Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
Valley of the Dolls
by Jacqueline Susann
Grove/Atlantic, Inc. 1997 (reprint)
ISBN-13: 978-0802135193
448 p.p.
Valley of the Dolls always struck me as an essential product of first and second wave feminism. There is a genre unto itself about the sell-your-soul-for-fame plot points, many focusing on the two towers of New York and L.A., but they don’t always describe the price that women pay. For a change, Valley of the Dolls focuses almost exclusively on the female characters and chronicles their respective paths toward fame and power, judging the prices they pay (or sometimes what they valued their own souls at). In terms of this fictionalized-yet-inspired-by-real-events “expose,” Jacqueline Susann is really one of the first to do this genre (and allegedly this is inspired by her time in the New York/Hollywood rush). This book always struck me as feminist broccoli—something I had to include in my ever-increasing diet of female/feminist literature. While a modern reader might mistake this as passé or over-done, it bears reminding oneself that this book was among the first of its kind: it exposed the seedy, sexist underbelly of glamorous “golden” Hollywood. Honestly, it felt more relevant now than ever before with our increasingly “glam-centric” Americana lifestyle. If the Kardashians are among our top news items it cannot be ignored that this bloodlust for power is still present and we are still fascinated with judging the price that women pay for it (so, are you a Kardashian fan or not?).
We follow three women, Jennifer, Neely and Anne, as they enter New York City, each trying to “make it.” Anne is trying to escape what she considers the claustrophobic atmosphere of her picturesque New England upbringing. Neely is a teenager who has spent her whole life in vaudeville and is desperately trying to get into Broadway. Jennifer is, arguably, the most beautiful woman in the world and is coming off of a public (and scandalous!) annulment to a Prince, openly trying to bank on her well-photographed body. They meet, their lives intersect, and we follow them to the end of the line—that isn’t to say we follow them until their deaths but we do follow them to their realization of life. Once they understand their place in the world the story abandons them, ends, as if to remind us that knowledge doesn’t solve the problems we make for ourselves. The fatalism that Susann weaves throughout the narrative can come off as cliché but the question persists: is she wrong? Do the beautiful women get preferential treatment because they are beautiful? Does Neely, the not-so-thin, not-so-beautiful talented girl become a fame-monster because she knows she’s not thin and beautiful? Does her addiction to “dolls” (and fame) necessarily begin because she is competing with a physical standard beyond her “status quo” body? Does Jennifer’s intentional commodification of her body degrade women or can we appreciate that beautiful women can wield their bodies when they lack other tools for success and personal betterment? To be crude, can we fault Kardashians (our modern Jennifers) with commodifying themselves for success or is body commodification always problematic?
To me, this is a cornerstone of first wave feminism: what is the female body and the role of that body in its society? Susann’s book heavy-handedly pushes this Stepfordian agenda of be-pretty-get-married-make-babies-or-you-fail motif but it isn’t clear if Susann herself supports it as the girls are never fully “successful” in this traditional sense (but they also aren’t happy outside the circle of tradition either).
Jennifer is constantly getting married but fails to reproduce; her failure to reproduce coincides with the destruction of physical beauty causing her to fail in all areas that she had capacity for success. Jennifer admits that she has “no talents” besides her body and she is seemingly punished for this by the emerging feminist voice—women are not merely bodies and uteri and thus those who further this smothering agenda get smothered by the plot. Anne’s beauty creates the majority of her power and she does want to get married and have babies but she learns to passively wield her body while withholding her devotion. I find her an interesting comparison to the bodacious Jennifer. All the women become sexually free—something the emerging feminist aesthetic would embrace—but Anne is the only one to not get an abortion or a divorce, something that feels like a judgment against Neely and Jennifer. Then again, Anne’s “successful” marriage to Lyon Burke (that she waited to have for over a decade) is crushed by her own forcefulness, and her desire to avoid divorce punishes her in the end. This seems odd to me—Anne manipulates men through her manners, her beauty, her cold demeanor and her money and manages to escape the majority of the patriarchal confines the first wave feminists sought to overcome. Why then do we end the book on the dour note that she is on the road to addiction and depression she had previously avoided? Is the role of the modern woman to look behind the screen of gender rigidity and realize that fluidity isn’t necessarily freeing?
In this way, Neely is a fascinating character—she is “free” in that nobody can take her natural talents from her but she frequently destroys herself. In fact, given the smallest freedom over her life, Neely will choose the most destructive path possible. Neely is the “modern” woman: talented, wealthy, sexually free, and self-made. She did not need a man to make her, she used her friendship with Anne and Helen Lawson to climb up, circumventing the clutches of men until she gets to The Head. The Head is a man but oddly he is frail, old, and often a disembodied reference rather than a character—the treatment typically given to female characters. The novel doesn’t punish Neely—Neely punishes Neely. Perhaps she is a subliminal message to women who are their own worst nightmare—Neely is what we are capable of being when we neglect our own human limits. She is a mother but never present, she is not ugly but never satisfied with her looks, she is loved but never feels she has enough love—she will destructively seek new lovers, new influences, and frequently turns to the “dolls” (slang for pills) for companionship.
This book is emblematic of the first wave of feminism and, as such, an essential read for those who consider themselves students of the movement. You can fully appreciate this type of novel by reading one of the founding texts of the “inside Hollywood” genre—this isn’t a novel that gets old.
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Jacqueline Susann’s first novel was Valley of the Dolls and it is still considered one of the best selling books ever written. Born in Philadelphia, she showed an early aptitude at writing but left high school to pursue acting. She married Irving Mansfield who managed her career. Her work was not well received by critics and peers and she famously got into a fight with Truman Capote over being called a “truck driver in drag.” Susann refused to bow to critics and decidedly wrote the way she wanted, lived the way she wanted, and needs to be remembered now as an early adventurer in feminist writing.
