Modernist Women Writers and Whimsy: Marianne Moore and Dorothy Parker

This article assesses the work of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) and Marianne Moore (1887–1972) in relation to the aesthetic category of whimsy. It considers how whimsy has been used as a term of dismissal for American women poets, outlines ways both writers’ receptions have been informed by this context, and explores questions of cost, worth, and value raised by their work. It situates whimsy in relation to Sianne Ngai’s account of diminutive modes in Our Aesthetic Categories (2015) and suggests why American women’s modernist poetry can be a useful context for exploring the aesthetic and cultural associations of whimsy.

Saboteur (1942)

This chapter examines the influence of Production Code censors and wartime conditions on the production of Saboteur. War with Germany freed moviemakers from the shackles of the Neutrality Act, so that the common enemy could be identified without fear of censorship. Censors instead focused on several class-conscious remarks inserted in the script by left-leaning author Dorothy Parker suggesting a disdain for the police and the upper classes. The film did well at the box office and less well with critics, but Hitchcock created a memorable finale on the Statue of Liberty and succeeded in his attempt to make a thriller warning the US of the dangers of internal sabotage and the pro-German leanings of the America First Party.

‘I hate Women. They get on my Nerves’ : Dorothy Parker’s Poetry of Female Sympathy

In her poetry, Dorothy Parker uses parody as a literary device to detect and denounce gender inequalities and sexist prejudices in New York during the early twentieth century. Despite the pressures of popular magazine culture on women, and her amusing jabs at her own sex in presumed complicity with the prevailing patriarchal ideology, Parker laughs last because her parodic verses, intertwining humor and faultfinding, are not only intended to entertain her male readers, but also to build a virtual village of female sympathy within a hostile male New York. She encourages sisterly bonding and welcomes real women, who are misrepresented by compulsory feminine images of happy domesticity or deviant sexual availability. Her poems offer her secret female addressees weapons of survival to live beyond their submission to male authority and repressive stereotypes of femininity.

Candide

This chapter represents the most thorough and accurate study to date of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, including its long, torturous history both before and after its 1956 premiere. It pays special attention to how the show’s books and lyrics evolved over the year, including contributions of Latouche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler, and others, and studies its many productions under the supervision of such directors and adaptors as Hal Prince, Jonathan Miller, and John Caird. It also surveys its critical reception over the years.

Honey, You Know I Can’t Hear You When You Aren’t in the Room

The need for more diversity in Hollywood films and television is currently being debated by scholars and content makers alike, but where is the proof that more diverse writers will create more diverse material? Since all forms of art are subjective, there is no perfect way to prove the importance of having female writers in the room except through samples of qualitative case studies of various female writers across the history of film. By studying the writing of several female screenwriters – personal correspondence, interviews and their writing for the screen – this paper will begin to prove that having a female voice in the room has made a difference in several prominent films. It will further hypothesise that greater representation can only create greater opportunity for more female stories and voices to be heard. Research for my PhD dissertation ‘Married: With Screenplay’ involved the work of several prominent female screenwriters across the first century of filmmaking, including Anita Loos, Dorothy Parker, Frances Goodrich and Joan Didion. In all of their memoirs and other writings about working on screenplays, each mentioned the importance of (often) being the lone woman in the room during pitches and during the development of a screenplay. Goodrich summarised all their experiences concisely when she wrote, ‘I’m always the only woman working on the picture and I hold the fate of the women [characters] in my hand… I’ll fight for what the gal will or will not do, and I can be completely unfeminine about it.’ Also, the rise of female directors, such as Barbra Streisand or female production executives, such as Kathleen Kennedy, prove that one of the greatest assets to having a female voice in the room is the ability to invite other women inside. Therefore, this paper contributes to the scholarship on women in film and to authorship studies.

“Best Fiction of 1957”

In this chapter, Dorothy Parker discusses William Faulkner's novel The Town, which she declares the best fiction of 1957. Parker says she wishes to sendThe Town to those she most loves and respects. According to Parker, she cannot consider The Town as Faulkner's finest work because his books are so variegated that comparisons among them are not possible. The Town comes after The Hamlet in Faulkner's triptych of the horrible, evil, greedy, irresistible Snopes family, on their way to taking over full power in Yoknapatawpha County. Parker once said that 1957 was no banner year for American novels, but admits that The Town made her a fool and a liar.