Despite her glib and somewhat cynical
remark to Charles that all women are adventuresses ("if
you waited for a man to propose from natural causes
you'd die from old maidenhood"), there is a sense in
240
which we cannot deny our conflation of Eve and Jean.
Jean is Eve from the very beginning. The apple drop is
a parody of the original sin. Notes to The Lady Eve in
Sturges's papers suggest that the garden of Eden motif
figured early in the Sturges's story treatment:
A wealthy young idealist has never married
because of an absurdly high standard or rather a
false conception of what his mate should be . .
.On a return trip from Brazil to New York, he
meets a girl called Jane. She is as wise as
Mother Eve, and his innocence awakens her
protective instinct. She is amused at her own
softness (Preston Sturges Collection, Box 11, f.
2) .
In Genesis 3:20, Eve is so named by Adam "because
she would become the mother of all the living" (NIV),
but as the film brings out, Jean is also the "woman of
curiosity"; "I wonder if I could clunk him on the head
with this." The film also plays up the temptress role,
no doubt according to years of less than careful
religious exegesis and secular myth retelling. Contrary
to her popular stereotype, Eve is deceived while Adam
stands by:
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree
was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and
also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some
and ate it. She also gave some to her husband,
who was with her, and he ate it (Genesis 3:6,
NIV) .
As Stanley Cavell also notes, Harry refers to Charles as
the "finest specimen of the sucker sapiens," and certainly,
241
his likeness to Adam in this respect is more than apparent.
The curse on the serpent is likewise repeated parodically
as Charles meets Jean by tripping over her heel: "I will
put enmity between you and the woman, and between your
offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will
strike his heel" (Genesis 3:15, NIV) .
Charles is associated with the serpent through his
occupation, incidental dialogue and comic camera shots.
Jean's nightmare leads to Harry's confusion of Charles
and a "slimy snake," but in a later scene, we actually
see the coiled serpent. In the pre-party chaos of the
Pike mansion (the "nuthouse" Pike senior mutters about),
Charles asks the harried butler if he has seen his
"little black crotalis colubrinus." Mr. Burrows grandly
states, "I rejoice to say that I have not, sir" but in
an angled close-up off his feet, the camera tracks with
him as he walks away, a little snake wrapped securely
around his right ankle. "In a way, snakes are my life,"
Charles tells Eve. "What a life!" she replies, but her
disgust is unwarranted. Without exception, Charles's
snakes are "harmless," "playful as kittens," in short,
impotent to strike. Although we may associate or
identify Jean with one of the oldest and most
distasteful stereotypes in the book, Charles does not
escape unblemished either. He trades strictly in what
242
seem to be "little" snakes named Emma, or "little black"
ones "with pink spots." Charles association with
snakes, however phallic their shapes and symbology, is
also supremely feminine. Within a comic and
specifically, parodic, context, the patriarchal Adam--
the Father of all fathers, loses a little bit of his
masculine primacy. A few of the excesses and "lacks" of
femininity seep into Charles's characterization. The
question becomes, of course, do these signs of
femininity simply confirm his "essential," "original"
masculinity, or begin to question its possibility?
By themselves, the duality and ambiguity of
Jean/Eve's identity for Charles and the spectator alike,
as well as the comic undermining of Charles's masculine
prowess do not necessarily lead to an extensive parody
of gender. The film does parody the notion of the
"original sin" which has been culturally and mythically
embodied in Eve through the very "nature" of her
sexuality. During the long seduction scene in Jean's
cabin, Charles sits on the floor next to Jean on the
chaise longue. Jean nestles her cheek next to Charles,
pretending to cling after her frightening experience
with the snake. The low camera shot is a "two big
heads" close-up, maintained for several minutes as Jean
tousles her hair and talks crooningly to him. Charles
243
is seduced into a kind of sexual trance, overcome by
pheromones and his year-long lack of female contact "up
the Amazon." He does not act on his desires, of course-
-his manifestation of them is primarily a sign that
Jean's tactics are overwhelmingly successful. But
Jean's likeness to Eve as temptress is also rendered as
a fiction, an act, as she explains to Charles her gloss
on the "adventuress." Jean is performing as Eve before
she adopts that role in the diegesis of the film.
Again, through the garden of Eden motif, the film
suggests a fluidity of sexual identity as Jean usurps
Adam's role as namer of all things and names herself
"Eve."
But simple role reversal does not go as far in
suggesting gender parody as do other less obvious
aspects of the film. Feminist film theory and theorists
have furthered the study of the cinematic apparatus by
establishing, among other things, that film
spectatorship is gendered. The manner in which film
addresses the spectator and solicits his or her
identification with and through images and structures of
looking does depend on the gender of the spectator. The
question and problems of female spectatorship have been
raised in relation to various genres of classical
Hollywood cinema; most notably, perhaps, in relation to
244
film noir or the woman's picture. What makes the
question of female spectatorship most relevant to
"screwball" comedy and to The Lady Eve in particular is
the challenge of theorizing the woman's look when that
look (1) belongs to a "strong" and "powerful" female
character, and (2) when that "look" appears to drive the
narrative of the film. Jean gets the ball rolling, so
to speak, when she drops the apple on Charles's head,
but this bit of slapstick is nothing in comparison to
the careful visual and audial plotting she does later in
the film.
Aboard the ship's main dining room, Charles
concentrates on a book entitled Are Snakes Necessary!1
Reading, however, is not a privileged activity in this
film, especially when Charles's eyes are demanded
elsewhere. After a few establishing shots of bartenders
serving Pike's Pale to the clamoring dinner guests,
1In this title, it is difficult to imagine that Sturges was
not parodying James Thurber's 1929 bestseller, is Sex Necessary?
Wes Gehring notes as much in Screwball Comedy (58) . The like
question surfaced in three more of his films. One of the original
titles for The Palm Beach story was "is Marriage Necessary?" In
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and Unfaithfully Yours, the same
question is the title to a movie that Trudy, Norval and Sir Alfred
intend to see or do see. As Trudy and Norval leave to have their
clandestine marriage performed, Trudy tells Officer Kockenlocker
that they are off to see three films. In a nervous voice, she
reels off the titles as "The Road to Rio, The Bride Wore Purple,
and Is Marriage Necessary?" In Unfaithfully Yours, Sir Alfred
pines away his afternoon in a movie theatre after he has
confronted Detective Sweeney and learned that his wife may have
been untrue to him. in a sullen and irascible voice, he tells the
worried and bewildered Daphne the plot to three different films,
one of which he recounts as "asking if marriage is necessary for
eight reels and then concluding that it is in the ninth."
245
Charles is the object of several women's gazes.
However, we are alerted to the "looks" of the mothers,
daughters, and single women by Charles's reactions. A
close shot of Charles reading, then briefly looking up
is followed by a reverse shot of a table of people
(mostly women) staring at him, glasses of Pike's Pale in
hand. Sturges's uses script directions such as "the
woman are looking at us hungrily," or "sulphurously"
(Five Screenplays, 362-363). Charles's comic recoils
seem to deflect the women's looks, but he is helpless
when it comes to Jean's monitoring eye.
In one of the most popular "trick shots" of the
movie, Sturges does a medium two shot of Harry and Jean
at their table, Jean looking into the mirror of her
compact. Her first remark, "Not good enough,"
immediately suggests that the women's looks are
ineffective. Her clarification a line later, "they're
not good enough for him," suggests that Charles is doing
the picking and choosing, but as events unfold, this
statement again repeats that their looks cannot control
Charles as will hers. We cut to a close up of Jean's
mirror, in which we see Charles sitting at his table and
a string of women trying various ploys to get his
attention. The frame of Jean's mirror doubles as the
picture frame, and of course foregrounds the analogy of
246
a film within a film. Jean not only "films" the action
but narrates it: "He's returning to his book . . .He's
deeply immersed in it . .He sees no one except watch
his head turn when that kid goes by. It won't do you any
good, dear, he's a bookworm, but swing them anyway . .
." Jean's narration also encompasses Charles's
thoughts, "I wonder if my tie's on straight . . .1
certainly upset them, don't I?"
When Charles gets up and walks out of the mirror
frame Jean breaks into the first person (as Charles
breaks back into the "real" film) and tells him to "Go
soak your head and see if I care." She promptly trips
him. The fall of man entails the curse symbolized by
Jean's broken heel. But it is she who "strikes."
Stanley Cavell argues that Jean is a "stand-in"
director in this scene, and "the man, the sucker, is a
stand-in for the role of the audience" (Pursuits of
Happiness 66). Despite Cavell's omission of the issues
of female spectatorship in such an equation, the
cinematic apparatus does generally work to give the
illusion that the (male) spectator has achieved mastery
of the look and thus a fictional coherent subjectivity.
In this sense, the spectator is a "sucker," victim of a
con game, just as Charles is about to become. Such a
reading seems to confirm Charles as just another "duped"
247
Adam, and does little to acknowledge his challenged
status as "male" controller of the gaze; in short, this
reading neglects Charles's transformation into the
passive, "marionette-like" object of Jean's gaze.
Indeed, Cavell not only neglects feminist work on
spectatorship, but most other film and psychoanalytic
theory as well. In a scene which negotiates
subjectivity through "looks," Lacan's theory of the
mirror phase should hardly be forgotten. Lacan writes
that the mirror stage is an "identification, in the full
sense that analysis gives to the term; namely, the
transformation that takes place in the subject when he
assumes an image" ("The Mirror Stage" 2). In the
formation of a self-identity, the "would-be" subject
looks into the mirror; his "jubilant assumption of his
specular image" then seems to "exhibit in an exemplary
situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is
precipitated in a primordial form, before it is
objectified in the dialectic of identification with the
other, and before language restores to it, in the
universal, its function as subject" (2). Most
importantly, this "form," the "Ideal-I," Lacan states
"situates the agency of the ego, before its social
determination, in a fictional direction . . ." (2). The
"identification" is both part of the Imaginary register
248
and, in itself, a fiction, an illusion. This
theoretical process of fictional self-formation thus
precedes the point at which the subject gains language
and a sense of his place in the social world
The problem, of course, is that Lacan's theory
focuses on the male subject's look into the mirror. At
first, it offers little for our understanding of Jean's
act of looking. Concerned with such issues of female
spectatorship, Mary Ann Doane and Jacqueline Rose have
both explained and critiqued theory which attempts to
link Lacan's mirror phase to the operations of film.
Christian Metz, for examples ties the illusionary
product of the mirror stage to the cinematic apparatus.
Doane writes, "In Metz's analysis, the film spectator
achieves a sense of unity, mastery, and control--which
is analogous to that of the child in front of the
mirror— by identifying with his own look, and
consequently with the camera (ultimately identifying
himself as 'pure act of perception')" (The Desire to
Desire 15). Doane explains that the female subject
"quite simply does not have the same access to as the
male to the identity described" within Metz's cinematic
identification. Moreover, she does not "share the
relationship of the man to the mirror" (15). Grounding
her explanation in Luce Irigaray's writing, Doane points
249
out that the "ego" mentioned in Metz's account cannot
work in the same way for woman, since she is "relegated
to the side of negativity," "situated as lack," and
finally, "has not separate unity which could ground an
identity" (15).
However, the fact that Jean looks into a mirror and
does not see herself does not mean that she lacks
control of her own identity or of other cinematic means
to power. Rose writes, "The fact that the subject's own
body is not on the screen does not necessarily
distinguish its experience from that of the mirror
state; the subject never specularises its own body as
such, and the phenomenon of transitivism demonstrates
that the subject's mirror identification can be with
another child" (Sexuality in the Field of Vision 196) .
Although once again Rose's qualification applies mainly
to the male spectator, it does provide a theoretical
"window" for the female. In fact, Jean not only seems
to sustain the look that the other "female spectators"
fail to, but also to control the voice-over narration,
yet another sign of putative subjectivity in the
cinematic register.
In the wake of Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema," feminist film theorists seem
constantly to grapple with the dilemma of the female
spectator, who can either "identify" with the
spectacularized image on the screen (the woman),
collapsing the distance between subject and object in
the empathetic overidentification typical of structures
within the woman's film; or, make a shift into the
uncomfortable and unsteady position as "transvestite,"
identifying with the active (male) subject of the look.
If a female spectator watches a woman looking into a
mirror, and this woman in fact "sees herself," is the
spectator simply watching an analogous
overidentification, a becoming the image acted out on
the screen? If the answer is in fact, "yes," then what
can we understand about Jean, who looks into the mirror
and not only sees Charles, but "voices" him? Is this
indeed, just the flip side of the coin— that
"transvestite" identification? I would like to suggest
that we "provisionally" take up Cavell1s reading of Jean
as the "stand-in" director. If this is so, then it is
Sturges, or the controlling agency, who is becoming the
"transvestite" in identifying with Jean. And arguably,
the male spectator may find himself in the uneasy
position of making a similar identification.2 It is in
21 would argue that this identification is no more "shaky"
and unlikely than is the male spectator's identification with the
object of the look. Jacqueline Rose explains that the 'scopic
drive to the object of desire is not simply one of distance but of
externalization, which means that the observing subject can become
object of the look, and hence elided as the subject of its own
251
this possible identification, that gender "role
reversal" becomes a little more disturbing, or to use
Butler's term, "troubling." Is Sturges surprising us
with a female version of himself as the "original" male
director? The parody of gender here involves more than
parody of an "original"; it invokes the parodic
imitation of a male "performing" a female "performing"
both males and females.
