Jenae Valvoda

Eng 330

30 Nov 2014

Dr. Wicktor

Gold-Digging: Socioeconomic Mobility in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

The Progressive Era, a period in the United States between the end of the 19th century

and the beginning of the 20th century, contributed many social and economic reforms that

influenced themes in Anita Loos’ novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a

Professional Lady, published in 1925. Namely, what is known as the first-wave of feminism was

having success as a movement to improve women’s rights, promoting social equality amongst

genders. The movement proved successful with a constitutional amendment in 1919, giving

women the right to vote; however, that is just one aspect of what women asked for. Charles

Bressler notes, the first wave was mainly concerned with the right to vote, education, sexual

choice, literature, and the acceptance to be as socially active outside the home as men were in

a sphere (“Feminism” 171). It is recognized that patriarchy is the norm in western cultures,

where “men define what it means to be human, including what it means to be female. Since

the female is not male, Simone de Beauvoir maintains, she becomes the ‘Other,’ an object

whose existence is defined and interpreted by the dominant male,” he remarks (“Feminism”

173). In this othering process, the female feels secondary and therefore a subordinate figure to

both herself and the patriarchal environment surrounding her. Therefore, notions such as

independent thinking and loosening inhibitions, the polar opposite of many generations of

women before them, comprised the popularized flapper lifestyle of the 1920s as trying to break

out of the patriarchy. Women, for the first time, started to become a part of the social sphere

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and not just working objects around the household, acting faintly more like men to prove a

point about gender equality or to mimic what was solely happening in the sphere they were

trying to enter and do so with subtlety. Flappers drove automobiles, cut their hair in boyish

styles, drank alcohol, and treated intercourse casually in order to promote egalitarian ideals.

Loos depicts flapper lifestyle in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and was also known to

participate in the cultural phenomenon herself. Because of her close connection to the societal

shift, the reader is able to correlate the two and easily see her novel as a comical

representation of women transitioning from the traditional way they were raised as ladies in a

small town, to embracing the more liberal ideals of feminists and flappers that have a global

outlook for equality. For this reason, this analysis will focus on gold-digging acts in Gentlemen

Prefer Blondes as a form of social agency in order to gain economic mobility and aspire to a

higher social status in a capitalist society.

Lorelei Lee, the “professional lady” in Loos’ novel, is undisputedly one of the first

portrayals of a gold-digger since she is obsessed with material possessions and strictly uses her

charm in order to obtain them. Gold-digger gained a new connotation in English lexicon

through a production by Avery Hopwood in 1919, as documented by the Oxford English

Dictionary; previously meaning simply one who digs for gold, it became slang for a woman who

portrays interest in a man solely for benefitting from his wealth, and may do so to multiple men

at once. Though patriarchy makes this term a negative comment on a woman, this is a way that

culturally women shifted to a less subordinate role than they had been for all of eternity prior in

the Western world. Correlating with The Progressive Era that had just abolished prostitution in

an effort to supposedly better women’s social standing and rid society of sexual pollution, gold-

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digging became a means for which men could attract women to spend time with them and for

women to continue to profit off of the situation, since prostitution is in fact the world’s oldest

profession and habits so old are not easily broken (Barry 222). Women of this period had very

few ways to earn wages of their own and liberate themselves, especially now that prostitution

was more taboo and illegal than ever, to a more capitalist market rather than the purely

ascribed status of their fathers or husbands, which is the main argument behind why a woman

would want to practice gold-digging in the 1920s. Charlotte Perkins Gilman defined ‘material

feminism,’ to be concerned with relieving traditional duties women are typically assigned with

such as domestic responsibilities and child rearing (“Feminism” 181). These activities were

caging women to homes, unable to have the opportunity for financial or social independence

from their husbands or fathers. Marxism is closely related to this notion since it is concerned

with how economic and social inequalities shape the way we behave morally, ideally a society

would want to create egalitarianism so as to obtain harmony and not jealousy through

competition (“Marxism” 192). Therefore the reader can determine digging is an egalitarian

move because it attempts to correct what men have kept out of reach to women for so long

(Barry 302).

Pamela Robertson argues the opposite in her article, “Feminist Camp in Gold Diggers of

1933," by stating:

The concept of gold-digging still raises questions related to the effects of

commercialization, industrialization, and urbanization on sex roles and sexual

behavior. But, because the gold-digger’s actions are attributed to greed and not

need, her image is divorced from the broader issue of women’s inequality that

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had previously grounded feminist concern over the cultural emphasis on

material acquisition and commercialized leisure (138).

