Valley of the Dolls

“‘Here everyone is looking for a husband. Including me!’ […]

‘You mean you marry just anyone?’ […]

‘Not anyone. Just anyone who’d give me a nice beaver coat, a part time maid, and let me sleep till noon each day. The fellows I know not only expect me to keep my job, but at the same time I should look like Carole Landis in a negligee while I whip up a few gourmet dishes.’”

This exchange between the young woman at the employment agency and Anne captures the essence of the unrealistic expectations of young men and women in New York during that era: Men dreamed of gorgeous wives who would have an income, keep house, and pamper them, while women dreamed of men who would shower them with gifts and indulge their leisure. The quote reveals the underlying conflict of the Mid-Century Patriarchy and the Objectification of Women. Her reference to Carole Landis is the first of many references to celebrities and foreshadows the sad fates of the book’s female characters.

“There were several men standing in the hall outside the office when she arrived. They parted to let her through. Suddenly one shouted, ‘Hey, it’s her!’ Cameras flashed, questions were shouted. Through the confusion she heard Allen’s name. She pushed past them, but they followed her into the office, calling her name. It was like one of her childhood nightmares, where she was pursued and no one tried to help.”

This is Anne’s first encounter with frenzied reporters, who have just read that she is engaged to Allen. The experience is horrible for Anne, who never accepted Allen’s proposal, in large measure because he never asked her to marry him and simply told her that they were going to wed. Exacerbating her distress is the unnerving response of her coworkers, who stand back and admire what they perceive as an enviable encounter. Susann uses this episode to describe the sense of being powerless and overwhelmed when surrounded by reporters and paparazzi. The three protagonists will endure such faceoffs, resulting both from positive and negative gossip, multiple times.

“Then the showgirls arrived. I began to feel real crummy. Even in my new dress. You should see the getups on some of those showgirls. Six of them had real mink coats, and the rest had beaver or silver fox. Not one cloth coat! And everyone knew everyone else, except us. And when Jennifer North arrived, you’da thought Rita Hayworth was making an entrance. The assistant director rushed to her with cooing noises like how glad he was she was joining them. She was ten minutes late and he was making like it was a thrill that she managed to come.”

Susann consistently describes animal fur coats as revered status symbols among the women characters. When Anne is given a mink coat, it is a step in her forced inculcation among high society figures. Here, Neely feels inferior because all of the other women have fur coats and she does not. This quote is also ironic because she scorns the reverence bestowed upon Jennifer. When Neely achieves stardom, she demands complete obsequiousness from everyone associated with her projects, even the head of the movie studio.

“Her figure was beginning to show signs of middle-age—the thickness through the waist, the slight spread in the hips. Recalling Helen’s appearance in the past, Anne felt as if she were gazing at the cruel distortion of a monument. Age settled with more grace on ordinary people, but for celebrities—women stars in particular—age became a hatchet that vandalized a work of art.”

Every woman performer in the narrative expresses a fixation on her age. When Neely is only 24, her studio threatens to replace her with a younger woman. Helen, in her mid-30s at this point in the story, describes herself as only being able to hold onto stardom because of her voice. The French director who hires Jennifer, who is still in her 30s, orders her to have a facelift. As the Gillian Girl in her late 20s and early 30s, Anne expresses gratitude for the heavy television makeup that hides any mark of aging. In this quote, Susann directly links this fixation on youth to objectification by comparing women to inanimate works of art, ruined by the human aging process.

“The office was filled with the activity of the Ed Holson radio show. But Anne was exhilarated with all the excitement around her. She was busy with her work; Henry needed her; Helen and Neely needed her; she was climbing Mount Everest and the air was invigorating and wonderful. Even if every second verged on crisis, this was part of living—not just watching from the sidelines.”

