REFIGURING DOROTHY and HER FRIENDSHIP to LORELEI By
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GENTLEWOMEN PREFER WOMEN: REFIGURING DOROTHY AND HER FRIENDSHIP TO LORELEI By MARGOT R. REYNOLDS A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2005 Copyright 2005 by Margot R. Reynolds To my grandparents: Betty and Karl Stopper ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank the University of Florida and the Department of English for their support of my work. In particular, I am thankful for assistance from Dr. Susan Hegeman, Dr. Kim Emery, and Dr. David Leverenz. Their instruction, comments on writing, and professionalism elevate my work. I thank my mother, Donnetta Reynolds, and my grandmother, Loetta Kopita, for their continued support of my education and growth. Their generosity in the material, emotional, and spiritual realms sustained me during this process. Also, I would like to thank my colleague Melissa Mellon for encouragement. Friends like Joanna Zwanger, Allison Knight, Kim and Glenn Sloman, Jennifer Kryshka, Ian McCain, and those unnamed contributed to my sanity and my thought process during this project. I thank my partner and fiancé, Krystian Lagowski, who continually supported me through my graduate work, in all its facets. His humor, good nature, and positivism were essential checks to my sometimes serious nature—a silly joke goes a long way. I thank all those women, and men, before me who insisted on women’s rights, including the right to meaningful and productive higher education. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………….iv ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………....…......vi CHAPTER 1 CONSIDERING DOROTHY IN GENTLEMENT PREFER BLONDES (1925) …..………………………………………………………………………................1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 Introducing Dorothy and Gender Trouble: A Review of Literature….……...……4 2 A STUDY OF DOROTHY IN QUEER TERMS…………………………………………………………………………..16 Dorothy’s Agency: Performativity or Performance?.............................................16 Looking Through The Lens of Performativity……………………………….…..22 Queering Dorothy: Establishing the ‘Brunette’ as the Outside of Normative Gender…………………………………………………………...……………27 3 GENTLEWOMEN PREFER WOMEN: A STUDY OF A PRIMARY FEMALE FRIENDSHIP……………………………………………………………………33 LIST OF REFERENCES…………………………………………...……………….. 51 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH………………………………………………...……….54 v Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts GENTLEWOMEN PREFER WOMEN: REFIGURING DOROTHY AND HER FRIENDSHIP TO LORELEI By Margot R. Reynolds December 2005 Chair: Susan Hegeman Major Department: English My article focuses on issues like gender and identity construction relevant to cultural progress. In particular, I concentrate on Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) to reveal the difficulties associated with gender through the lens of queer theory, particularly in regard to friendship, work, and matrimony. I begin by evaluating the central characters, Lorelei Lee and Dorothy, through contemporaneous and recent criticism. Notable authors like Edith Wharton and William Faulkner’s felicitous reviews encouraged my notation of the absence of criticism about Dorothy and her relationship to Lorelei. Thus, I shifted the focus from the character of Lorelei, popularized by literary critics and popular culture as the Blonde, to Dorothy in order to discuss her subject position as queer and the women’s friendship in terms of its centrality to the performance of gender. My argument for viewing Dorothy in queer ways invites her readers to consider both the appearance and subtlety of gender, class, and normative behaviors. These considerations afford her readers an opportunity to contemplate issues like status, vi identity, voice, family, motherhood, beauty, friendship, history, traditions and spirituality. I elucidate on these issues through defining concepts like performativity and performance—which situate gender and other identity markers like sexuality as socially constructed and thus mutable rather than essential. Dorothy’s friendship to Lorelei, I argue, showcases how the women prefer each other to men because their relationship does not rely on essential definitions of gender and sexuality. Furthermore, Dorothy’s agency is responsible for the stability of the relationship and, often, their mobility. Ultimately, my paper aims to show how Dorothy and Lorelei’s relationship in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes provides an important source of valuable reflection and insight about gender, sexuality, and agency. vii CHAPTER 1 CONSIDERING DOROTHY IN GENTLMEN PREFER BLONDES (1925) Introduction Also among us was a blonde who was being imported to Hollywood to be Doug[las Fairbanks’] leading