Dorothy Parker: An Unhappy Comedic Genius                

    Dorothy Parker wrote from experience. Her childhood, characterized by death, anger, and a great education, informed her poetry as much as anything else in her life. Depressed much of the time, she tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide three times (Kinney xxiii-xxvi). Many things plagued her -- unhappy memories, unrequited loves, unfavorable political climates -- but negative criticism was rarely one of them (Kinney 121). She was recognized from early in her life for her incisive wit and mastery of language. Her humor encompassed irony and sarcasm as well as plain-old punnery. She knew how to use the word horticulture in a sentence: “You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think” (Kinney ix).                
    On August 22, 1893, Eliza A. Rothschild gave birth to Dorothy two months prematurely at the family’s summer home in West End, New Jersey, a town where wealthy Jewish families vacationed (Meade 3). Her father was not present; he was busy overseeing his sweatshop in New York City every day during the summer except for Sundays (Kinney 1). As a child, Dorothy’s sense of justice clashed with her ability to enjoy her comfortable upbringing at the expense of hordes of exploited immigrants (Kinney 2).                
    When Dorothy was five, her mother took ill and died suddenly. Though there was no logical basis for such thought, Dorothy blamed herself (Meade 11-12). Eleanor Frances Lewis, her stepmother and a dreadful excuse for a human being enrolled her in the Catholic Blessed Sacrament Convent. This instilled self-loathing by conflicting with her Jewish background. As a child, she found creative outlets for her anger, imagining tortures for her stepmother until one morning, she woke to hear that an acute cerebral hemorrhage killed Lewis. By now, she felt guilt for the deaths of two mothers (Meade 16).                
    Not long after, she left Blessed Sacrament and enrolled in a selective private school in New Jersey where she studied Latin, English, history, algebra, geometry, and a number of classical subjects (Kinney 4). She enjoyed the personal attention and social interaction at the school where she first recited poetry, but ended her formal education at age fourteen when the school went bankrupt (Kinney 7). A few years later, her father died, and with him, what childhood that remained (Meade 29).            