By making this argument, however, I am not claiming
that Jean/Eve completely and always escapes the
specularization which typically befalls women in a
comedic narrative that indeed winds up in ultimate
heterosexual union. As Eve in the Pike Family Mansion,
Barbara Stanwyck poses on the threshold of the living
room as the camera does a point-of-view shot over her
shoulder into the crowded room, only to reverse and
picture her sans veil and cape, in what Sturges
indicates is a "silver lame dress which I am baffled to
describe" (Five Screenplays 452). The guests are awe
struck and their "conversation dribbles into silence."
On the other hand, Eve is conscious of her beauty, "owns
it," in a way, and plans the appearance to exact her
revenge on Charles. Indeed, what ensues in the balance
of the picture was initiated in Jean's first seduction
representation (the oeil derridre la tete could therefore be the
means whereby the subject's position as spectator in the cinema is
continually threatened" (Sexuality 196).
252
scene: the undeniable spectacle of Barbara Stanwyck,
beautifully dressed for male spectator and Charles
alike. Such a spectacle wars with any further instances
of Sturges's (male) identification with the (female)
director, Jean/Eve.
For by the time Jean gives her temptress act a
name--Eve, the special effect of the small compact
mirror is not grand or extensive enough to continue the
directorial fiction and agency. Instead, in a scene
after the Pike's party, Jean/Eve tells Sir Alfred the
"plot" of her romance. "One day, two weeks from now,
we'll be riding in the hills ..." The close-up of Eve
dissolves into a high camera shot of Eve and Charles
riding through the trees, while Eve's voice-over
narration continues, describing what is occurring in the
visual diegesis of the film. The scenes that follow are
a series of parodic maneuvers, suggesting, up until the
time Charles exits the train, that Eve is still telling
the story, orchestrating the events, even though her
voice-over is long gone. The love scene on the hill is
of course the parody of that aboard the ship, in which
Charles (with the "telepathic" interruptions of Eve)
delivers the same "romantic" speech about having always
known her. "You seem to go way back," he croons. "I
see you here but at the same time, further away and
253
still further away, way, way back always ..." The
horse's nudges the back of Charles's head, underlining
the "non-original," derivative status of the whole
scene. Eve is also playing her own female part, sharing
in some of the parodic excess by pretending to admire
the sunset to the extent that she is "overcome" and has
to get off her horse.
Later, in the train stateroom scene, Eve and
Charles are on their honeymoon and still embroiled in
the narrative of Eve's revenge plot. Eve as spectacle
shows up again, luxuriously arrayed in a bridal
negligee, in a room which Sturges describes as "the
stateroom of all staterooms. It is necessarily small,
but oh my!" (Five Screenplays 493). Again, the excess
of such luxury dovetails with the excess of Eve's
promiscuity. No sooner has Charles arrived than Eve
starts laughing and discloses her earliest indiscretion.
Charles, on the other hand, is excessively prudish, and
in a marvelously orchestrated speech of moral probity
(accompanied by Wagner's Tannhauser, no less) grants her
her forgiveness: "If there is one thing that
distinguishes a man from a beast, it is the ability to
understand . . . and understanding, forgive. Surely the
qualities of mercy, understanding and sweet forgiveness
Charles is interrupted by Eve and literally has to
yell out the last two words of his speech. The thunder
and lightening which take over from Tannhauser accompany
Eve's startling revelations of one after another lover.
The sign that briefly flashes by us as we see an
external shot of the train says, "Pull in your head,
we're coming to a tunnel." Like Christ descending into
hell, Charles is doing battle with Eve aboard a speeding
train rushing into a mock Hades of female excess.
Jean/Eve, in putting on an act, accomplishes her revenge
as Charles furiously exits the train. The immediate
violence of Charles's fury is dissipated in his comic
fall in the mud. However, Eve's reaction shot to
Charles is sober and reflective, releasing the film from
Jean's narrative to the thematic discourse of "true
love." But in the "reunion" of Jean and Charles aboard
ship, the question of Jean's identity, unresolved for
Charles, is knowingly put off. Charles and the camera's
"gaze," therefore, still catch her "in the act."
THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK
The most clearly gender-specific targets of parody
in The Lady Eve, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and
Unfaithfully Yours are the subjects of romance,
innocence, motherhood and marital infidelity. But
whereas The Lady Eve operates on woman's control of
255
gaze, plot and knowledge, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
operates despite both genders' lack of control over
these elements.
This "lack of control" is most obvious in the
characters of Trudy Kochenlocker (Betty Hutton) and
Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), the film's "romantic
leads" (a parodic misnomer, given that neither seem to
"lead" anything). The narrative resolution hinges on a
miraculous improbable or "magic" intervention, as it
does in Sturges's The Palm Beach Story, Hail the
Conquering Hero, and Christmas in July. But the miracle
of this film's title is a parodic miracle in more ways
than one. Critics in general note that the "miracle" is
a parody of the Virgin birth and the Christmas story,
which it undeniably is, but the crux of the gender
parody in this picture seems to come in what one critic
termed the miracle's "biological extravagance. 1 1
A frame story opens with the delirious chaos of
Morgan Creek's newspaper editor and music store owner on
the phone. Sturges parodically uses the stars of his
1940 film, The Great McGinty, as both judge(s) and jury
of the ''incredible'1 tale. Governor McGinty (Brian
Donlevy) and the "Boss" (Akin Tamiroff) thus learn what
the "miracle" is before we do, while we become the
spectators of the events leading up to it. Trudy, a
well intentioned, "good-time" girl, literally "bumps"
into marriage and motherhood by stealing away (with
Norval1s "suckered" help) to a good-bye party for the
"clean, decent young men" going away to war. During the
dance, one of her partners lifts her into the air,
crashing her head into a light fixture. This, rather
than the copious "lemonade,” is the excuse for her
slurred speech and loss of memory the next morning when
she drives Norval's battered car back to the movie
theatre where she has left him. She soon remembers that
she has married a G.I., probably by the name of Ratzky-
Watzky, but since the marrying couple gave false names,
there is no way to ascertain the marriage, and no
certificate. The hope that it is all a dream is dashed
when she discovers that she is pregnant. Eventually
confessing her problem to the love-sick Norval, the two
come up with a scheme to get married, which lands Norval
in jail for impersonating a soldier, among other
charges. Norval escapes, but the comic jail break and
bank robbery causes Trudy's father, the town constable
(William Demerest) to lose his job. The family
conveniently moves away. Norval returns six months
later, and is caught again. As Trudy goes back to
Morgan Creek to explain her secret and save Norval,
labor pains hit her and she becomes the mother of
257
sextuplets on Christinas Day. Through the agency of
Governor McGinty, the two are deemed married, Norval
"becomes" the babies' father, and is awarded his yearned
for military status.
In his analysis of 1930's comedies, romantic and
"screwball," Stanley Cavell remarks that the absence of
the mother in the genres "continues the idea that the
creation of the woman is the business of men" (Pursuits
of Happiness 57) . In Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Trudy's
mother is gone, and as she argues with her father about
going to the dance, she wishes that "Mama was here."
Officer Kockenlocker echoes the sentiment, implying the
strain of being "father and mother both" (Demerest, by
the way, most notably begins wearing the apron which
later became one of his distinguishing marks in his role
in the sixties television sit com, My Three Sons). But
rather than shape and control her— or her precocious
sister Emmy (Diana Lynn)--he is confused and baffled by
them. In fact, the idea of the father's control of the
daughter (certainly one of the comic tensions between
Colonel Harrington and Jean) is not only mocked in the
film's many dizzying verbal and physical exchanges, but
also completely reversed as Trudy's "surprise package"
makes it clear that the "creation of men" is finally the
"business" of women. Indeed, as one of the newspaper
258
headlines declares after Trudy gives birth, "Platoon
Born in Mid-West."
Trudy repopulates the nation, compensating for the
loss of war. There is no denying that the "biological
extravagance" serves as a kind of redemption both for
her and Norval. Tying Trudy to both Eve and Mary, what
some may read as the oppressive whore/madonna dichotomy,
the "miracle" of Morgan's Creek appears to be one of the
most conservative narrative forces of the film. Trudy's
excess sexuality, displayed by her riotous dancing (if
not drinking) is contained, but in a way, duplicated in
her fecundity. The notion that it was an accident, that
it just "happened" to her not only reinforces her lack
of control but her inherent destiny, the "biological"
aspect of that miraculous "extravagance." Andre Bazin
claimed that the characters in this film "are literally
antiheroes and, as such, are incapable of creating any
events themselves, whether good or bad, for which they
must suffer the consequences" (Cinema of Cruelty 40) .
The label of "antihero" is, as I have previously
discussed in connection with James Thurber, intimately
connected to modernist literary humor and screwball
comedy's "little man," who does battle with the women
and inanimate objects of the vast and often emasculating
comic, cosmic regime. So while this label is perhaps
259
misapplied to Trudy, it fits Norval Jones and Officer
Kockenlocker perfectly, as they unwillingly trip and
fall in the misrule of daughters, "patriotic"
sweethearts, and stray cows in the kitchen.
What I am offering is what I believe to be one
forceful, if somewhat simplified, feminist criticism of The
Miracle of Morgan's Creek. In competition with such a
reading is Sturges’s parody of sacred "miracles," and his
satire of the "small-town morality" that makes such a
miracle necessary. "Is Marriage Necessary?"--the question
that lurks in the background and interstices of Sturges's
comedies, returns like a lost, comic revenant. However, in
this film, the question becomes "Are Miracles Necessary?"
In precocious insight, Emmy explains that the importance
behind being married is not the inherent "rightness" of it,
but how it is perceived: "You can't tell how a town's
gonna take things. A town that can produce a schnook like
Papa. All suspicious and suspecting the worse and
everything."
Conversely, the all-too eager excitement over the
"miracle" is also questioned. In addition to the
exaggerated parody of the newspaper headlines— "Hitler
Demands Recount" and "Mussolini Resigns"--there is the
incidental silliness and chaos of the hospital corridor,
down which fly increasingly ecstatic "prim and proper"
nurses, and the comic doctor, with some long, phallic
eye-piece protruding from his forehead. More
importantly, McGinty and the Political Boss, Sturges's
self-referential, parodic visitors from The Great
McGinty, release a breathless flood of words over the
event. Working as a kind of omnipotent grace, McGinty
is positioned as listener, commentator, and
interventionist in the plot, by virtue of his place in
the frame story. As he listens to the editor of the
local paper in Morgan Creek recount the "miracle," he
alludes to his corrupt and imperfect "godhead" with the
Boss and state by mentioning building dams, bus
franchises and vacant lots for hotels--activities which
highlighted his dishonest rise to power in The Great
McGinty. McGinty also irons out the question of Trudy's
possible bigamy: "She's married to Norval Jones . .
.She always has been."
However, the most important challenge to
"conservative" morality comes in the husbandless mother-
to-be as a subject for comedy. One viewer wrote to
Paramount, "To make a laughing matter out of such a
theme as serious as 'Juvenile Delinquency' or what might
be termed the 'soldiers' problem' is as sacrilegious as
laughing at an act of God" (Kreskin, Letter to Sturges).
Another viewer wrote to a critic who praised the film,
261
"'Convention Busters' of this type are of far greater
danger to the welfare of America than the more obvious
'blockbuster' of current fame" (McCarthy, Letter to
Wanda Hale). In addition, letters from the Hays Office,
and from Paramount's liaison with them, Luigi Luraschi,
indicate that Sturges would have to some very careful
editing, rewriting and camera work in order to make the
film acceptable. Not only were questions of sexual
morality involved, but also the very subject of
pregnancy itself— at the end of her term, Trudy was
filmed with all but her face and head concealed.
There is a very real sense in which this film, like
many the 30's comedies before it, is the product of the
uneasy and sometimes stilted dialogue between comic
outrageousness and censorship. Ed Sikov's comments
about the development of screwball comedy suggest as
much, and interestingly, do so in terms of sexual
parody. He writes:
Screwball comedy simply couldn't have
developed without people like Joseph Breen, a
man who would permit audiences to see Cary Grant
modeling a woman's dress but forbade the
specific verbal expression of Grant's
character's putative neurosis. Had the period
been less repressed, moviegoers might still have
seen Grant holding a gown up to himself and
nodding approvingly, but the underlying tensions
would have been made too obvious (Screwball 43-
44) .
