Dorothy Parker Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Rhonda S. Pettit

Critical Essay by Rhonda S. Pettit

SOURCE: Pettit, Rhonda S. “The Sentimental Connection II: Dorothy Parker's Fiction and the Sentimental Tradition.” In A Gendered Collision: Sentimentalism and Modernism in Dorothy Parker's Poetry and Fiction, pp. 121-53. Cranbury N.J.: Associated University Presses, 2000.

In the following essay, Pettit regards Parker's short fiction as part of the sentimental tradition.

If Dorothy Parker's twentieth-century poetry seems at times enmeshed in nineteenth-century sensibilities, her fiction offers no less an enigma. Whether she is considered a marginal modernist or outside the canon entirely, whether she is being critically hailed or hammered, Parker is typically referred to as a “modern” writer, particularly where her fiction is concerned. The characterization applies not only to her use of irony and abbreviated form, but to her content as well. Thomas A. Guilason, for example, writes that Parker “used the short story to advance her modern ideas concerning the plight of oppressed people, especially women, struggling...
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