Blonde

BLONDE
by Joyce Carol Oates

 Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2002, National Book Finalist 2000, Pulitzer Finalist 2001

 Date Read: July 22, 2019

 Blonde could so very easily be the actual narrative of Marilyn's life. For all her seeking, Marilyn was never to find the love and fulfillment she desperately sought. From the very beginnings of her life, she was subjected to the wills of others and was never to find her own voice or the ownership of her own fate.

 Marilyn quickly becomes the property of men - from her marriage to Bucky, to the studio heads owning her name to her signature look and subsequent marriages. She sought comfort and reassurance from everyone she met but they all wanted her to shut up and look pretty/act sexy. She ceaselessly searched for her father, any father figure would do! I suspect, however, had she ever found her father, she would have been sorely disappointed that the discovery didn't offer the solace and approval she craved.

 Men profited from her like pimps, never paying her what she was worth, never acknowledging her personhood. She's forced to put her true self in a corner and act like Marilyn Monroe, a role she would play for the remainder of her life. "She was 'Marilyn' - no, she was 'Angela' - she was Norma Jean playing 'Marilyn' playing 'Angela' - like a Russian doll in which smaller dolls are contained by the largest doll..."

 Marilyn wants so desperately to understand the world and herself but she's never given the map or the tools. Everyone making fun of her for searching, longing. Rather than posing as an intellectual, I believe she was simply trying to grasp at knowledge to understand life and her place in it. Her insecurity and disorientation was mistaken for ignorance. Marilyn was far from dumb but perhaps told that enough times, she started to believe it.

 Blonde is a difficult novel to get through with the shameless exploitation of a life and already knowing how it would end. I wanted so much for Marilyn to find comfort and lasting love. She took everything so personally that I couldn't help but wonder how she would have survived in this time of social media and am thankful she never had to experience that.

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