262
The questionable identity of Trudy’s spouse, much like
that of Charles1s spouse in The Lady Eve, allows the
characters of the film--if not its spectators--to play
with an ambiguity that is unsettling, but in Sikov’s
words, "not too obvious." That she is married is
tentatively established, but not immediately. The scene
in which Trudy and Emmy converse builds to the horrible,
though comically understated realization that Trudy has
a curtain ring on her finger, symbolizing a true--if
somewhat farcical--marriage. Yet, even so, there is a
crescendo of "serious," almost melodramatic music as the
film cuts from a medium two-shot of the sisters looking
down at Trudy's ring to a slow, dramatic close-up of
Trudy's left hand twisting in her lap. The next scene
is in the doctor's office, which not only retroactively
confirms that she is married, but that she is pregnant
as well.
Though the picture tries hard to confirm the
"legal" status of her marriage by the sign of its
consummation, the result of the consummation and
concurrent absent of the father releases a counter force
which is the very thing that unsettled viewers and
studio censors alike. Studio correspondence during the
film's production often referred to the need to "get
away" as often as possible from the fact that Trudy is
263
pregnant. This worked, effectively, to limit the number
of times the characters actually mentioned or referred
to her pregnancy. Ironically, of course, her pregnancy
is the premise that drives the entire plot, and it is as
unspeakable as it is unforgettable.
On an apparently less "serious" level, Critics have
noted the names of the characters, wondering how such
obvious puns as "Kockenlocker" could get by the Hays
office. But rather than another example of Sturges's
penchant for funny names, such a pun works as part of a
larger, non-comedic discourse, as do other names such as
"Trudy" (Truly?), "Norval" ("No Valor"?), and "Ignatz
Ratzky-Watzky (or "Zitzky-Witzky"). The first question
of names not coincidentally occurs with the attempted
identification of the father. Not only is the question
of patrimony later at stake, but that of Trudy's "new"
last name. All that she knows is that "it has a 'z' in
it." Dana Polan, in his discussion.of a Blondie comic
strip, notes another significant "Z"--that which Blondie
emits in sleep as she is burrowed next to Dagwood
("Brief Encounters" 176). The "Z" above Dagwood's head
denotes castration, and Polan cites Barthes's famous
explanation: "Z" is the "letter of mutilation . . .an
oblique and illegal cutting edge . . .initial of
castration . . .lack's wound" {S/Z, 113). The "z" is
264
the only thing that Trudy remembers about the name of
the father; his absence may indeed be a double absence
given that he bears "lack's wound."
Even if we decide to qualify Polan1s invocation of
Barthes as playful, Polan's insights suggest that comic
texts work with "serious" issues in ways which question,
rather than dismiss or simply "attack" them. Taken
together with Norval's stuttering, the couple's
invention of a first name for the absent father, and
other examples of miscommunication and evasive rhetoric,
the difficulty of names and naming expands to a general
parody of "speech" acts. Naming as a process or stage
of identity— a strategy meant to ward off "lack"--also
invokes our understanding of the entry into language and
the Symbolic Order. But rather than render all such
theory absurd, the parody of names and naming questions
language's and the social world's power to originate and
also to legitimize.
For once Trudy has left the paternal care of the
doctor and his "medical gaze," she goes to see Mr.
Johnson, the lawyer. He begins by shouting, "Of course
she is married! . . . Marriage is a matter of fact, not
names." But the lawyer's answer doesn't free Trudy or
the spectator from the fact that the "false names" given
at that forgotten ceremony are irretrievable. The
265
frustrated Johnson finally admits that he can't sue or
annul anyone or anything. He needs "real people with
names and corpuses and meat in their bones--I can't work
with spooks." Legally, Trudy runs the risk of having
an unsubstantiated marriage and therefore having a child
that will be branded illegitimate. Once again, Trudy's
sexuality may be in excess of what the law can document.
And, apart from the parody of the Christmas story,
Trudy's pregnancy may even suggest that there was no
father.
But before the film turns Norval into the "adenoidal
4-F" St. Joseph "stuck on the home front" (Corliss 33), it
turns to its climatic attempt to once and for all give
Trudy her "new" last name and the baby an identity. The
comic pressure of the scene results in Trudy's affliction
with stuttering. As the two drive to the Justice of the
Peace, they argue about Ratzsky-Watzsky's first name,
stuttering all the way. When they reach the "Honeymoon
Hotel" where the ceremony is to be performed, they can
barely stand at the counter and utter their names. Yet, in
an instant of respectful clarity, the ceremony begins;
their staggering and stuttering instantly stop--until the
end of the ceremony. But correspondence in the Sturges
papers indicates that Sturges once intended that the
ceremony be played comically. In an inter-office memo,
266
Luraschi writes, "As we have advised you before, we cannot,
under the Code, approve a marriage unless the ceremony is
played straight. Therefore, this material, as now written,
is unacceptable" (11/5/42).
As it is filmed, then, the almost incongruous
"seriousness" of the couple’s vows is most likely a
result of the Code. Nevertheless, the parody of naming,
names and "true identities" ultimately continues.
Norval and Trudy are "found out" because Norval signs
his real name to the marriage certificate. Through the
folly of her confused father, however, Trudy's
certificate is torn up--once again "unnaming" her and
the baby.
The next important parodic scene not only stems
from the absence of a "true father," a marriage
certificate and Norval, but also from the increasingly
obvious presence of that "spook” the Mr. Johnson refers
to. Emmy plays "Silent Night" on the piano (the first
tune we heard from her was the "Wedding March"), Officer
Kockenlocker nails a star to the Christmas tree, and
Trudy sits forlornly in front of the fire, hidden from
view, her tones low and melancholic. Kockenlocker
confronts her, telling her (and us) the import of the
event:
You gotta have more confidence in the
Almighty, or whatever it is that makes the
267
wheels go 'round. And it's almost Christmas.
Where was He born? In a cowshed. You might be
waiting for the President of the United States.
You gotta have more confidence.
This speech is delivered in all seriousness, but only to
be interrupted by Emmy's observations that Bessie the
cow had wandered into the kitchen. As the film suggests
elsewhere, politicians with pretenses to benevolent and
high callings are a dubious lot. The film seems to
somewhat gleefully hit us over the head with hints of
the "spook" (read Spirit) father of Trudy's baby. At
the same time, the parody of namelessness and
illegitimacy is converted into a parody of the Virgin
Birth. This is notable in light of advice to studio
censors that " . . .the word 'miracle' in the title was
bad as it is associated in the minds of religious people
with a serious religious event" (Holman, Letter to
Luraschi). Here, Sturges not only keeps the word in the
title but links it without question to the very
"miracle" held to be most sacred. Of course--despite
the allusion to the President--the idea that Trudy will
remain pure and madonna-like resolves her own
identity/sexuality problem. But in the consecration of
Trudy as mother--however parodic, however at the service
of stabilizing forces, once again returns us to the idea
that "the "creation of men" is the "business" of women.
In the reversal of Cavell's statement, I do not
intend to imply that a mother or a woman who becomes a
mother may achieve some liberating sort of "control"
over men by virtue of her reproductive organs. The
reversal that I see implied in The Miracle of Morgan's
Creek does begin to counter male social-sexual power.
The "miracle" is ridiculous; the fact that it "redeems"
Trudy is also ridiculous. As Richard Corliss writes
about this idea, "They also serve who just stay home and
mate" (34). If Trudy's fate is a parody of biological
destiny, Norval1s entails one of the value assigned to
his antithesis— that valiant, virile man whose chief
calling card is the uniform Norval can never get to fit
him. Norval is not the "real" father of Trudy's babies,
but it is the act, not the essence of that matter which
is important.
There is also a sense in this film that that which
seems accidental, unavoidable, and in a way, "natural,"
is at once undeserved as it is unexpected. Norval, as
the Shakespearean epilogue reads, is one of those who
has "greatness thrust upon 'em." This sense of the
"undeserved" conflicts with the sense of the "natural"
and "deserved" biological destiny of Trudy. But that
Trudy becomes a type of celebrity by virtue of her
motherhood is also somewhat suspect.
269
For who is Trudy before she becomes a mother?
Introduced as "one of the prettiest girls in town" by a
homely young woman wearing sunglasses, Trudy debuts in a
music store lip-syncing to a basso profundo male voice
singing "The Bell in the Bay." The soliders looking for
Trudy pile into the store just as Trudy lips a few
sonorous "Boom Boom's" from behind the counter. There
is a brief cut to a record playing on a phonograph, but
not until the third line of the song. As the song
finishes, the notes get lower and lower and in gestural
mimicry, she sinks, mouth open as the bass voice hits
one of the lowest notes possible. Before she finishes
the song, Norval also enters the store, focusing his
gaze on the source of the resonant voice "booming"
throughout the store. The soldiers crowded around the
counter block him from a complete view of Trudy. When
they leave, he approaches Trudy and asks for some
phonograph needles as a pretext to ask her to the
movies. She explains her promise to go to the dance for
the soliders, and Norval walks away dejectedly,
forgetting his needles and admitting to Trudy that he
doesn't have a phonograph anyway.
It is not accidental that our introduction to the
female and male leads of this film is mediated through
the soundtrack. That Trudy mouths an excessively low
270
male voice is not only a parodic male impersonation, but
the first of the "speech" acts parodied along with
stuttering, absurd names and difficult naming. In The
Acoustic Mirror, her study of the female voice in
psychoanalysis and cinema, Kaja Silverman states that
like its visual analog, the "sonic vraisemblable is
sexually differentiated, working to identify even the
embodied male voice with the attributes of the cinematic
apparatus, but always situating the female voice within
a hyperbolically diegetic context" (45). Silverman
explains that Hollywood films imply "linguistic
constraint and physical confinement" (45) by continually
situating female voices in the interior of the diegesis.
Male voices, conversely, come to be associated with
textual origin and the cinematic apparatus. The
establishing shot of Trudy, however, briefly allows us
to believe that a male voice is anchored to a female
body, and this the body of "the prettiest girl in town."
Silverman analyses a similar moment in Singin ' in the
Rain' (1952), explaining the force of synchronization
and postdubbing, which
perform a supervisory role with respect to
sexual difference, enforcing the general dictum
that female voices should proceed from female
bodies, and male voices from male bodies.
Violations of this dictum are marked as 'comic,'
and are never more than temporary (Acoustic
Mirror 47) .
Silverman uses "comic" here in the sense of that
which is not "serious." Therefore, as a challenge to the
"dictum" it is easily dismissed. Admittedly, Trudy's
performance has a "comic" effect, but in the first few
seconds of the shot it is closer to a sense of "comic"
which entails the parodic. These first few moments are
not only a violation of the "sonic vraisembable," but
also the location of the most important female character
in the film. Before the male voice is anchored to the
phonograph record, are we then witness to a troubling of
the sexual schema? Before Trudy becomes anchored as
definitively female by virtue of her pregnancy, she
plays with fire, however briefly, by issuing forth in a
kind of sonorous male drag. Norval, who we also are
"seeing" for the first time, asks for the phallic--
perhaps fetishistic— phonograph needles and then forgets
them. For a moment we may think that he has no need of
such psychic reinforcement, but then we discover he not
only lacks needles but lacks the entire mechanism with
which to use them. Suggested, of course, is Norval's
lack of control, not only over voice, but also over the
whole of the film's audial apparatus.
Trudy's lip-syncing only briefly exceeds the
parameters of conventional cinematic sexual
differentiation. Yet, like Jean in The Lady Eve, Trudy
272
comes to "stand-in" for an outside authorial voice.
Sturges wrote "The Bell in the Bay," a dirge-like naval
song, specifically for the film. Sturges, in effect,
"sings" through Trudy, identifying with her as the comic
(in the sense of parodic) entertainer. But by "writing"
Trudy into her role as mother, Sturges, the "authorial
voice," or even the "male" sound and visual apparatus
effectively takes Trudy out of the purview of his (its)
identification.
In her analysis of Hitchcock's Rebecca, Silverman
cites Tania Modleski's argument that a "forced
identification" with du Maurier and a "female" authorial
system provided Hitchcock with a subject for one of his
later films, the "'potential terror involved in
identification itself, especially identification with a
woman'" (Modleski qtd. in Acoustic Mirror 210). Despite
its place in comedic genres, Sturges's theoretical
identification with Jean, and to a lesser extent, with
Trudy, though chiefly parodic, contains that "terrific"
element of sexual confusion. Motherhood seems to
clarify Trudy's sexual identity, and perhaps what is
more to the point, circumscribe her "good-time party
girl" excesses. Jean has no such curb, even though her
alter-ego drips with maternal symbology. Again, the
difference between The Lady Eve and The Miracle of
273
Morgan's Creek is that the former runs on the illusion
of control, while the latter, on its lack. Jean makes
things happen, whereas "things" happen to Trudy. Both
may be said to be illusions, however, because as Jean's
"direction" of the film does not give her unlimited
power, Trudy's position as unwilling madonna is not
powerless.