In her few brief weeks working for the law firm in New York, Anne has already made tremendous inroads in her career, the social scene, the entertainment world, and the lives of many noteworthy people. From her innocent viewpoint, Anne has already achieved her dreams. She will discover, as she has been warned, that things become painful and complicated when her emotions get involved. As Henry had said to her, “The minute you start thinking with your heart instead of your head you’ll get clobbered” (96). Anne’s career arc is what the author refers to throughout as climbing Mount Everest. She implies that just as addiction is insidious, working to become upwardly mobile is also pernicious and addictive.

“Do you think I’m in love with that featherbrained broad over there? I was in love once—with Allen’s mother. She was a lady. But when a man my age thinks about love, then he’s in for trouble. Who needs love now? I just want a girl who’s pretty, who has a good body. She doesn’t have to have brains or be a legend. She just has to look good and satisfy me. And I pay my part of the tab with a few furs and trinkets to keep her happy.”

In this passage, Gino converses with Anne, whom he believes will soon be his daughter-in-law, about Helen Lawson. He is brutally honest about his feelings toward women, particularly Helen. Gino’s attitude reflects the perception that most of the men in the novel have toward women. Women are objectified, viewed as commodities, and valued according to their perceived usefulness in a man’s world. Virtually all of the women in the book are evaluated based on the purpose they can fulfill for other people, particularly wealthy, entitled men like Gino.

“She clung to him. She didn’t care about the hurt or discomfort—just to belong to this wonderful man was the greatest happiness she could ever know. […] All at once she knew—this was the ultimate in fulfillment, to please a man you loved. At that moment she felt she was the most important and powerful woman in the world. She was flooded with a new sense of pride in her sex.”

Following her arrival in New York City, Anne receives constant warnings against becoming involved with the playboys who attempt to take advantage of her beauty and innocence. She intends to avoid becoming sexually involved until she meets and marries the man of her dreams. This passage records her after her first sexual experience, in which she abandons her intentions and gives herself to Lyon, who famously has many girlfriends while having no intention of settling down with one woman. Her childlike reaction to this encounter is an ironic expression of her innocence and her misjudgment of Lyon’s intentions. Her pleasure in pleasing him also highlights the power disparity between men and women in this society.

“Look. Tomorrow when you see Lyon, be really nice. Let your eyes fill with tears. Tell him you just learned how stupid you were to feel anything resembling friendship for Helen. Play it sweet—sweet and wounded. […] Remember, there’s only one way to own a man—by making him want you. Not with words. Now sleep on it.”

Anne’s innocence is challenged by Helen’s cruelty and Lyon’s abandonment, and Jennifer steps in with this advice on how to get the desired response out of Lyon. Anne is resistant to Jennifer’s recommendation to act girlishly and simultaneously hard to get—advice that Jennifer uses herself to draw Tony Polar into marriage. The author portrays Anne as unwilling to manipulate those around her. Though she learns to feign innocence and does eventually become jaded, Anne remains persistently honest in her relationships throughout the novel.

“Henry’s struggled for 30 years to get where he is—the top, I guess you’d call it. It’s a trite word. He calls it Mount Everest. And that’s where he is, financially and professionally. But what about his personal life? If one were to write up Henry’s Who’s Who, there would be several paragraphs devoted to his theatrical and business achievements. To his personal life, one line—unmarried no living relatives. In short, no life aside from the business. Alone on the summit of Mount Everest. […] Because a marriage is meaningless on Mount Everest.”

Here, Lyon explains his rationale for not wanting to get married while working as a talent attorney. He tells Anne he does not want to end up like Henry, who has achieved his dreams and, in the process, loses the opportunity for a lasting relationship. This speech is ironic since Lyon is not actually looking for a family; he is looking for an excuse to avoid commitment. The narrative also portrays all those who ultimately make it to the top—achieving their dreams, gaining wealth and notoriety, becoming accomplished—as lacking meaningful personal relationships, including Anne and Neely.

“Maria’s logical explanation removed any taint of abnormality. […] We are doing nothing wrong. We are not lesbians like those awful freaks who cut their hair and wear mannish clothes. We are two women who adore one another and who know about being gentle and affectionate.”

