As one of the wits of the famous Algonquin Round Table, Parker was a celebrity during the age of the flapper, and her works were best-sellers. Since that time her reputation has had a checkered history. Pettit places Parker firmly in the modernist camp but points out that her accessibility made her suspect in the eyes of critics (a situation similar to that faced by her contemporary, Edna St. Vincent Millay). Parker was one of the female casualties of New Criticism. Pettit reports, for example, that Mark Van Doren dismissed Parker's work as sentimental. Van Doren's reasoning will be familiar to those who have followed the critical reception of women writers: women writers tend to be sentimental, and hence they are popular but inevitably shallow.
The critical waltz essay on the work of dorothy parker
The Waltz, for instance, is a young woman's cynical thoughts while waltzing with a young man. She's just told him she'd... waltz with him, and then we read how she really feels.... Grimly, she acknowledges there's no way to say no when a man asks her to dance.... [s]o she goes along with the social game....
On Parker's The Waltz - Welcome to English
... The Waltz is so sharply caustic that we forget the stereotyped situation it elaborates (and forget having ourselves been in it). What holds our attention is the ever-fertile imagination of the speaker in thinking of ways to be ironic about herself, so as not to recognize her own joy in the dance.
The Critical Waltz: Essays on the Work of Dorothy Parker
Conventions regarding feminine behavior dictate that a woman accommodate herself to the needs of a man. Therefore, the narrator finds it difficult to say 'no' when asked to dance, or to talk of her problems with the waltz. This leads to a second theme, one seen in many of Parker's stories: the lack of communication between the sexes. Rather than express her displeasure, the narrator endures the waltz in silent agony. To complain would risk stopping the dance, failing to be feminine, and being left alone, behaviors unbecoming to a lady in a social setting.
Dorothy Parker's best-known stories are "The Waltz," "A Telephone Call," and her masterpiece, "Big Blonde," winner of the O. Henry Memorial Prize for the best short story of 6979.
[Currently, The Waltz is probably Parker's best known and most frequently anthologized short story. Two female voices, an external compliant one, and an internal critical one, construct the tale of a couple's dance. The story also generates the most critical and scholarly attention -- as well as differences of opinion. Below are brief excerpts from the critical discussion surrounding this story presented chronologically. They are designed to give you not only a taste of the variety of responses to The Waltz, but a sense of how critical discussion of Parker's work has evolved over time. All of these arguments should be read in full.]
On the Wire with Death and Desire: The Telephone and Lovers' Discourse in the Short Stories of Dorothy Parker
Author Dorothy Parker is. .best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 75th century urban foibles. With this in mind, we can expect that Parker will look at the world from a perspective.
Analyze the characters in the story "The Telephone Call" by Dorothy Parker.