Motherhood, the maternal voice, and the difficulty
of naming and names parodically oppose the Symbolic
Order, entry into language, and the formation of
identity. Silverman summarizes the different meanings
of Kristeva's chora, then quotes her statement, "'the
entry into syntax constitutes a first victory over the
mother, a still uncertain distancing of the mother, by
the simple fact of naming’" (Acoustic Mirror 104-5,
nl4). While they are hardly without language or syntax,
Trudy and Emmy litter their speech with vague references
and deferential, uncertain phrases such as, "if you know
what I mean," "all suspicious and expecting the worse
and everything," or "it starts in the church basement
and goes to the country club and like that." Norval's
stuttering and Trudy's difficulty with remembering names
also suggests that this "victory" over the mother hasn't
been achieved, that they indeed may be closer to a place
and time when that "entry into syntax" hadn't yet been
274
negotiated. Of course, if we take issue with Kristeva's
representation of the mother as "an agency antipathetic
to language and identity" (105) as Silverman does, then
the theme of motherhood as it is played out audially has
quite different implications. Silverman's adaptation of
Guy Rosolato's conception of the "acoustic mirror" is
worth quoting at length:
The notion of 'acoustic mirror' can be
applied with remarkable precision to the
function which the female voice is called upon
to perform for the male subject. Within the
traditional familial paradigm, the maternal
voice introduces the child to its mirror
reflection, 'lubricating,' as it were, the
'fit.' The child also learns to speak by
imitating the sounds made by the mother,
fashioning its voice after hers. . . .even
before the mirror state and the entry into
language, the maternal voice plays a major role
in the infant's perceptual development (80).
In The Lady Eve, Jean's narration and character
voice-overs are signs of this "maternal voice
introduc[ing] the child to its mirror reflection." In
this way, Jean does become as "wise as Mother Eve"; but
her voice molds, "fits," and in a sense, "creates."
Trudy, in an equally parodic fashion, waits for the
"President of the United States," but instead "creates"
an even greater bounty of six male "subjects." Rather
than read her sexual identity as being clarified but
contained through motherhood, we can read it as being
"empowered." But with an understanding of the mother's
275
voice as an usurpation of, and/or an identification with
the father's voice in his role as language instructor,
we can also read Trudy and Eve's roles as mothers as
another potential conflation of male and female
identities. Officer Kockenlocker complains that he is
"father and mother both." Furthermore, as Lucy Fischer
argues, Silverman's likening the mirror phase to a
period in which a male subject can identify with a
mother, implies that this conflicted identity of grown
male comic heroes such as Kockenlocker, is actually a
desire harkening back to the womb. "In envisioning a
female doppelganger in the mirror, the male comic hero
reveals a wish to return to a time of maternal union
when 'all of him’ was 'all of her'1 ' ("Sometimes I Feel
Like A Motherless Child" 69).
Thus, despite Trudy's absent mother, the "creation"
of men ultimately becomes the "business" of women in The
Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Trudy recovers her "maternal
voice" from its initial absence in the first scene of
the film. Jean/Eve begins with it, especially in her
mirror narration. Yet all of this does not remove the
co-existent, always co-present traces of the male voices
and identities in the films' characterizations of its
female leads. In the final analysis, it is difficult to
say that Cavell's original remark has any less bearing
276
on these two films than does the reversal of it in
Trudy's "miracle," or through Silverman's
reconceptualization of the maternal voice.
UNFAITHFULLY YOURS
In Unfaithfully Yours, the grand illusion of
symphony conductor Sir Alfred de Carter's (Rex Harrison)
mastery over more than just his orchestra is a central
tenet. Upon this mastery set up, lost, and regained,
turns the different visual and audial parodies of "high"
and "low" art, gender, and marital infidelity. But as I
suggested in the analysis of Mae West's persona, the
appearance of "control" or lack of it is also determined
through the conventions of genre. For instance, as a
"screwball" comedy, The Lady Eve typically features an
odd or eccentric female lead who drives romantic
courtship while engaging in schemes that also present
obstacles to its conclusion in union (or reunion). The
Miracle of Morgan's Creek, has "screwball" elements, but
to a greater extent that The Lady Eve, is a farce.
Albert Bermel believes that Sturges conceived of Miracle
as a farce; and farce, he states, "flouts the bounds or
reason, good taste, fairness and what we commonly think
of as sanity" (Farce 21). Indeed, although slapstick
abounds in all of Sturges's films, Miracle has more than
its fair share. Bermel argues that farce shows us
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"human bodies that are indestructible" (23), and being
so "are more than mortal and also less" (24). What
seems particularly true of Miracle is that "all
characters are their creator's puppets" (24). Our first
glimpse of Trudy Kockenlocker lip-syncing is our glance
of the first real "puppet" in the film.
This feature of farce— puppets (and, in fact,
puppeteers)— also figures in Unfaithfully Yours, a
comedy hybrid of melodrama, film noir, slapstick and
black humor. Control is literally orchestrated through
the soundtrack of this picture and through various
audial elements, making it making it most akin to
melodrama. The challenge to this control also comes
through the conventions of film noir--the low camera
angles, dark lightening, and "femme fatale" thematics.
The "lead" in this film takes the strings, so to speak,
even if he is eventually defeated through the broad,
physical humor that assaults his "more than mortal"
body.
Returning from a trip, Sir Alfred is reunited with
his young, beautiful wife, Daphne (Linda Darnell), only
to learn that his brother-in-law, August Henchsler (Rudy
Vallee), has had her tailed. "Keeping an eye on her" is
what August thought Sir Alfred wanted him to do, and
such an activity has symbolic resonance throughout the
rest of the film. Sir Alfred goes to the "private eye"
Detective Sweeney (Edgar Kennedy) and learns that Daphne
may have been unfaithful. At the evening concert, Sir
Alfred conducts Rossini 1s Overture to Semiramide,
Wagner's Overture to Tannhauser, and Tchaikovsky's
Francesca da Rimini, fantasizing during each one of
them. Here he enters into the private theater, the
likes of which Nietzsche (despite the significant "z" in
his name) has the nerve to so heartily condemn. In Sir
Alfred's "descent" into the "low" culture theater, we
witness the melodramatic murder, noble self-sacrifice,
and fierce confrontation with the lovers, only to laugh
ourselves silly when Sir Alfred attempts to execute
these schemes in "reality" and simply ends up in a
tangled mess of living room furniture and telephone
cords. It seems hardly possible, but Sir Alfred
descends even lower into the abyss of what Nietzsche
regards as the nemesis of the "true" artist.
Nevertheless, and for the benefit of the beleaguered Sir
Alfred, the truth comes out, Daphne is exonerated, and
husband and wife are reconciled.
The parody of mastery in Unfaithfully Yours is
intimately connected to a fundamental parody of gender,
in what Judith Butler discusses as Lacan's (failed)
"heterosexual comedy" (Gender Trouble 47). Whereas The
279
Lady Eve and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek highlight
this "comedy" chiefly through the agencies of
"madonna/temptress" characters, Unfaithfully Yours
focuses on the agency of the male subject, a kind of
Father, Adam, and comic anti-hero all rolled into one.
Sir Alfred's wife Daphne (Linda Darnell) is, of course,
the "focus" of Sir Alfred's gaze, and as such, becomes
the most easily identifiable "puppet" in the film.
Butler builds on the theorization and terminology of
Joan Rivere, Mary Ann Doane, and of course, Lacan, when
she writes that all this "'appearing as being' the
Phallus that women are compelled to do is inevitably
masquerade ..." (Gender Trouble 47).
Daphne appears unfaithful. Woman as the beautiful,
young, unfaithful/faithful wife simply seems to take her
place both as spectacle and surface, and as unknown and
likely, treacherous depth. Following Mulvey's
influential theorization, Daphne becomes the erotic
object for all male subjects, screen characters and
spectators alike. One reading of the film is surely
possible: the fear of Daphne's infidelity is safely
(for the male subject) given play in Sir Alfred's
vengeful and self-sacrificing fantasies. Then, in the
traditional comedic denouement, this fear is dismissed
as her fidelity is reaffirmed (and her mystery,
280
demystified). We seem to have a simple upsetting and
resetting of what it means to be "male" both in the
psychic economy and in the cinematic apparatus.
However, two problems complicate this reading:
first, even during his most fervent suspension of
disbelief, the "male" spectator is never far from the
realization that Sir Alfred's fantasies are not really
happening, and therefore Daphne's possible infidelity
may never be punished; second, the extended slapstick
which follows the fantasies and is therefore part of the
film's "real" diegesis makes Sir Alfred into a typical
comic anti-hero, or more bluntly, a buffoon. Andrew
Dickos complained that this comic deflation was
implausible, Sir Alfred "too meticulous" and "refined"
to "bungle a murder plot" (Intrepid Laughter, 126-127).
Dickos' critique privileges consistency and
verisimilitude, and thus loses sight of the main point.
For the character of Sir Alfred de Carter is
Sturges's parody of the notoriously sardonic and
quotable English composer, Sir Thomas Beecham. Sir
Alfred's flamboyant and witty repartee contains
allusions to Beecham's reputed mannerisms, attitudes and
personal history. Perhaps the most direct reference
comes in Sir Alfred's reply to August's "embarrassment"
over the de Carter family business. "I am a
bandleader," Sir Alfred says, and my family's product
has kept England on time since Waterloo." Beecham's
family made their money from the manufacture of
laxatives, and as Elliot Rubenstein points out, de
Carter refers to "Carter's Little Liver Pills" ("Sturges
Folly," 270). Unfortunately, as studio correspondence
indicates, mention of "laxatives" could not be approved
under the "vulgarity clause" of the Production Code (Al
Fisher, Memo).3 In addition to the Code's impinging on
the parody, the remark, "keeping England on time" also
obscures it, since a "bandleader" is popularly held to
"keep time." Rubenstein discusses a few other
references to Beecham in the film, but argues that they
were just too elusive for the audience to catch.
Mainly, however, more than a parody of Sir Thomas
Beecham, Sir Alfred is a parody of Sturges. As a
"bundle of repressed physical violence, that verbal
tornado, that fabricator of outlandish scenarios" (270),
Sir Alfred is yet another "stand-in" for the director,
writer, auteur, and I would add, "creator."
Sir Alfred is conductor and musician both, much as
Sturges is both director and writer. As conductor, he
3This memo also includes lyrics to a commercial sequence
which Sturges had apparently contemplated including in the film:
"Are you Ros-y/ Are you Pink/ Are you Frisk-ky As a Mink/ If
You're Not . . . Try A/ Pot of Wol-fan's Lax-it-tive." The
reference to Wolfans, by the way, is most likely to Sturges's
long-time friends Dr. Bert and Priscilla wolfan.
282
exerts command. As musician, his passion exerts command
over him. Though admittedly simplified, the dialectic
between Sir Alfred's bipartite character organizes many
of the film's thematic and imagistic elements. The film
opens with a wide-angle shot Sir Alfred conducting the
fiery strings and wind-instruments of Francesca da
Rimini. The Tchaikovsky dies away into the rumbling of
a small plane's motor, there is a dissolve to an airport
scene, and the series of events leading to Sir Alfred's
evening concert begins. The opening scene is therefore
non-sequential and almost pure signification: theme,
myth, emotion and gender immediately impact the
spectator. If most fail to recognize the allusion to
marital infidelity in Dante's story of condemned lovers,
Francesca and Paolo, then they may at least note the
register of the "ineffable," and its correspondent
evocation of intense emotion. The camera moves in on
the back of Sir Alfred, his lengthened shadow stretching
ominously over the orchestra. His status as musician
and "emoter" is qualified as one of mastery in every
sense; as Hugo (Lionel Stander), his agent, says in the
following scene, "He isn't a rehearser . . . he's a
hypnotist."
Immediately, however, two forces within the film
begin to undermine this mastery: the parodic, self-
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effacing modesty of the de Carter/Beecham persona, and
his identity as musician--both subject and object of
desire. Hugo's reference to Sir Alfred as hypnotist is
borrowed from the effusive rhetoric surrounding
conductors. In production notes for the film, a
biographical sketch of Toscanini entitled, "I Am Only A
Conductor" reads, "Volumes could be filled with attempts
to explain the power of Arturo Toscanini's art of
conducting. Appraisals have run from strictly technical
analyses to awesome delvings into magic" (Bagan and
Biancoli, 4). In reply to Hugo's comment, Sir Alfred
says, "It's the men who really count. All I do is wave
a little wand a little . . .and out comes the music."
In other words, Sir Alfred claims he is "only a
conductor," but without completely disowning the
comparison to magician, sorcerer or hypnotist. This
parodic humility continues in following scenes, most
notably in the bedroom reunion scene in which most of
the Sir Beecham allusions are made. Daphne and Sir
Alfred are interrupted mid-kiss by his secretary Tony,
who poses a series of fans' questions, such as "Why do
you conduct with a stick?" or "Why do you conduct from a
score?" Sir Alfred's answers are good-naturedly
flippant— because his hands look like "cracked walnuts,"
and "Because I can read music." The latter reply
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supposedly a dig at Toscanini, who often didn't conduct
from a score (Rubenstein, 270).