One of the themes that runs through the narrative consistently is Pushing the Norms of Society. The author consistently points out that those with wealth and liberty in the highest social settings give only the slightest pretense to maintaining traditional decorum and behaving in socially acceptable ways. In this description given by Maria, Jennifer’s Spanish schoolmate, of their relationship, Maria criticizes other women who engage in similar relationships by using antigay stereotypes and language. Simultaneously, she rationalizes their behavior as empathetic and uplifting. In the same way, characters throughout the narrative rationalize their drug use, infidelity, betrayal, and dishonesty.

“‘Look for one of those third-rate hotels on the West Side. You’ll see a doctor sign on a dirty window,’ Irma explained. ‘Don’t just walk in and ask for pills. You have to play the game. Walk in and say you’re from out of town—California is always good. Don’t wear the mink, or the price will go up. Tell him you can’t sleep. He’ll make a stab at listening to your heart, and you keep saying all you need is a few nights’ sleep. Then he’ll charge you ten bucks and give you a prescription for a week’s supply, knowing you’ll be back. And he knows you’re good for 10 bucks a week.’”

Because she cannot sleep, Jennifer asks Irma, one of the singers in the Broadway play, for one of her sleeping pills, a Seconal. The feeling it gives her is enjoyable, and the effect is what she desires, so Jennifer decides to get a supply of her own. Here, Irma describes what she calls “the game,” the manner in which prescription drugs are readily available. For those with greater means than Jennifer, there is seemingly an unlimited availability of prescription narcotics. As with the other characters who become dependent upon these dolls, the initial experience seems pleasant and innocuous compared to a disastrous final result.

“Lyon, don’t you understand? Just as you have certain principles—you wouldn’t let me support you in New York—well, I have my blind spots too. Not many—in fact, just one. Lawrenceville! I hate it! I love New York. Before I came to New York I lived here, in this mausoleum. I was nothing. I was dead. When I came to New York it was like a veil lifting. For the first time I felt like I was alive, breathing.”

For most of the narrative, Susann portrays Anne as a quiet, undemonstrative young woman. One of the few times she is beside herself is this scene in which she insists she will not live in Lawrenceville and asserts that her true love, as Lyon often notes, is New York. Each of the major female characters has something or someone with which they are obsessed. Neely is obsessed with stardom, Jennifer with a settled married life, and Helen with a young lover. While readers may recognize that addiction to drugs is the one common compulsion among the three main characters, each also has another powerful driving force ruling their lives, emphasizing the theme of Escape Through Addiction and Self-Destructive Behavior.

“I’ll lend you some of my green dolls to help you get your figure back. […] [B]ut the trouble is, you gotta keep taking them. The second I stop, I eat like a maniac. But the feeling is great—sets you on fire, like you could dance for hours. And I bless you every night for the red ones. They saved my life. Oh, hey. Have you ever tried a yellow one? They’re called Nembutals. If you take one of each—a red one and a yellow—wow! You really sleep. I learned it by experiment.”

At various points, the three main characters share their stresses and struggles with each other, and the subject of dolls and how they work arises. The women recommend different prescription drugs to each other until all three become dependent upon them. Procuring them, as the author describes it, becomes simpler as their addictions progress. Neely, speaking here, is a rising starlet. As such, she is given virtually anything she wants in Hollywood, including 100 Seconal tablets by her physician. She does not realize the studio treats her this way to keep her under control, nor does she recognize the drugs are slowly taking charge of her.

“Oh, we use sex—but in a subtle kind of way. Anne is beautiful. But she has the type of beauty women can identify with. A college girl or young matron will think she can look like Anne if she uses our product, but she would never think she could look like Jennifer. You’re selling escapism in pictures—I’m selling a product. Anne is right for my product. People won’t stop to think that it’s her fine bone structure that does it, or the way her eyes are spaced, or the thickness of her own lashes. They’ll think if they use the same product it would happen to them.”

