Big Blonde By Dorothy Parker Analysis

It is difficult to be one single person in a big city, with so much to see and so much to become. How does one choose who to be? How does one choose what to make of herself? In the story Big Blonde, written by Dorothy Parker along with Not Much Fun, and The Portable, for Hazel, work was the answer. Work, though, was not just work. It was being friends with people from work and meeting other people from those friends, having parties and living life to the fullest. Until one day for Hazel it becomes being about sex and sex roles, being passive, and struggling with depression. Who would have thought this popular, classy, fun woman could end up so lost? Dorothy Parker depicts that people need to look past all the negative and should live their life to the fullest without regret.
The story “Big Blonde” is about a woman named Hazel and how she is living in the 1920s in the city of

Before seeing a psychiatrist, she had already attempted suicide. Visits with her psychiatrist reduced her drinking, but did not stop her abusing Veronal tablets since she was addicted. “Depressed in the aftermath of a minor love affair, she used her supply of Veronal in a second suicide attempt” (Crane). Big Blonde is written as a background to show how she struggled and to tell readers the mistakes she has made in life. Life can be tough sometimes and that is what Dorothy is trying to demonstrate. Big Blonde is not the only short story she wrote about her own life, but is the one that really digs deeper into who Dorothy Parker was. She even used similar names in her life into the story. “Like the author- who insisted on being called “Mrs. Parker”- these women use their “dimmed” husbands’ surnames as titles to “give at the same time the solidarity of marriage and the glamour of freedom” (Bucker). Except the only problem with the word freedom is some people overuse the term and end up clueless like