But most notably, Sir Alfred emphasizes that he is a
musician. "I play the flageolet. Don't forget to tell her
that." Ironically, he joins Daphne in situating himself in
the position of desired object. Daphne's looks at Sir
Alfred in the airport scene reveal her dreamy, sexual
attraction to him, and her comment on Sir Alfred's waving a
"little wand a little," is that the wand is "A little magic
wand . . .dipped in a little stardust." The "little"
phallic allusion is part of the parodic innuendo. It is
also an allusion to Sir Alfred's mastery, to what she
desires in him, and a strange undercut to both, although
the close-up of the "two big heads" seems to emphasize its
love story elements. Mary Ann Doane argues that in the
love story, "Music has an anaphoric function, consistently
pointing out that there is more than meaning there is
desire" (The Desire to Desire 97). However, music, along
with "excessive emotionalism," denigrates the genre. This
denigration, Doane explains,
. . . at least partially explains a very strong
tendency within the genre of the love story to
motivate an apparent over-emphasis on music by
situating its major male character--the object of
female desire--in the role of a musician (The
Desire to Desire 97).
Thus, music may remain integral to the genre while the
respected (male) cultural realm of "Art" lends the
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musician a legitimate role, rationalizing the genre's
emphasis on music. Being a musician not only makes Sir
Alfred Daphne's object of desire, but contributes to his
sense of ego and mastery. He is not, therefore,
"objectified" in the same way Daphne is.
However, as a musician, Sir Alfred may also be
overcome by his passions. In her analysis of music's
"anaphoric function," Doane discusses Jean Negulesco's
Humoresque, and the music's slippage from the diegetic
to extradiegetic level. The Joan Crawford character
places her hands over her ears to drown out the
soundtrack. The music is stopped at the diegetic level,
becoming "subjectivized, psychologically motivated."
Ultimately, Doane argues, music as the "bad object, as
the site of overindulgent or excessive affect is
constrained by its confinement to female subjectivity"
(103) .
The same fluctuation between diegetic and
extradiegetic levels occurs in Sir Alfred's fantasies.
As he begins conducting each of the three pieces, the
camera moves in for the "trick shot") of Sir Alfred's
eye, dissolving into the entry way of his darkened
apartment. The eye is not only the "window of the
soul," here, but also the metonymic symbol of the gaze
and mastery. As we penetrate his eye, entering into his
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conscious fantasy of revenge against the troubling image
of his gaze--the unfaithful Daphne, the music he is
conducting at a diegetic level becomes the extradiegetic
"soundtrack" to his plot. When the piece is about to
finish, only then do we "move out" of his fantasy, the
camera literally back tracking from the close-up of his
eye. Thus, music as "bad object" is confined to Sir
Alfred's subjectivity during the fantasy. He takes the
position traditionally marked for "feminine"
subjectivity.
Therefore, the fluctuation between Sir Alfred's visual
and audial role as conductor and musician is sexually
differentiated. This play between gendered excesses of
mastery and indulgence continues in the thematics of "high"
and "low" culture. Rubenstein writes that many of
Beecham's famous remarks were too "scatological" or
"scandalous" to escape the Code, but Sturges picks up on
Beecham's irreverence in more of Sir Alfred's disarming
sarcasm about music. Tony tells Sir Alfred about a
"citizen" who wants to establish the "Carter Foundation for
the Diffusion of Serious Music," and Sir Alfred declares,
"Throw him out! There's nothing serious about music. It
should be enjoyed flat on the back, with a sandwich in one
hand, a bucket of beer in the other, and as many pretty
girls around as possible."
Later in the film, his good-natured posturing
transforms into snobbish indignation. He discovers that
Detective Sweeney is a music aficionado. Sweeney
instantly recognizes the conductor in his shop and
launches into the following encomium: "For me, nobody
handles Handel like you handle Handel. There's you up
here [he raises his hand], and then . . .there's nobody.
No second, no third, maybe way down here Arturo, a poor
fourth. Sweeney even tries to correct Sir Alfred’s
malapropism "footpad," only to receive a severe rebuke.
Sir Alfred is offended by the Sweeney's pretenses to be
arbiter of "high" culture and immediately attempts to
re-establish the split, contradicting his earlier
remarks to Tony and Daphne: "I had always like to
believe that music had moral and antiseptic powers quite
apart from its obvious engorgement of the senses which
elevated and purified its disciples, lifting them out of
and above professions like yours." A production note to
this scene indicates that Sturges required Alfred's
voice to be the "important part" during the close-up of
Sweeney's face as he listened to Sir Alfred's mini
diatribe (Note on Reel 4). As it is cut and dubbed,
Alfred's voice is meant to censure and lecture,
disembodied, even if only momentarily, as we see
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Sweeney's puzzled and hurt face; it is a solemn
pronouncement.
Sweeney compassionately reads Sir Alfred's
misdirected anger and remarks on the vulnerability of
men to the love of women. But his identifying and
replacing the "true" source of offense for the two men
only emphasizes women's place as yet another agency of
the amoral, "low culture" world in which Sweeney
resides. In a later reaction shot of the audience after
the particularly lugubrious Tannhauser overture, Daphne
is crying, as are the lower class clowns, Sweeney and
his friend the tailor. Their "senses" have obviously
been "engorged," and Sir Alfred's face registers a mark
of disgust before he turns away and heads offstage for
his break. Music becomes the "bad object" again, only
this time as it is anchored to the feminized,
unsophisticated, "low" culture patrons out of place in
this grand arena of high art.
That "culture" is sexually differentiated has
already been noted by Nietzsche, Sturges's biographers
and James Agee. In a review of Hail the Conquering
Hero, Agee argues that Sturges's films are "images" of a
"neurosis" afflicting America at the time; namely, "the
stranglehold wedlock of the American female tradition of
'culture,' and the male tradition of 'success.'" (117).
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From this understanding, Agee concluded that Sturges had
a "permanently incurable loathing for everything that
stank [sic] of 'culture'" (117). That "high" culture is
feminized complicates the dichotomy set up in
Unfaithfully Yours; at least, as far as Sir Alfred's
position of elite, cultural master is concerned. What
it actually suggests, however, is that the "split" is
always already shifting and slipping. Nietzsche, and
other modernist thinkers such as Adorno, were
disgruntled with Wagner's idea of the spectacular
Gesamtkunstwerk, and condemned theatrical performances
enacted by cinema and the indulgences of opera (Bordwell
33). Nietzsche characterized such popular theater
through a string of lively but pejorative terms:
No one brings along the finest senses of his art
to the theater, least of all the artist who
works for the theater--solitude is lacking;
whatever is perfect suffers no witnesses. In
the theater one becomes people, herd, female,
pharisee, voting cattle, patron, idiot—
Wagnerian . . . (Nietzshe Contra Wagner 665-
666) .
Either as conductor or as musician, Sir Alfred cannot
escape a fundamental sexual ambivalence— "feminized" in
some quarters, "masculinized" in others.
Sweeney is in a similar position: privileged as a
"private eye" watching over Daphne, and once himself
betrayed by a woman, he joins the discourse of mastery
and the male subject's fearful relationship to the
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potentially castrating woman. But as apparently "low
culture," comic buffoon who indulges in the excess of
music, he also lacks restraint. Though unlike Sir
Alfred, he puts on no act, cries unashamedly, and thinks
nothing of the propriety of his music appreciation.
Sturges's self-parody in Sir Alfred seems most marked by
the ambivalence he purportedly felt between his days
hearing Wagner and his days running a business, an
ambivalence played out in Sir Alfred's position as a
musician, and in his position as heir to a capitalist
fortune.
Thus, the first half of the film not only sets into
action Sir Alfred's suspicions of Daphne, but also the
conflict of the various "gendered" aspects of his own
identity. In the second half of the film, Sir Alfred
combats these suspicions in his fantasies. Plunging
into the consciousness of Sir Alfred interiorizes the
film, emphasizing an almost claustrophobic world of male
subjectivity. During this sequence, spectators are most
aware of the visual control exerted over Daphne; her
"appearance" and "being" is more ruthlessly questioned
and more ruthlessly resolved. As orchestrater twice
over, Sir Alfred visualizes not only himself but an
"off-screen," out-of-the room Daphne. For this reason,
the fantasy sequence is the most analogous to the female
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subject's theoretical lack of access to the gaze, both
as cinematic spectator and as pre-Oedipal child before
Lacan's mirror. The emphasis of Sir Alfred's control
over the visual and audial aspects of the film
backfires, however; not only do Sir Alfred's passions
dominate him, but also the libretti to his operatic
overtures ironize and parody his apparent mastery. Of
the three scenarios, the vicious slashing of Daphne's
throat to Rossini's Overture to Semiramide provides the
greatest challenge.
The choice of grand opera in general, and
Semiramide in particular continues the film's struggle
to maintain a male protagonist's masculinity while
allowing him to indulge in excess. Opera, coded as
socially acceptable and indeed socially elite, is
actually nothing more than melodrama's "refinement."
Peter Brooks notes in his analysis of Bouchardy’s Les
Enfants trouves, "melodrama finds one possible logical
outcome in grand opera (which did in fact use many
libretti from melodrama), where melody and harmony, as
much as words, are charged with conveying meaning" (The
Melodramatic Imagination 49). Ostensibly, opera allows
a shift from the emphasis on the moral articulation
possible in the excesses of words and histrionic acting,
to music itself. We can now evaluate the spectacle and
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drama on the basis of the quality of the music (its
singers, musicians, and conductor) and therefore
reappropriate it from emotion-based criteria to
aesthetically ruled and ordered criteria.
David Bordwell writes that "the most important
influence upon Hollywood film scoring. . was that of
late nineteenth-century operatic and symphonic music,
and Wagner was the crest of that influence" (Classical
Hollywood Cinema 33). In addition, to keep production
costs low, producers and studio executives gravitated
toward music already in the Public Domain. A list of
such "cheap" music which includes both Rossini's
Semiramide and Wagner's Tannhauser can be found in
Sturges's production notes for the film (Tresselt,
Memo). However, in choosing the piece by Rossini,
Sturges also may have been following the judgment
contained in the "Program Notes" to the Toscanini
concert. Bruno Ussher writes that the "'Semiramide1
overture served to remind listeners that [Rossini's]
almost forgotten opera provides ample ground to esteem
the composer of the hilarious 'Barber' as creator of
seriously and powerfully dramatic music" (9). Sir
Alfred's posturing would of course be more suitable to
the "serious" rather than "hilarious" Rossini, as well
as be more acceptable as "high" art.
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As the Rossini and Sir Alfred's fantasy begins,
Daphne is closest to the camera, centered in the mise en
scene in a dark and bejewelled evening gown. Sturges'
temporary script directions following this crucial
opening shot are true to the film:
Daphne does not look the same as she did
the last time we saw her. Her make-up is a
little more obvious . . . Her eyes more heavily
beaded. She seems to have much less character
than before . . . She looks cheaper . . .She
looks like an unfaithful wife . . . Sir Alfred,
on the other hand, looks, if anything, handsomer
than before (Script, 86-87).
Daphne becomes pure image; her "unfaithful" depth is
easily imaginable, as she never meets Sir Alfred's eyes
or turns her body from its statuesque position in the
mise en scene. Her glance shifts, diffuses, appears
deceitful, as opposed to Sir Alfred's circling, pointed
scrutiny. After proposing that his secretary, Tony (the
suspected seducer) take her dancing for the evening, he
watches her delight as she practically skips out of the
room. The Rossini Overture, engaged in its dominant
theme, a light and quick staccato melody, comes to a
sudden but delicate crescendo as she leaves. Sir Alfred
thus deploys the plot by which he viciously murders
Daphne and successfully frames Tony. It is significant
that he does so by sound: speeding up his voice on a
home-recording unit, he records her "screams," then
intersperses the record among her personal favorites
294
over the turntable. Duly played after Alfred has left
the room, these screams cause Tony to stumble into her
room where he is later found by the hotel police. The
trial scene ends with Sir Alfred's triumphant laughter
at Tony's death sentence. Back in the concert hall, Sir
Alfred angrily laughs as he brings the Overture to a
close.
The original libretto to Semiramide was taken from
Voltaire's Semiramis (1748), and is another of the voix
du sang topos, in which "parents and children and
siblings are irresistibly drawn to one another despite
mistaken and lost identities" (Brooks 45). In this
case, the recently widowed Egyptian queen, Semiramide,
is pressured to chose a new monarch to the throne, and
unbeknownst to her, ends up choosing her long lost son,
Ninias, who has come back from an obscure past as the
Scythian commander, Arsace. Through a series of
complicated events, Arsace must descend into the tomb of
his dead father, Ninus, where he discovers his true
identity. The "unknown victim" he is destined to kill
is a rival for his mother. However, in the original
version of the libretto (which, apparently, was never
performed), Arsace meets his mother in the tomb--the and
slays her with his father's sword ("Synopsis of the
Action," 8-12).
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Peter Brooks argues that the voix du sang topos
belongs to the "realm of signs that organize and
decipher the world," and that here, there is "a
substratum of irreducible moral sentiment that can be
called upon to act toward recognition or self-betrayal"
(45-46). As the opera came to be performed, there were
no actual- killings, but in the aborted Oedipal construct
of the original libretto (where Arsace kills, but does
not marry his mother), Sir Alfred's fantasy finds its
reverberations, though, identities are conveniently
collapsed and intensified. The old seducer becomes the
young (Tony), and the (dead) husband (son and father)
kills his wife (mother and daughter) because she has
betrayed him. Thus, it seems Sir Alfred's "joke" on
this universe and the world succeeds. He castrates his
castrater, and more importantly, he obliterates all sign
of the frightening lack (the object of his gaze, the
camera's gaze); our "male" gaze disappears, collapses in
upon itself.
