Drinking in the Panopticon : Female drinkers in Dorothy Parker´s stories

Abstract: The main aim with this essay is to look how Dorothy Parker portrays women who drink. My main focus is at Dorothy Parker’s story “Big Blonde” but also her stories, “Dialogue at Three in the Morning”, “A Terrible Day Tomorrow”, “Just a Little One” and “A Woman in Green Lace”. Inspired by Ellen Lansky, who points out that Panopticon and Panopticism can be applied on all-male institutions and men, my analysis proves that Foucault’s Panopticism can be used to describe masculine control of female drunkenness. Women behave in a certain way to please inspectors in the Panopticon. I this essay I argue that there are two types of drinking women in Parker’s stories. The “modern” and the “controlled” woman, who both are forced to submission by Panopticism.