Simpson?s analysis of ?Big Blonde? is very good in highlighting the cultural aspect that deals with minority. It is a fresh approach and it effectively portrays not only the black and white female?s role, but also the society who places them within these constraints. The only aspect Simpson left out was Parker?s role in the story, which many other critics have been quick to do.
Brendan Gill and Acocella give the best biographical information about Parker?s life. Gill tells us in his introduction to The Portable Dorothy Parker, that she was born in 1893 and began writing short stories and love poems highlighting the relationships between men and women, in her early twenties. Her childhood had been particularly rough since she lost her mother at an early age and acquired a hated stepmother (Acocella 76). After her father died, Parker moved away from New Jersey to her beloved and favorite city of New York, where she worked for Vanity Fair. Her column Modern Love, which commented and explored the themes of heterosexuality, heterosociality, and marriage, was a huge success and was loved by both women and men of the times (Miller 764-765). It was in this time that she was working for Vanity Fair, in which she met her closest friends whom were mostly men, including other writers such as Robert Benchley, Earnest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Robert Sherwood, and became associated with the celebrated Algonquin Round Table (Acocella 76).
The cultural period of the Jazz Age was surrounded by the ideas of social interacting at parties, where drinking, dancing, and gossiping took place among friends. Parker was one of the favorites and became known for her quick wit and sarcastic humor (Acocella 76). Since Parker was the only female of the group, there was immense pressure on her to play the ?sport.? It is perhaps this very reason why so many of her short stories and poems reflect this relationship between men and women. But Acocella notes, the success that came from the publication of these many celebrated stories, including the award winning ?Big Blonde,? did not bring her happiness.
So she tried to fill this void by having promiscuous love affairs and eventually got married to Alan Campbell, an actor and a raging alcoholic (Acocella 78). She became his drinking partner and was soon struggling with bouts of depression because of her failed marriages. It is here where so many critics like Acocella and Gill, compare Parker to her main protagonist, Hazel Morse. Both were wearing ?shoes that fit too tight,? and were bitter and miserable at playing the ?sport.? Like Hazel, Parker attempted suicide a few times by taking handfuls of Veronals (Acocell 78). But the critics imply that Parker was all talk when it came to death, because she did not die until 1967 of a heart attack. Parker had disappeared from the writing scene any years before this death and the public was surprised when they heard of her death, for they though that it had happened years ago (Gill xiv). Alcohol had been the ending to her demise, just as Hazel?s had been in ?Big Blonde.?
This is beyond a point of significance. Parker and Hazel are, in almost every aspect, the same person. However, the difference is that Parker had the power as a successful woman writer and didn?t realize it. She didn?t need to rely on a man like Hazel did for the commodities that were so essential to the time. But because the pressure was so demanding on women in the social scene to be a ?sport?, to make the men laugh, to be the desirable female that was worthy of a husband, Parker fell into the socially devastating role. All these approaches that have been presented can be combined together to make a critical social statement about the society in which Parker, and other women of the 1920?s were living.