The musical allusion which counters Sir Alfred's
pretenses is the "repressed" voix du sang topos of the
Semiramide libretto. It apparently gets its
"condensed" play, however, in the Orestian twist to the
classic Oedipal drama: the son and father gets to marry
his wife and daughter as well as kill her. On the other
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hand, the aspect of the libretto which gets diminished
play is the strength of Semiramide's desire for the
young Arsace, and her very different status from Daphne
as a reigning queen who, though pressured to chose by
the gods, nevertheless has the power of choice in the
first place. Daphne is a desired object, not a desiring
subject. This traditional "bind" reaches its excess in
the first scenario when an extreme close-up of Daphne's
face as she sits on her dressing table, a three-way
mirror reflecting her profile, encompasses the whole of
the screen. At this moment, she is on the phone with
Tony, (while Sir Alfred is off-screen) gleefully
arranging the liaison Sir Alfred has suggested. Her
closing tones of desire, the "un-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,"
she reiterates, falls into contrapunctual time with
three sustained measures of the Rossini. But Daphne's
power of desire is also reduced to the power to
castrate. Needless to say, this "power" is strictly
regulated by the dictates of the Freudian paradigm: it
is translated in terms of its outcome, not in its status
as desiring itself. The urge to bring the power to
closure (castration, marriage) makes the act of desiring
an intermediate stage. To allow it play as an
indefinite would be to emphasize its possibility for
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female agency, and its suggestion of female
subj ectivity.
It is interesting to note that Sturges "intended"
to call attention to Daphne's lack of will and control,
and that apparently, some viewers of the film understood
this. One particularly astute fan wrote that she
appreciated:
. . . the stiff, marionettish quality of Lady
Daphne in all the fantasy sequences. Most
directors would have made the mistake of having
Tony and she really act, instead of being what
the other figurines in one's own heroic dreams
always are— lay figurines responding in the
exact words which will give us our cue to be
magnificent (Palmer, Letter).
Sturges wrote back that what he most liked about the
picture was "the marionette-like behavior of the other
characters in Sir Alfred's prospects" (Letter to
Palmer). He also pointed out that no other critic or
reviewer had yet noticed this. Even without this
"intentional" "support," however, it becomes clear that
Unfaithfully Yours, as do The Lady Eve and The Miracle
of Morgan Creek, turns its various characters into
puppets, more or less alluding to the idea of a
"master," creator or puppeteer pulling the strings.
Palmer's reference to "real" acting alludes to the
"seamless" illusion of Linda Darnell's performance in
the rest of the film. It also emphasizes that Daphne,
at her most feminine and treacherous, is involved in a
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type of masquerade. In this sense, we have that
"parodic repetition of gender" which Judith Butler
writes "exposes" the "illusion of gender identity as an
intractable depth and inner substance" (Gender Trouble
146) .
The parody of Sir Alfred's mastery in the fantasy
sequence is thus inescapably a parody of his--and his
wife's— gendered identity. And even if the audience
misses the "marionette-like" quality of Daphne’s and
Tony's performances in the fantasies, the slapstick
sequence which follows them eliminates any doubt that
Sir Alfred himself is indulging in a masquerade of self-
sufficient, "masculine" poses. But even before the more
obvious comic deflation, another parody of mastery is
attempted from within the Semiramide scenario. After
Daphne is killed and Sir Alfred is in the process of
setting Tony up, the Overture stops and is replaced by
another classical piece. Sir Alfred turns on Daphne's
gramophone (which will later play her mimicked screams
of "Murder! Murder! Tony! stop! Stop!) and a jazz parody
of the soundtrack drowns out its target original at the
extradiegetic level. This is the music Daphne plays
while she is dressing for Tony, or so Sir Alfred tells
him. In actuality, Daphne's vocal "resurrection"
doubles Sturges's resurrection of the parody; as she
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lies dead, the voice of "feminine" popular culture— a
desemanticized "voice," but a disembodied voice
nonetheless--becomes the voice of the dead. We hear
Daphne reappropriating and subverting the musical
register which was just recently sustaining the
"mastery" and "serious drama" of the Rossini piece. For
those who have ears to hear, the "dead" protest. The
trace of a "female" voice, as an agent of popular "low"
culture and as feminine "desiring" counters the Master's
voice.
But despite the subtle parodies within the
fantasies--and maybe because they are too subtle--the
film "resorts" to the physical comedy prevalent
throughout all of Sturges's films. As soon as the
concert is over, Sir Alfred rushes home alone. The
object of his "look" now becomes the home-recording unit
which he used to imitate Daphne's screams. Breaking
several wicker chairs, he proceeds looking through high
cabinets, always to be met by the inexplicably present
glass heads that have no other function than to break
and to look like his head in the earlier 1 1 trick-shots" .
By the time he finds the unit, he has trashed the
apartment. Every time he knocks the telephone over, a
female voice blurts out, "Hello? Do you want a number?
Who is this!" Unlike in the Rossini plot, he cannot
300
manipulate his voice to sound like Daphne's (he can
barely operate the recording unit), but instead,
produces an ominous, ridiculously low-pitched groan
which fills the apartment just as Daphne and Tony walk
in.
The sequence described above reveals his diminished
"look" evidenced in his delayed and ultimately deferred
search. That he cannot appropriate a female voice is
significant, as are the two voices that interrupt him
through the telephone: first, as we know, the telephone
operator; secondly, and more importantly, Daphne, who
concludes after his difficulty speaking, "He sounds like
a sick dog!" Again, we may read this as the comic anti-
hero's classic defeat by mechanical objects and women;
but we may also conclude that when feminine voice is
denied a body, its voice works through inanimate
objects, becoming, not a force to be reckoned with
alongside of things, but one that will appropriate and
struggle (usually successfully) through such things.
Correspondingly, the comic sequence parodies Sir
Alfred’s loss of control, as well as appealing to
clearly extradiegetic musical parodies the three
Overtures, especially Semiramide. The female voices that
interrupt Sir Alfred's search works towards the same end
as the "boogie woogie" version of Semiramide: to render
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the Master's gaze improbable and defective, and to
reappropriate the power of the "repressed"--Semiramide's
voice. His passing in Lacan's mirror phase, occurring
in his ennobling and fulfilling "prospects," abruptly
evaporates as past illusion--for him, for the
spectators. Paraphrasing E.-Ann Kaplan, Joanna Rapf
identifies what is so crucial about comic film's
treatment of the mirror phase:
. . .The gaze in comic films usually belongs to
the male; he controls the point-of-view of the
camera and has the power to act on the gaze
whereas the woman does not. But--and this is
significant--comic films do not give back to the
male spectator 'his more perfect mirror self.'
The Lacanian mirror phase works only in
inversion here, for comic effect ("Comic Theory"
195) .
However, Sir Alfred's motor and vocal incapacity
also allow the male spectator a comparatively superior
notion of himself, much as Freud theorized in his
discussion of the "comic of movement" (Jokes 190-194).
Yet even so, Sir Alfred's trouble with female voices
does suggest a problematic relation to the mother’s
voice in Silverman's use of the "acoustic mirror" theory
of early subjectivity. I would also add to Rapf's
comments that the "comic effect" which is the result of
inversion of the mirror stage identity formation, is
more nearly a parodic effect, and as such, is not only
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meant to be laughed at, but also to be referenced back
to that which it is not: seamless, gendered mastery.
The film ends in comedy's classic reunion: Daphne
embraced by Sir Alfred, her face in a loving, filtered
close-up, shot from over Sir Alfred's shoulder. But
Daphne makes a slip of the tongue, as she professes her
devotion to Sir Alfred: "I know what it's like to be a
great man--I mean, really I don't ..." The ambiguous
statement plays between a distance from a differently
gendered subjectivity, and an allusion to a time when
that subjectivity had been imitated or possessed. But
then, Daphne never comes close to donning a "male" drag.
In fact, that seems to be the dilemma with most of
Sturges's films in the deployment of their gender
parody--it is too subtle. Daphne's statement, best
described as a confused empathy, most imitates
Semiramide place as desiring subject. In other words,
"to be a great man" means to have subjectivity. Or,
more simply, it means to have control, choice and
responsibility; something Semiramide, as Queen, seems to
have more of than does Sir Alfred.
The closure of comedy in heterosexual union
ultimately seems to have disproportionate power over the
instability of gender identity and the access to and
control of subjectivity. Why, for instance, must the
"closing" shot have the determining blow? Is it truly
"closing?" In Unfaithfully Yours, the last embrace
between lovers echoes the first. A circle is closed,
but it also goes on indefinitely. Sturges1s continual
return to the question, "Is Marriage Necessary?' in all
its permutations ("snakes," "miracles," and indirectly,
"sex") satirically displaces what we know will
inevitably come. But the tendency to evaluate the
parodic elements, especially that of gender, in terms of
an overwhelming socio-economic institution seems short
sighted. In the three films analyzed in this chapter,
the characters whose gender identities are most called
into question all "end up" married. This does not,
however, erase audial and visual impressions of the play
of, and against gender "stereotypes" and gendered
"realities."
Though most critics agree that Sir Alfred is
Sturges most blatant example of self-parody, I have
tried to show that other cross-gender parodies of
Sturges as director--in mastery--operate in The Lady Eve
and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. In all three films,
the themes, images and cinematic structures of control
are sexually differentiated. They also may be rendered
as illusions. In The Lady Eve, the "lady" seems to have
all of the control--taking what is the traditional
"male" position; in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek,
neither female or male lead has control over their
destiny, gender, lack or excess thereof; and in
Unfaithfully Yours, the male lead seems to have all of
the control. Ultimately, whether these "leads" unite in
marriage or not does not change the fact that the
control which sutures and grounds identity is an
illusion. And it is this illusion which makes the
shifting acts of gender possible.
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Conclusion
This study set out to address two questions of the
work of Mae West, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, and
Preston Sturges: first, to what extent and ends are
notions of essential gender parodied and destabilized?
and second, given the "battle of the sexes" theme of the
modernist period, how are power and issues of
subjectivity and agency defined within comedic
economies? In the following pages, I will briefly
suggest a few ways in which the preceding chapters
answered these questions.
Mae West not only "wrote out" her image, her
gender, and her sexuality, but also performed it.
Critics such as Robert Allen and Marjorie Rosen argue
that her film comedy was thus based on the parody of a
"turn-of-the-century sausage," a playful (if somewhat
demeaning) self-parody of shimmering surfaces and bawdy
lines. On the contrary, West's performance was gender
parody, clearly and understandably heralded as "camp" by
her gay following and by later critics. Her clothes,
bodily gestures, vocal and verbal inflections all
alluded to an excess sexuality, which she employed, not
as a qrotesque or clown, but as a viably "sexy" and
shrewd woman who shaped standards of beauty to fit her
"shape." Her camping and excesses questioned the ideal
306
vision of womanhood and parodied the Venus de Milo
paragon even as she purported to be it. And yet, her
artifice allowed ambivalence. The cultural work of her
writing, gestures and "image" suggest that "Mae was
really a man," but the entrance of her persona into the
demands of genre, and specifically, the multiple lover
theme, countered that masculinization. Her persona was
not "subject to" a "feminine" desire, but "subject of"
one. West therefore takes the contradictory place of
this study's most radical "enacter" of gender
ambivalence, while maintaining a position amenable to
goals of a more "essentialist" feminism. Ruthlessly
commanding the subject position of jokes and one-liners,
West also played a "real" woman, turning the traditional
"joking" sexual harassment of women by men on its head.
Her heterosexuality was also reinforced by her flagrant
enjoyment of men, which, instead of being a "compromise"
of her "drag" or any other radical agenda, was arguably
the very cause of her decline in the conservative film
industry.
James Thurber's Walter Mitty, Mr. Monroe, and other
"little man" figures, though culturally and historically
recouped by modernist critics into a aesthetically
valid, "serious" tradition, render notions of maleness
preposterous through cliche and exaggeration. If
Thurber added a "darker interiority" to his version of
the comic antihero found in both American film and
humor, that "interiority" was far from a "real," or more
radical "inner" self. Constructed from parody,
melodrama, and "high" modernist texts, the little man's
c-enter is shifting and hodgepodge; it is not simply a
comic reversal of tragic or angst-ridden modern
consciousness, or a bathetic example of the "trivial"
exalted to the "serious," but a layered mixture
producing something hazy and diffuse, uncentered. This
is not to say that Thurber's texts reach the degree of
radical parody that do West's or Parker's. Thurber's
humor allows few places for more historically grounded
and "real" discourses of women’s gender parodies; their
dilemmas are not represented. However, Thurber's big,
little, and "smartly domestic" women are the images
projected by the little man's filtered and myopic
"maleness." We therefore cannot help but question the
sometimes amorphous, sometimes ruthlessly tedious
objects of their vision. Considering their source, we
should.