This passage is part of a conversation between Kevin, the CEO of a cosmetic company, and Claude, the producer of French soft-core porn movies. They discuss the type of sexuality that each of them uses to promote their products and make a great deal of money. The irony of this passage is that both Jennifer and Anne, whose acting and modeling services represent the sex appeal these businessmen seek, sit in silence, listening to this conversation about themselves. This is one of the author’s most dramatic revelations of the objectification of women in the extremely influential, lucrative world they dwell in.

“Geez, why wouldn’t that girl look good? She wasn’t pulling in five thousand a week. She wasn’t one of the hottest names in pictures. She was just a girl trying to make it. If she was a star, she’d be in bed at nine with the cream and the oil too! Tears ran down her face. God, all her life she had dreamed about something like this. A big house, a guy you loved, kids. She had them all…only there was no time to enjoy it.”

After discovering her husband, Ted, in her swimming pool with a naked starlet, Neely reflects on her life. She has acquired everything she always dreamed of. Possessing these things, however, requires her to give up the time and attention necessary to enjoy what she has earned. The demands of her studio contract force her into such a regimen that she must take narcotics to perform. Susann draws a comparison between Neely’s addiction to drugs and the way she is equally consumed by her career, with virtually no control over either.

“She recalled their first union. She had been unable to do more than submit. She allowed him to take her, to satisfy himself—nothing more. And he never asked for more. Sometimes she forced herself to respond in a tepid way, and Kevin seemed to accept this for passion. Soon she realized that for all his worldliness, he was totally unsophisticated about the act of love. […] Anne was a lady as his wife had been. And so he accepted her frigidity as a normal attribute of a lady, and being a gentleman, he expected nothing more.”

With this description, the author harkens back to one of Anne’s earlier concerns that she simply is not attracted to men. Her relationship with Lyon made her realize that she could indeed feel real passion, though she never experienced it with anyone except him. As she considers the possibility of marrying Kevin, she recognizes it will be more of a social contract and that Kevin cannot understand it being more than that. Susann implies that this sort of arrangement is prevalent in a patriarchal society; Kevin, like the other men in the text, is only concerned with his pleasure and thinks it is normal for women to be immobile and passive during sex.

“A slow flush spread up Helen’s neck. When she answered her voice was shrill. ‘What would a washed-up little has-been like you know about a vibrato? I’ve been on top for 30 years and I’ll stay on top as long as I like. But you better keep singing for free, because that’s all you’ll get. Sure you’ll get applause—any audience will applaud for something extra they get for nothing. But you’re finished, washed up.’”

These hostile insults, directed by Helen to Neely, are the culmination of an argument that escalates between two fading A-list stars. As the degrading comments escalate, each criticizes the other. Ironically, each of their critical comments about the other is accurate, though Helen’s situation foreshadows Neely’s eventual fall from grace. This exchange, one of the most famous scenes in the novel, demonstrates the jealousy and rivalry that exists between celebrities, a reality the author would know about firsthand as a Broadway actress.

“‘You are the sex goddess of Europe. All Hollywood is waiting to see how you measure up to their sex symbols—Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor—and those girls are young.’

‘I’m not Liz Taylor or Marilyn Monroe. I’m Jennifer North. I’m me!’

‘And what are you? A face and a pair of breasts! That’s all you are…all you’ve ever been! […] Don’t ever get it into your head that you have anything else to offer.’”

This conversation takes place between Claude, the French producer, and Jennifer, as they debate whether she must have plastic surgery. Claude has a financial interest in making Jennifer look as young and attractive as possible since he intends to sell her contract to film studios in Hollywood. His comments here are an explicit acknowledgment of Mid-Century Patriarchy and the Objectification of Women, reducing Jennifer to her body parts—and how Jennifer’s career relies on maintaining her looks. After this conversation, Jennifer sacrifices her health for beauty, a pattern that repeats later.

“He stopped as his finger stumbled against the small bandage. ‘What’s this? What have they done to one of my babies?’

Her smile was frozen. ‘It’s nothing… I had a small cyst…’

‘There won’t be a scar!’ He was genuinely horrified.

