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| author | Julie Ruth Strain |
| title | Dorothy Parker and the Women She Loved to Hate: An Examination of Female Drinkers in the Works of Dorothy Parker |
| abstract | This paper will make the argument that there persists a flaw in the continued academic critique of the work of Dorothy Parker.
While Parker lead a life of incredible literary celebrity, critics have overextended the actions of Parker as a female writer and drinker who pushed the social
norms of women in her public life and have applied these actions to her private life as well. This in turn has lead to a hyper-autobiographical critique of the
body of work that Parker produced, especially when examining the female drinker in her stories, often analyzed as being a reflection of Parker's personal struggle
with alcoholism. Despite the persistent "Parker the alcoholic female writer" narrative, Dorothy Parker would have vehemently denied that she was an alcoholic and
would have justified her drinking as a right afforded to her as a woman of a certain class and would have certainly differentiated herself from those that had a
"drinking problem" or those with "questionable morals"--she was, after all, one of the most successful writers of her generation. This paper will examine the role
of the female drinker in the short stories and poetry of Dorothy Parker not as an autobiographical examination of the female alcoholic experience, but as a diverse
assortment of female drinkers created on the basis of the collective female experience that function as a way normalize the female drinker,
rather than to marginalize her. |
| school | The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, Drew University |
| degree | M.M.H. (2017) |
| advisors | Kirk Johnson
Paul Kadetz |
| committee | Phil Scibilia |
| full text | JRStrain.pdf |
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