Conversely, although in the whole of her work she
addresses the married lives of both men and women,
Dorothy Parker most frequently focuses on the lives of
single and married woman. The gender parody effected in
such stories as "A Telephone Call, " "The Waltz," and
"Big Blonde," stresses women's "real" selves in conflict
with their acts or masks. But as I argued based on
theory of "women's speech," and the dialogism posited by
Bakhtin and elaborated upon by other feminist critics,
uhese "real" selves are themselves "ideal" linguistic
postures. The speaker's "real" self is constructed from
"ideally" clever and literate speech. In "A Telephone
Call," this bifurcation between the ideal and real is
less noticeable, but in the speaker's recitation of the
"rules" of romantic etiquette, we find the rehearsal of
yet another gendered "act." Still, these "real" selves,
and the emotions they evoke through social and psychic
situation, "give" the reader something with which to
identify; they mimic, "portray" or otherwise represent
cultural, and by implication, historical instances of
women's sufferings. Because the gender parody working
in Parker isn't radical enough to eliminate the category
of women’s experience, women speakers frequently "speak"
or "express" their anger; in lyrics, the brevity and
structure of rhyme and rhythm at once emphasizes the
"stylized" nature of the speech and underscores an
illusion of concise, and therefore "heartfelt"
expression. The speaker's anger in "Indian Summer"
seems unmediated by double-voiced discourse:
But now I know the things I know.
And do the things I do;
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you! (PDP 107)
And yet, as "Big Blonde" and other poems
demonstrate, "real" selves, and real "cores" of emotion
do not liberate women from the act. In "Big Blonde,"
Hazel Morse comes to a stuporous dawning of reason: the
"real" self she has been searching for is a pain-ridden
void, or at best, a "haze." Neither does Death, or a
pretense to nihilism free one from "the" gender act. As
a "dead" body, one is prodded at, shaped, and elegized
by language as fundamentally uncontrollable as the
stereotypic gender which one tries to avoid but cannot
escape. Parker's poems and epitaphs ultimately undercut
the desire for death’s "serious" pretense to finality,
and render it just another act.
In the films of Preston Sturges it is also true
that "anybody can put on an act"; however, whether this
act is a truly fundamental sexual parody is another
question. Thematically, the notion of an "original" is
parodied both in The Lady Eve and The Miracle of
Morgan's Creek; that "Mother Eve" is somehow inherently
a temptress is undermined by Jean's using her symbology
as a pose. Trudy Kochenlocker has no such control over
the gender act imposed upon her; she "bumps" into
biology, and it thus becomes the social necessity of a
310
biological miracle that is satirized. Neither of these
thematic parodies truly destabilize gender. Instead, in
the deep structures of the film, within certain
theorizations of the cinematic apparatus, the Symbolic
order, and the "gaze," we find the first possibilities
for such parody. When Jean looks in the mirror, she
parodies the subject-grounding "male gaze" theorized in
feminist and psychoanalytic theory; on a less
sophisticated level, she works as an analog for the male
director, another instance of self-parody in Sturges's
canon. Similarly, when Trudy produces a male singing
voice, she may be theorized as embodying the normally
disembodied, "male" cinematic register. When she
subsequently gives birth to six male subjects, notions
of the male authority are deconstructed as we posit
notions of Kaja Silverman's "acoustic mirror," in which
the maternal voice shapes and forms the (male) child's
subjectivity. Such complex operations seem to reverse
Stanley Cavell's dictum that, in "screwball" comedy, the
creation of the woman is the "business of men."
Ultimately, however, the prevalent gender parody in
Sturges's films comes to light in Unfaithfully Yours.
It is, again, a case like Thurber's, in which we
encounter the comic antihero's delusions of mastery and
fundamental impotence in a world of objects and people
he cannot control. While Sir Alfred de Carter is
feminized as musician, and other elements of the film
re-create and at the same time "trouble" the gendered
mass/high culture split, the chief parody of masculinity
is through the infamous "gaze." Filmic "trick shots"
augment the master1s eye as he manipulates music and
melodrama within the private theater of his own revenge
fantasies. Slapstick further deflates his illusions of
mastery, as well as the female voices and "jazz" parody
in at the extradiegetic level. Although in comic films,
the "Lacanian mirror phase" supposedly only works in
"inversion," and the "male spectator" does not get back
his "'More perfect mirror self'" (Rapf 195), "male"
spectators nevertheless feel superior to Sir Alfred
according to the operations of Freud's "comic of
movement." And though stereotypes of femininity and
motherhood are parodied in The Lady Eve and The Miracle
of Morgan's Creek, more typically gender parody works on
notions of maleness. As are Thurber's big women,
Sturges's Daphne and her ilk are "unfaithful" puppets,
paranoid visions of a faulty master, as suspect as
"truth" as are his own notions of omnipotence.
As I have demonstrated in my discussion of sexual
parody, feminist film, Freudian and Lacanian theories
define terms of power and issues of subjectivity which
312
may be raised within milieus outside of the psychic
economy. Genre theories of romantic and screwball
comedy also define power and agency in terms of
narrative control, and the drive toward heterosexual
union. In Sturges's Unfaithfully Yours, Sir Alfred's
illusions mastermind, to a large extent, the plots and
narrative of the film, while Jean seems to do the same
for The Lady Eve. In The Miracle of Morgan's Creek,
biology in the form of pregnancy and paternity in the
form of Trudy's search for a father drive the narrative,
taking Trudy and Norval along for the ride. What is
most interesting is that though all three films end in
heterosexual union, all of them also begin in marriage--
or in the case of The Lady Eve, achieve it midway.
Indeed, of the four subjects concerned, the films of
Preston Sturges seem to most warrant the criticisms and
accolades belonging to those comedies which either
celebrate the figure of the "runaway" bride or "mystify"
marriage by implying that the "romance" will continue
after the final embrace. But rather than marital bliss,
The Lady Eve parodies romantic love, the Honeymoon,
forgiveness and the "proposal" speech. In one way or
another, characters in both Miracle and Unfaithfully
Yours pose the question, "Is Marriage Necessary?" That
the question is also the title of a fictitious film they
313
have supposedly seen only emphasizes their wry awareness
of, and dubiousness toward filmic unions. As production
correspondence indicates, Sturges would have parodied a
marriage ceremony, but was stopped by censors.
However, where Sturges fails, Mae West succeeds. The
sham marriage and marriage ceremony of My Little Chickadee
is a reminder of the control West exerted over her film
persona's "free wheelin'" sexuality. Furthermore, though
it is true that most of West's films end in a coupling, or
an impending marriage, the presence of "romance" and its
mystification is almost completely usurped by the
circulation of sexual desire, and if anything, the "de
mystification" of the heterosexual union as simply
momentary sexual pleasure. Unlike the figure of the
runaway bride, West "sashays" toward the object of her
desire, rather than running towards it. She certainly does
not "run away" from it (West never runs) except, perhaps,
insofar as she "runs away" from one "object of desire" to
another. West's films are not screwball comedies, but this
fact is only partially responsible for the lack of
marriage’s mystery. The focus of the illusion is almost
certainly in the "camping," and masquerade of West’s
persona. Her working out of the narrative culmination in
union is more the function of her command of her suitors,
most immediately in her simultaneous command of the joke
314
and joking. West's extra-filmic persona, especially in the
form of much quoted her one-liners, is a specific antidote
to the cherished notion that romance equals marriage.
"Marriage is a great institution," said West, "but I'm not
ready for an institution."
But in the work of James Thurber and Dorothy Parker
theories of narrative control and the drive toward union
become less important. Romance, where it exists in
Thurber, is much more likely to be one of the little
man1s delusions. Whereas Sturges adds slapstick and
feverish dialogue to the battle of the sexes, and West
adds cutting innuendo and suggestive body language,
Thurber adds nothing. Marriage for both Parker and
Thurber is an economy of war from the beginning.
Sources of power are defined in a realm of inversion,
where erstwhile "domestic tranquillity" is transformed
into "domestic mystery" controlled by relentless warrior
women. Though Thurber emphasizes the little man's
untrustworthy gaze, readers of his work can still note
that men and women "bounce off" of each other, stark
opposites in Lacan's "failed model of reciprocity";
since men are "diminished" and ineffectual, women are
"formidable" and supremely competent, each taking an
inverted "token" signifying position or "side" in the
struggle.
315
In most of Parker's fiction and poetry, marriage is
likewise an inharmonious battlefield of "trivial" tedium
that threatens to escalate into profound alienation.
Though not addressed in this study, "Here We Are" is one
such story in which a newlywed couple come out from
their corners fighting. Married no more than a few
hours, they quibble on the way to the Honeymoon. More
than violent emotion, the story emphasizes the loss of
illusion and the beginning of their inevitably prosaic
life together. Less comically, "Big Blonde" similarly
reveals marriage as yet another tedious act of gender
for Hazel Morse, leading her to profound isolation. But
for the most part, power in Parker's work revolves
around the issue of emotional and social control; her
speakers attempt to control their less than desirable
situations with the opposite sex through language and
linguistic posturing. But as Lacanian theory has
suggested, the woman is only problematically a "subject"
of language. Moreover, Parker's female characters speak
an ideal "borrowed" speech, participating in an
inevitable dialogism which constructs them and not the
reverse. Still, Parker maintains the illusion of agency
with language, even if it is not always a desired
"possession." As I discussed with poems such as "Song
of Perfect Propriety" (PDP 103), the lyric unfavorably
compares the writing acts of "little ladies" to the
romantic, swashbuckling adventures of an active male
world. Though the alternative to writing poetry is
cliched and somewhat parodic, the lyric voice wistfully
gestures towards yet another realm outside words, and
outside the gendered speech and "trivial" acts of the
less than powerful.
317
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University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.
326
Martin, Linda, and Kerry Segrave. Women In Comedy.
Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1986.
Mast, Gerald. The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
McCarthy, Frank. Letter to Wanda Hale, critic, New York
Daily News. 20 January 1944. Preston Sturges
Collection, Box 40, Folder 29. Department of
Special Collections, University Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles.
McEvoy, J.P. "Letter to Mae," n.p., n.d. Mae West
Clippings File, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
Mellencamp, Patricia. "Situation Comedy, Feminism and
Freud." Studies in Entertainment. Ed. Tania
Modleski. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press,1986.
Modleski, Tania. "Femininity as Mas(s)querade: A
Feminist Approach to Mass Culture." High
Theory/Low Culture, Ed. Colin McCabe. Manchester:
The University of Manchester Press, 1986.
Moore, Richard. "How Heavy is Light?" Parnassus:
Poetry in Review 14.2 (1988): 249-265.
Morsberger, Robert. James Thurber. New York: Twayne
Publishers, Inc., 1964.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema."
Screen 16.3 (Autumn, 1975): 6-18.
Murphy, Gardner. An Historical Introduction to Modern
Psychology, 2nd Ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace &
Company, Inc., 1930.
Neale, Steve and Frank Krutnik. Popular Film and
Television Comedy. London: Routledge, 1990.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Nietzsche contra Wagner. The
Portable Nietzsche. Ed. and Trans. Walter
Kaufmann. New York: The Viking Press, 1980.
327
"Note on Reel 4," ms. Preston Sturges Collection, Box
25, Folder 6, Department of Special Collections,
University Research Library, University of
California, Los Angeles.
Palmer, Muriel. Letter to Preston Sturges, 9 May 1949.
Preston Sturges Collection, Box 43: Unfaithfully
Yours, Folder 46, Department of Special
Collections, University Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles.
Parker, Dorothy. The Portable Dorothy Parker, 1944;
revised and enlarged by Brendan Gill. New York:
The Viking Press, 1973.
_______ . The Ladies of the Corridor. New York: The
Viking Press, 1954.
"Physicians Endorse Mae West Curves." Milwaukee: n.p.,
Oct. 6, 1933. Mae West Clippings File, Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly
Hills, CA.
Pinsker, Sanford. "On or About December 1910: When
Human Character and American Humor--Changed."
Critical Essays in American Humor. Ed. Bedford
Clark and Turner. Boston: G.K. Hall, Inc., 1984,
pp. 184-198.
Polan, Dana. "Brief Encounters; Mass Culture and the
Evacuation of Sense." Studies in Entertainment,
Ed. Tania Modleski. p. 167-187.
_______ . Power and Paranoia: History, Narrative, and
the American Cinema, 1940-1950. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986.
Rainger, Ralph. "A Guy What Takes His Time." She Done
Him Wrong: Production Code File, Mae West
Collection. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
Rapf, Joanna E. "Comic Theory from a Feminist
Perspective: A Look At Jerry Lewis." Journal of
Popular Culture 27.1 (Summer 1993): 191-203.
328
Reitz, Rosetta. Liner Notes. Mae West "Queen of Sex"
Sings Sultry Songs. By Mae West. With Duke
Ellington and others. Rosetta Records, Inc.,
Women's Heritage Ser., RRCD 1315, 1990.
Review of I'm No Angel. Time, 10/16/33, p.34.
Review of Klondike Annie. Time, 3/9/36, p.44.
Review of Pleasure Man. New York Times, 10/2/28:34
(Littell Gabriel).