‘No, Winston—[…] No scar.’

‘That’s all that matters. Let them take out your ovaries—I couldn’t care less. That’s not you—I’ve never met your ovaries. But as long as they never harm my babies…”

This exchange, between Winston and Jennifer in the hospital after she has had a biopsy, is ironic. Jennifer happily assures Anne that Winston loves her for who she is and wants to have children with her, but when he comes to her hospital room, it becomes apparent that what he loves most about her are her breasts, which he continually refers to as his “babies.” Because she will lose her breasts, Jennifer believes there is now no hope for the happiness she long sought and decides to die by suicide.

“This girl is an addict now. Sleeping pill addiction can be as serious as any other addiction and harder to cure, because unfortunately it’s quite easy for a patient to get pills on the outside. […] Did you know that on the day of the suicide attempt she had taken 50 pills? I checked with the druggist. Her prescription had been filled the night before. […] [E]ach prescription had a new physician’s name on it. […] [T]hat and a good supply of liquor—a dangerous combination. Yet she still needed to cut her wrist to accomplish the act. Her tolerance is the tolerance of an addict.”

This passage presents a clash between an accurate recognition of addiction—the doctor understands addiction’s potency and the difficulty of treating it—and the lack of viable treatment in the early 1960s. Like other mental health conditions, addiction was poorly understood and stigmatized during this time, resulting in Neely’s yearlong involuntary psychiatric hold. While Neely’s treatment is shocking to modern readers, misunderstandings and stigma regarding addiction persist today.

“Why do you think they keep six nurses for just twenty of us? We’re always under C.O.—constant observation. Twice a week the head nurses meet with the doctors and give reports on you. Everyone gives reports on you—the occupational therapy instructor, the gym instructor.…You’ve got two bad marks already—you sulked in gym and refused to cooperate in O.T. Didn’t want to make one of the darling little ceramic ashtrays. You’ve got to remember, Big Brother is everywhere, always watching.”

This passage reveals the reality of mental health care in the 1960s. While the patients undergo psychoanalysis, the goal is to reinforce what is deemed appropriate behavior. The absurdity of this treatment plan is reinforced by the allusion to George Orwell’s 1984, comparing the doctors and staff to the tyrannical Big Brother.

“Lyon was back. Nothing had changed. But it had—she was no longer twenty, and the years had brought changes. There was Kevin, who had given her love, trust—and her career. Kevin needs me, she thought, and in walks Lyon, just for a visit, and I act like an idiot, ready to kick over the traces and forget all the years without a word. Tomorrow I’ll call him and say I’m busy. Or maybe I won’t even call. Let him wait, like I waited so long.

But she knew she would see him.”

Anne is right back in the middle of a love triangle, just as when she was 20 years old. The first time, it was simple to decide what to do: She just followed her heart. The result was losing her fiancé, as well as the man she truly loved. Now, she finds that the same situation presents an even a more difficult quandary. She doubts Lyon, who has already walked out on her twice, yet she has no passion for Kevin. While she recognizes the foolishness of her emotions, she also intuitively knows that she will follow her emotions and accept Lyon’s entreaties.

“You know, this thing with you and Lyon—it was wrong from the start. But you wanted him. All right, you’ve got him. And you’ve gone through too much to throw in the sponge now. Your cue is to act as if nothing has happened. It’s not going to be easy—in fact, it may be almost impossible at times, because this thing with Neely will get hotter before it cools down. But if you can hold out the cycle will reverse itself. And he’s got to wind up hating her. She’ll castrate him—she does that to all men. […] In time, if you can ride with the punches, you will wind up as the soft female he has wronged, and he’ll feel protective and guilty about you.”

This is advice Henry gives to Anne as she struggles with the news that Lyon and Neely are having an open affair. Henry is the one sympathetic man whom Anne always trusts. While his advice turns out to be correct, he insists that she give up her self-respect and lifelong commitment to honesty to play the role of the passive homemaker who accepts her philandering husband. Such behavior was expected of married women during this era.