![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/02\/blonde-199x300.jpg\")
Blonde<\/em> is a peculiar read. If you have never read Oates before, it\u2019s a wild ride. Luckily I\u2019m familiar with the author, and because of that, immediately recognized that the novel is Oates in all her postmodern, Gothic glory. At times, the prose is convoluted, stream-of-conscious, switching from points of view like blinking an eye. She maintains this symbol of a Beggar Maid and a Dark Prince, and by the time you finish the book, you understand this about as much as you did entering it. Sometimes the story slugs on, especially in the middle of the book, as will happen in a 700-plus-page book.<\/p>\n All things considered, this book is an epic feat in literary fiction. Monroe comes alive on the page as Norma Jeane Baker\u2014the actress\u2019s given name\u2014while also taking on personas of the Blonde Actress, the Gemini, Miss Golden Dreams, and each of her film\u2019s characters. Through time, so many rumors and so many lies have been smeared on Monroe\u2019s legacy that her real self is constantly overshadowed. When exploring Monroe\u2019s biography, it\u2019s vital to see her not as some Hollywood sexpot, but as an ambitious, intelligent young woman determined to create art, who struggled with mental illness and abuse from the men around her. She was not the \u201cdumb blonde\u201d character she played on screen\u2014that\u2019s why it\u2019s called acting<\/em>. And Oates knows this, much to the novel\u2019s benefit. Blonde<\/em> is a personal and<\/em> political triumph, and I encourage anyone unfamiliar (or familiar) with the feminist movement to give this book a read. In a way, this is Oates reclaiming Monroe\u2019s legacy, not as her reputation, but for what she really was.<\/p>\n One particularly intriguing aspect of the novel is the mother-daughter relationship of Monroe and Gladys Baker. A woman struggling with severe mental illness, Gladys tries raising Monroe as a single mother, and the novel presents a woman so raw and ugly in its realness, that in her many flaws, is refreshing to see a motherly character as such. Very seldom is a secondary character written so intricately. And it\u2019s the same with many of the other characters: from Cass Chaplin Jr., to her first husband (written as \u201cBucky Glazer\u201d), to Joe DiMaggio (written as \u201cthe Ex-Athlete\u201d), to Arthur Miller (written as \u201cthe Playwright\u201d), to the various employees at the Studio.<\/p>\n However, the story centers itself around Monroe, and Monroe is the character to which we should be most enthralled. This is the part of the book that boggled with my mind the most. From reading about such complicated and honest secondary characters, I expected the protagonist to be much of the same. Yet that is not what I found. Monroe seems to be the entire work, yet none of it, filling both the whole world and not a tiny speck in it concurrently. Sometimes she\u2019s a tangible portrayal of a young career woman, though at other times it feels as if she\u2019s barely present. I kept wanting more from her. I understand this is where the troubles with a fictional biography come in. The author can never truly enter the mind of its protagonist, and maybe that\u2019s the point in Oates\u2019s writing. There are so many assumptions, speculations, and theories that have to go into it, that maybe you can\u2019t conjure the person\u2019s image, regardless of how hard you try.<\/p>\n Additionally, this is also where many of my complaints fall. At times, Oates writes with a sensationalist tilt, tiptoeing into the land of conspiracy theory. I won\u2019t spoil the end, but I will say that it\u2019s a huge disappointment, and she finds herself not taking simple, hard fact and exploring the grounds of conspiracy, which plays a huge role in the false reputation of Monroe that Oates attempts to dissect. It erases Monroe\u2019s mental illness, almost trivializing it, and Oates is guilty of infantilizing Monroe at points. You see flickers of Monroe, but Oates finds a way to dismantle it. Albeit Oates penned a forward detailing that one shouldn\u2019t read Blonde<\/em> for biographical, factual information on the star, it\u2019s hard not to when it\u2019s marketed and written as such.<\/p>\n Blonde<\/em> is in a strange place where I recommend it wholeheartedly, but doubt if I will read it again. If anyone is interested in Monroe, I suggest reading her autobiography, My Story<\/em>, or the even more intriguing Fragments<\/em>, which includes her poetry, journals, and personal writings. One will be surprised at the insights and talent of the actress, who had a particular knack for poetry. That\u2019s where the true Monroe can be found\u2014in her own voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kyle Labe\/\/Blog Writer Decades after her untimely death, Marilyn Monroe remains an archetype in America\u2019s collective unconscious. Like Hollywood\u2019s version of Helen of Troy, Monroe\u2019s beauty has transcended time, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/02\/my-story-207x300.jpg\")