Riviere, Joan. "Womanliness as Masquerade." Formations
of Fantasy. Eds. Victor Burgin, James Donald, Cora
Kaplan. London: Methuen, 1986. First published:
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol.
10, 1929, pp. 303-313.
Robertson, Pamela. "The Kinda Comedy that Imitates Me":
Mae West's Identification with the Feminist Camp."
Cinema Journal 32 (Winter 1993): 57-72.
Rose, Margaret A. Parody/Meta-Fiction: An Analysis of
Parody as a Critical Mirror to the Writing and
Reception of Fiction. London: Croon Helm, 1979.
_______ . Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-Modern.
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Rosen, Marjorie. Popcorn Venus. New York: Avon, 1974.
Ross, Andrew. No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular
Culture. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall,
Inc., 1989.
Rubenstein, E. "The Home Fires: Aspects of Sturges
Wartime Comedy." Quarterly Review of Film Studies
7.2 (Spring 1982): 131-141.
_______ "Sturges1 Folly: the Fate of Unfaithfully
Yours." Sight and Sound 50 (Autumn 1981): 268-
271.
Russo, Mary. "Female Grotesques: Carnival and Theory."
Femininist Studies/Critical Studies. Ed. Teresa de
329
Lauretis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1986, pp.213-229.
Sarris, Andrew. "Preston Sturges" (1975). The National
Society of Film Critics on Movie Comedy, p. 83-86.
________. (pseudonym Jonsson, Eric). "Preston Sturges
and the Theory of Decline." Film Culture 26 (Fall
1962) : 17-21.
Secor, Robert. "Walter Mitty and Lord Jim." English
Language Notes (Sept. 1987): 74-76.
Sheppard, Alice. "Social Cognition, Gender Roles, and
Women’s Humor." Women's Comic Visions, p. 33-51.
Shokoff, J. "A Kockenlocker By Any Other Word: The
Democratic Comedy of Preston Sturges." Postscript
8.1 (1988): 16-28.
Shumway, David A. "Screwball Comedies: Constructing
Romance, Mystifying Marriage." Cinema Journal 30.4
(Summer 1991): 7-23.
Sikov, Ed. Screwball: Hollywood's Madcap Romantic
Comedies. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1989.
Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice
in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1988.
Sommers, Martin. "Welfare Island Fails to Tame the Wild
West." The News, New York: News Syndicate Co.,
Inc. 1933. Reproduced in: Tuska, Jon. The Films
of Mae West. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1973.
Spoto, Donald. Madcap: The Life of Preston Sturges.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990.
Sturges, Preston. Preston Sturges: His Life in His
Words. Ed. Sandy Sturges. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1990.
________. Letter to Muriel Palmer, 14 June 1949.
Preston Sturges Collection, Box 43: Unfaithfully
Yours, Folder 46, Department of Special
330
Collections, University Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles.
_. Strictly Dishonorable (incomplete playscript,
1929). Preston Sturges Collection, Box 26, Folder
17. Department of Special Collections, University
Research Library, University of California, Los
Angeles.
_. Unfaithfully Yours (Temporary Script, 1/14
48). Twentieth Century Fox.
Films Written and Directed by Sturges:
The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend. Dir. Preston
Sturges. Screenplay by Sturges, based on a story
by Earl Felton. With Betty Grable, Cesar Romero,
Olga San Juan and Sterling Holloway. 20th Century-
Fox, 1949.
Christinas in July. Dir. Preston Sturges. Screenplay by
Sturges. With Dick Powell, Ellen Drew, and Raymond
Walburn. Paramount, 1940.
The French They Are A Funny Race (The Notebooks of Major
Thompson). Dir. Preston Sturges. Screenplay by
Sturges, based on the book Les Carnets du Major
Thompson by Pierre Daninos. With Jack Buchanan and
Martine Carol. S.N.E. Gaumont-Paul Wagner, Paris,
1957.
The Great McGinty. Dir. Preston Sturges. Screenplay by
Sturges. With Brian Donlevy, Akim Tamiroff and
Murial Angelus. Paramount, 1940.
Hail the Conquering Hero. Dir. Preston Sturges.
Screenplay by Sturges. With Eddie Bracken, Ella
Raines, and Raymond Walburn. Paramount 1944.
The Lady Eve. Dir. Preston Sturges. Screenplay by
Sturges, based on a story by Monckton Hoffe. With
Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn and
William Demarest. Paramount, 1941.
The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek. Dir. Preston Sturges.
Screenplay by Sturges. With Betty Hutton and Eddie
Bracken. Paramount, 1944.
331
The Palm Beach Story. Dir. Preston Sturges. Screenplay
by Sturges. With Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea,
Mary Astor and Rudy Vallee. Paramount, 1942.
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. Dir. Preston Sturges.
With Harold Lloyd, Frances Ramsden and Jimmy
Conlin. California Pictures Corporation, 1947.
Rereleased as Mad Wednesday, RKO-Radio Pictures,
1950. Reedited by Stuart Gilmore.
Sullivan's Travels. Dir. Preston Sturges. Screenplay
by Sturges. With Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake.
Paramount, 1942.
Unfaithfully Yours. Dir. Preston Sturges. With Rex
Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallee and Barbara
Lawrence. Twentieth Century Fox, 1949.
"Synopsis of the Action." Semiramide. With Joan
Sutherland and Marilyn Horne. Cond. Richard
Bonynge. The London Symphony Orchestra and The
Ambrosian Opera Chorus. Decca Record Company,
1966.
Thurber, James. Credos and Curios. Ed. Helen Thurber,
1962; rpt. New York; Harper and Row, 1983.
_______ ."Interview with Harvey Breit." Conversations
with James Thurber. Ed. Thomas Fensch. Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1989.
________, and White, E.B. Is Sex Necessary? Or Why You
Feel The Way You Do. Harper & Brothers, 1929; rpt.
New York: Harper Perennial Edition, 1990.
________. Lanterns & Lances, 1961. Introduction by
Peter DeVries. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books
Inc. rpt., 1990.
________. Let Your Mind Alone.' And Other More or Less
Inspirational Pieces. New York: Harper & Brothers,
1937.
________, and Nugent, Elliot. The Male Animal: A New
Comedy, 1939. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1968.
332
_______ . Men, Women and Dogs. New York: Harcourt
Brace and Company, 1943. Rpr. with Introduction by
Wilfrid Sheed. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company,
1975.
_______ . The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935. New York: Blue
Ribbon Books, 1946.
_______ . My Life and Hard Times, 1933. New York:
Harper & Row Perennial Library Edition, 1971.
_______ . My World and Welcome To It. New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942.
_______ . The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities,
1931. New York: Harper & Row Perennial Libary
Edition, 1965.
_______ . The Seal in the Bedroom & Other Predicaments,
1932; rpt. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950.
_______ . Selected Letters of James Thurber. Ed. Helen
Thurber and Edward Weeks. Boston: An Atlantic
Monthly Press Book; Little, Brown and Company,
1981.
_______ . The Thurber Carnival. New York: Harper &
Brothers,. 1945.
_______ . "The Unicorn in the Garden." Fables for Our
Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. New York:
Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1940, p. 65-66.
_____ . The Years With Ross. Boston: An Atlantic
Press Monthly Book; Little, Brown and Company,
1959.
Illustrations:
_______ . "Home," from Men Women & Dogs.
Tildesley, Ruth. "Curves! Hollywood Wants Them — And
So Will You!" Motion Picture, July 1933, 34-35.
Tobias, Richard C. The Art of James Thurber. Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1969.
333
Toth, Emily. "A Laughter of Their Own: Women's Humor
in the United States." Ed. William Bedford Clark
and W. Craig Turner. Critical Essays on American
Humor. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1984, pp. 199-215.
Treichler, Paula. "Verbal Subversion in Dorothy Parker:
Trapped Like A Trap in a Trap." Language and Style
13.4 (Fall 1980): 46-61.
Tresselt. Memorandum to Preston Sturges, 16 January
1948. Preston Sturges Collection, Box 25:
Unfaithfully Yours, Folder 6, Department of Special
Collections, University Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles.
Tyler, Carole-Anne. "Boys Will Be Girls: The Politics
of Gay Drag." Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay
Theories. Ed. Diana Fuss. London: Routledge,
1991.
Ussher, Bruno David. "Program Notes to the Overture to
Semiramide." Preston Sturges Collection, Box 25:
Unfaithfully Yours, Folder 6, Department of Special
Collections, University Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles.
Walker, Nancy. "'Fragile and Dumb': The 'Little Woman'
In Woman's Humor, 1900-1940." Thalia. 5.2 (1982-
83): 24-29.
_______ . "Toward Solidarity: Women's Humor and Group
Identity. Women's Comic Visions, p. 57-80.
_______ . A Very Serious Thing: Women's Humor and
American Culture. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1988.
Ward, Carol. Mae West: A Bio-Bibliography. New York:
Greenwood Press, 1989.
West, Mae. Diamond Lil. New York: Macaulay, 1932.
Reprint. New York: Sheridan House, 1949.
_________ . Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It.
Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1959.
334
The Pleasure Man. New York: Dell
Publishing, 1975.
. "Sex in the Theatre." Parade Sept.
1929:12.
Plays:
Chick. Unpublished Play, 1924. Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D.C.
. Diamond Lil. Unpublished Play, 1928.
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division,
Washington D.C.
______ . The Drag. Unpublished Play, 1927,
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division,
Washington D.C.
. Frisco Kate. Unpublished Play, 1930.
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division,
Washington D.C.
. The Hussy. Unpublished Play, 1922. Library
of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D.C.
. Pleasure Man. Unpublished Play, 1928.
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division,
Washington D.C.
. The Ruby Ring. Unpublished Play, 1921,
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division,
Washington D.C.
______ . Sex. Unpublished Play, 1926. Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D.C.
Films:
Night After Night (1932). Paramount. With George Raft
and Constance Cummings. Director: Archie Mayo.
Additional Dialogue: Mae West.
She Done Him Wrong (1933). Paramount. With Cary Grant
and Gilbert Roland. Director: Lowell Sherman.
Based on Diamond Lil; adapted by John Bright and
Harvey Thew.
335
I'm No Angel (1933). Paramount. With Cary Grant.
Director: Wesley Ruggles. Story, screenplay and
dialogue: Mae West.
Belle of the Nineties (1934). Paramount. With Roger
Pryor and John Mack Brown. Director: Leo McCarey.
Screenplay: Mae West; based on her novel, The
Constant Sinner (1930).
Klondike Annie (1936). Major Pictures (Paramount
release). With Victor McLaglen. Director: Raoul
Walsh. Screenplay: Mae West; based on her play,
Frisco Kate (1930).
My Little Chickadee (1940). Universal. With W.C. Fields.
Director: Edward Cline. Screenplay: Mae West and
W.C. Fields.
See also:
Goin' To Town (1935). Major Pictures (Paramount
release). With Paul Cavanaugh. Director:
Alexander Hall. Screenplay: Mae West. Story:
Marion Morgan, George B. Dowell.
Go West Young Man (1936). Major Pictures (Emanuel
Cohen). With Warren William and Randolph Scott.
Director: Henry Hathaway. Screenplay: Mae West;
based on Lawrence Riley's Personal Appearance.
Every Day's A Holiday (1938) . Major Pictures (Paramount
release). With Edmund Lowe. Director: A. Edward
Sutherland. Story and screenplay: Mae West.
The Heat's On (1943). Columbia. Director: Gregory
Ratoff. No writing credit for West.
Myra Breckenridge (1970). Twentieth Century Fox. No
writing credit for West.
Sextette (1978). Crown International Pictures. Based on
play by Charlotte Francis, rewritten by West for
Broadway in 1961.
Wexman, Virgina Wright. Creating The Couple.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
336
Whitaker, Alma. "Mae West Loves To Shock For Business
Reasons." (Los Angeles?) n.p.: April 16,1933. Mae
West Clippings File, Academy of Motion Picure Arts
and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
Wingate, Dr. James. Letter, 2/3/33. She Done Him
Wrong: Production Code File, Mae West Collection,
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
"Will Mae West Make Us Fat?" n.p. Examiner, Nov. 1,
1933. Mae West Clippings File, Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills,
CA.
Yates, Norris W. The American Humorist: Conscience of
the Twentieth Century. Ames, IA: Iowa State
University Press, 1964.
_______ . "James Thurber's Little Man and Liberal
Citizen." Thurber: A Collection of Critical
Essays. Ed. Charles Holmes. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974, p. 28-36.
Young, Kay. "Hollywood, 1934: 'Inventing' Romantic
Comedy." Look Who's Laughing: Gender and Comedy,
Ed. Gail Finney. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach
Science Publishers, 1994.

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Creator Ivanov, Andrea Jean (author)

Core Title Sexual Parody In American Comedic Film And Literature, 1925-1948

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American studies,Cinema,literature, American,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Modleski, Tania (committee chair), Cheng, Vincent J. (committee member), Kincaid, James R. (committee member), Vickers, Nancy J. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c20-573823

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Legacy Identifier 9600993.pdf

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Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

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