lady in his forthcoming picture. Now this girl, although she towered above me (I weighed about ninety pounds) and was of rather a hearty type, was being waited on, catered to and cajoled by the entire male assemblage. If she happened to drop the novel she was reading, several men jumped to retrieve it; whereas I [a brunette] was allowed to lug heavy suitcases from their racks while men sat about and failed to notice my efforts. Anita Loos, “The Biography of a Book,” Introduction to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 1963 (xxxvii) How many of them, do you think, will ever know that Dorothy has something? William Faulkner, Letter to Loos, February 1926 (Blom 39) Between 1912 and 1981, Anita Loos wrote screenplays, plays, novels, and short- stories; she has also produced stories. In particular, her works, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1928) reveal her difficulties associated with gender, particularly in regard to friendship, work and matrimony.1 Throughout these works, and most especially in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she addresses these issues through the figures of Dorothy and Lorelei—two flappers extraordinaire. Those few critics who address these texts privilege Lorelei, her function as a flapper and as a Blonde femme fatale, or study the text historically, as a document of the jazz age and of early twentieth-century capitalism. Often these works are referenced from a biographical perspective, considering Loos’ life experiences. Few scholars have considered these 1 “The Biography of a Book” (1998 ed., xxxix). 1 2 texts from a queer perspective influenced by the methods of feminist literary theory.2 My work begins with a shift in focus from Lorelei to Dorothy in order to discuss her subject position as queer and the women’s friendship in terms of its centrality in regard to the performance of gender. This investigation rests on the provocation that these two texts negotiate gender roles, social roles like class, and female sexuality. Utilizing Judith Butler and Patrick Johnson’s arguments about queer theory and performativity, I will show that Dorothy, and the relationship between her and Lorelei, uses a critical, and often humorous framework through which to imagine altered identity roles associated with a female subject position, including the aspect of sexuality. Further, I will argue that through humorous quips, Dorothy’s attention to agency and her relationship with Lorelei offer readers of these texts opportunities to consider American norms, particularly as it relates to female friendship and sexuality. Using ideas drawn from gender studies and performance studies, I contend that Dorothy’s relationship to gender or her "preferences" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the subsequent text’s treatment of womanhood, matrimony, motherhood, and geography offer a queer perspective that reworks patriarchal notions of the aforementioned concepts. I designate Dorothy’s actions and perspectives as queer because she refuses rigid identity and normative behaviors. Through her relationship with Lorelei, Dorothy offers a flapper’s perspective on the experience of appropriating masculinity while at the same time using this same experience to establish a relationship that resists norms. In other words, these episodes, like sharing company, becoming educated, employing ribald humor, and redesigning notions of romance underscore rigid norms—thus becoming 2 For a feminist critique of the famous film, loosely based upon the book, see Arbuthot and Gail Seneca, introduction: xvii. 3 citations of gender performativity. 3 This theoretical device reconsiders notions of what constitutes ‘acting up and out’4 for individuals. While a queer theory framework for re- reading these texts may seem unfamiliar to readers, I argue that it comprises a powerful site of potential world-making. My paper emphasizes Dorothy’s adroitness in reworking gender and social relations between individuals. When assessed this way, these texts and characters are a significant resource for women, activists, and scholars interested in contemplation of subversive cultural productions like literature. My argument for viewing Loos’ texts in queer ways invites her readers to consider both the appearance and subtlety of gender, class, and normative behaviors. These considerations afford her readers an opportunity to contemplate issues like status, identity, voice, family, motherhood, beauty, friendship, history, traditions and spirituality. Loos writes, The world and its ways have changed a great deal since Lorelei Lee made her first appearance on the scene. Recently during a television interview in London, the question was put to me: ‘Miss Loos, your book was based on an economic situation, the unparalleled prosperity