Scan barcode
A review by izzyvb023
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
5.0
A friend gave me this book and said I’d like it and she was right! I really loved this book. I think reading Susann’s essay, “my book is not dirty” before reading the novel really colored my experience. She’s right-Valley of the Dolls is not “dirty.” It’s violent and disturbing and heartbreaking at times but it’s not ‘dirty’ just for the sake of shock value. Its honest.
Gloria Steinem famously hated this book-her reasoning mainly being that the girls are always dependent on the men for something. She believed the book presented a negative view of female ambition. I have to wholeheartedly disagree with this interpretation. Valley of the Dolls is special because it’s not just a book *about* three women. It’s a book that truly immerses the reader into their inner lives. It doesn’t just haphazardly shout “girl power” from the hills and then give you a happy ending. Susann’s characters are fully fleshed out, and by extension, fully human. They find love and happiness and success; and they also fuck up, face hardship, and hurt those they love. They are not the perfect one dimensional female role models one often hopes to look up to in “feminist” media. Rather, they are normal and vulnerable to criticism like the rest of us.
Writing from a feminist perspective does not always mean making women the ‘winners’ or to have them succeed above all else. It means writing them as real human beings with depth, ambitions, and individuality.
Susann’s characters are not relatable just by virtue of being women-they are relatable because they are genuine given the grace to make mistakes and learn (or not learn) from them.
NB: I haven’t seen the movie so this is purely a review of the book itself. From the looks of the trailer, the movie doesn’t take the book or its characters seriously. It treats the women as laughable stock characters. The same seems to be true of the 1996 stage adaptation that labeled itself as a comedy. I think these interpretations lend themselves to be talked about poorly and discounted as “silly” and “camp.” But that should not mean the source material should be treated the same way. I’d be interested to see a Valley of the Dolls adaptation directed by a woman, especially now that we are over 50 years past its publication.
Gloria Steinem famously hated this book-her reasoning mainly being that the girls are always dependent on the men for something. She believed the book presented a negative view of female ambition. I have to wholeheartedly disagree with this interpretation. Valley of the Dolls is special because it’s not just a book *about* three women. It’s a book that truly immerses the reader into their inner lives. It doesn’t just haphazardly shout “girl power” from the hills and then give you a happy ending. Susann’s characters are fully fleshed out, and by extension, fully human. They find love and happiness and success; and they also fuck up, face hardship, and hurt those they love. They are not the perfect one dimensional female role models one often hopes to look up to in “feminist” media. Rather, they are normal and vulnerable to criticism like the rest of us.
Writing from a feminist perspective does not always mean making women the ‘winners’ or to have them succeed above all else. It means writing them as real human beings with depth, ambitions, and individuality.
Susann’s characters are not relatable just by virtue of being women-they are relatable because they are genuine given the grace to make mistakes and learn (or not learn) from them.
NB: I haven’t seen the movie so this is purely a review of the book itself. From the looks of the trailer, the movie doesn’t take the book or its characters seriously. It treats the women as laughable stock characters. The same seems to be true of the 1996 stage adaptation that labeled itself as a comedy. I think these interpretations lend themselves to be talked about poorly and discounted as “silly” and “camp.” But that should not mean the source material should be treated the same way. I’d be interested to see a Valley of the Dolls adaptation directed by a woman, especially now that we are over 50 years past its publication.