     In retrospect, she viewed her childhood as a series of tragedies (Kinney 5). Her mindset was one of an “unloved orphan.” As such, she made it her business to be witty so that she could survive in the world (Meade 21). Though she was recognized as an essayist, a journalist, a playwright, and a fiction author, her wit was often at its sharpest in her poetry.                
    Nearly all critics at the time of her writing recognized the sharpness of her mind. T.S. Matthews of the New Republic appreciated the utter honesty her observations and reviewed her favorably:             "Dorothy Parker is an able prosecutor, and one who knows the limitations of her case. No one could write with such unhappy wit, no one could manage such a savage humor, who did not feel herself a blood sister to her victims, who did not also regard them as a pernicious race of odious little vermin. Dorothy Parker is very much of our day: the thrust of her wit is apt to tickle as it wounds; her most sympathetic gesture always has some horror in it" (Kinney 121).                
        Those critics who were not as favorable could not deny the wit, but rather took issue with the overly polished nature of the writing and the lack of sincerity in it. J. Donald Adams of the New York Times disdained the “exceedingly clever and polished writing which derives from an attitude. Even at its best,” he said, “and its best is very good indeed, an aura of artificiality envelops it” (Kinney 44).          Except for politically inspired writing in support of the Spanish People’s Front and numerous other communist causes of the ‘20s and ‘30s, most of her poetry, always painfully funny, was unified by the common themes of death, suicide and heartbreak from abandonment (Kinney 35-38). She employed personification masterfully to show her intimacy with Joy, Sorrow, and Pride, for instance. She also alluded to seasons and months to show the passage of time in love and life.                
        Generally, her poetry is not imagist, nor narrative. Her poems are usually not emotional -- especially considering the subject matter. They are, in fact, cold and intellectual, and all the funnier for it. A typical poem in this regard is “Résumé,” in which she innocently lists the most trivial drawbacks of various suicide methods: “Razors pain you;/ Rivers are damp;/ Acids stain you;/ And drugs cause cramp” (Ll. 1-4). After a few more incongruously cute rhymes, she concludes, “You might as well live” ( L. 8). Her poetry most always follows a predictable rhyme scheme, ABABCDCD in this case. One possible reason is that the sound of the rhymes heightens the perceived cleverness of her epigrams, cleverness being one of Parker’s unacknowledged tools for surviving as an unloved orphan.      “Light of Love” displays personification of the highest order. Joy, Sorrow and Pride interact with each other like characters in a play. In doing so, they convey the message of the poem: that the poet lives with these emotions as a defining aspect of her existence. The poem, though no human names are used, is vaguely autobiographical. “Joy stayed with me a night--/ Young and free and fair--/ And in the morning light/ He left me there” (Ll. 1-4). In this stanza, the emotion joy is embodies all that is good and seems to represent a male lover who abandons her. In this poem as in her life, joy is fleeting. The second stanza introduces sorrow as an emotion, a spirit even, that replaces joy. “Then Sorrow came to stay,/ And lay upon my breast;/ He walked with me in the day,/ And knew me best” (Ll. 5-8). Sorrow in this poem is portrayed as an unwanted guest who places physical and emotional constraints on her by laying, “upon [her] breast.” Doing so would hinder her breathing and therefore her energy. Also, her heart is in her breast, so one could say that sorrow is the same as having a heavy heart. Since he walks with her, sorrow is something that plagues her ubiquitously. In the third stanza, Parker introduces Pride who, the reader may gather, does not grant her much enjoyment. This character however, seems to exist as per the poet’s decision not to wed. “I’ll never be a bride,/ Nor yet celibate,/ So I’m living now with Pride--/ A cold bedmate” (Ll. 9-12). Again, the delivery of the last line -- the punch line -- of this particular the stanza is funny, in part, because of its nonchalance. The reader can be sure that pride is not an emotion inflicted on the poet, but by the poet. This is because the action verb, “living,” is done not by “Pride,” but by the speaker. The last stanza reaches a new pinnacle of wit when Parker makes these abstract ideas interact like human beings in relationships. “He must not hear nor see,/ Nor could he forgive/ That Sorrow still visits me/ Each day I live” (Ll. 13-16). Here, “He” refers to Pride who would be offended by the unfaithfulness of the poet when she visits Sorrow.                
        Such playful use of personification is common in Parker’s poetry. In “Wail,” she writes that, “Love has gone a-rocketing,” in one stanza and that, “Joy has gone the way it came,” in the next (Ll. 1, 5). The four-line poem “Anecdote” tells of the exploits of Love and Sorrow -- two commonly paired themes.                
        Parker also uses seasons and months to show the passage of time. By doing this, she bundles associations with times of year such as the life cycle. “The False Friends” exemplifies this. The poem starts with the speaker recalling the experience lamenting a broken heart and being told by other people that she would soon be over it. “‘The heart that breaks in April, child,/ Will mend in May again” (Ll. 7-8). By the end of the poem, as is typical, Parker utilizes a conversational voice and slips in one of the most appropriate adjectives imaginable: bitter. “Who flings me silly talk of May/ Shall meet a bitter soul;/ For June was nearly spent away/ Before my heart was whole” (Ll. 13-16). The title, “False Friends,” and the surprise at the passing of the month of June reinforces the bitterness in Parker’s voice.                
        For her eloquent wit, and memorable quips, Dorothy Parker is remembered as a literary giant, though a tragic figure. The year 1959 saw here inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1963 and 1964, she was distinguished as a visiting professor of English at California State College at Los Angeles. In 1967 though, she died, not by suicide, but of a heart attack in her room at the Hotel Volney in New York City at the age of 73 (Kinney xxvi). Stemming from all of her misery from her childhood through her tortured adulthood, readers craving cold wisdom can look to her poems for the harshest assessments of truth.    

Works Cited

Kinney, Arthur. Dorothy Parker, Revised. New York: Twayne Publishers,         1998.

 Meade, Marion. Dorothy Parker: what fresh hell is this?. New York:   Villard Books, 1987.