Robertson clearly misses the mark by not accounting for the limits put on women of the period

to earn wages of their own and that this was a way for women to introduce themselves to

society slowly, so as to learn cultural norms and behaviors before fully taking on a previously

exclusive man’s world. She ignores these facts and calls using men for socioeconomic

advancement anti-feminist, when she should be admitting that the act of acquiring wealth from

male suitors was a consensual act, however oblivious a man might have been about it, rather

than stealing as she makes it out to be. She does not account for that this act of digging made

women active rather than passive, a main tier to feminist theory (“Feminism” 179). Radhika

Balakrishnan mentions that “Feminists need to pay attention to the ways in which capitalism’s

effects on women are simultaneously liberatory and exploitive” (45). Though digging could

perhaps be both liberatory and exploitive, the liberation is the more important element here

since the time period is only in the first wave of feminism and any way of breaking out of

patriarchy is arguably a good way of breaking out (Barry 303).

Lorelei was actually introduced to gold-digging in very consensual ways, with men

practically throwing money at her, and she simply never refused them. In the novel, she

mentions that she has attended Business College, but again that is not a commonality for

women of the 1920s, and it is even less common that a career should follow that education.

She was actually hired by a man before graduating, soon realizing that he was not as interested

in her secretarial skills as he was her body; this was her first experience in which her body was

the commodity and the compensation was her secretarial wages in an indirect manner. This

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relationship soon ended and Lorelei became accustomed to a skill she had of being able to

command a room by simply entering it, she realized her body was one defining attribute about

her. Through this process of accepting her body as a commodity that she could use with little

outer physical labor, as capitalism would typically require, rather than an object for men to just

use without compensation, Lorelei overcomes the ‘othering’ that made women feel inferior to

men for centuries. Sometime after, Lorelei finds work in Hollywood with movies and is then

discovered by Gus Eisman who offers to lavishly educate her in New York by footing all of her

bills. To then connect Lorelei’s work to capitalist labor, the reader may note that spending time

with Eisman, according to her, was exhausting, “I mean we always seem to have dinner at the

Colony and see a show and go to the Trocadero and then Mr. Eisman shows me to my

apartment. So of course when a gentleman is interested in educating a girl, he likes to stay and

talk about the topics of the day until quite late, so I am quite fatigued the next day and I do not

really get up until it is time to dress for dinner at the Colony.” This first occurrence of digging

was the most consensual of all the acts in the novel because of how much Eisman was willing to

give Lorelei since the nature in which he kept her in New York is clearly more his idea than hers,

and he spares no expense at educating her both with money and with his own words, there is

more than just a digging relationship between the two. When Lorelei happens upon another

rich man, Lamson, she considers for a moment leaving Eisman, but decides not to due to the

scandal it would cause, not mentioning money or material goods as a determining factor in her

decision.

During her time in New York, the reader computes that this is the largest socioeconomic

jump that Lorelei makes in the novel as she becomes accustomed to the differences in higher

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class and experiences dialectical materialism, or the way in which one uses language in relation

to class standing is a core belief of Marxist theory (“Marxism” 192). Since Lorelei is starting

anew in a social class where she has no experience, this may be most easily viewed through

Jacques Lacan’s orders of the human psyche: imaginary, symbolic, and real. Imaginary order

comes first in one’s life but it is a genderless stage since it is the earliest and individuals have

not yet come to know gender differences as they are not of concern yet. Symbolic order

follows when individuals are becoming accustomed to social language; boys start to use

dominant language and girls start to use subordinated language. Real order comes lastly in

development. This stage involves shaping the individual’s perception of the world through the

learned language and surrounding societal actions; for women, this stage means obeying one’s

authoritative father by becoming submissive (“Feminism” 179).

After looking the part, in the dresses, jewels, and other apparel Eisman acting as a social

agent buys for her, Lorelei also feels the need to play the part in order to be fully accepted by

high society and the reader observes this through the way she uses language. There are

instances where it is clear that she is dumbing herself down so as not to appear threatening to

men and make herself less attractive and discontinue the benefits she receives, she is

subconsciously still including subordinated language, but also attempts to integrate the way she

perceives the higher class communication happening around her. One example of this is in an

attempt to sound sophisticated, she eradicates the word ‘me’ from her speech and replaces it

with ‘I’ when she says, “Gerry said it made him cringe to think of a sweet girl like I having a

friendship with Mr. Eisman. So it really made me feel quite depressed. I mean Gerry likes to

talk quite a lot and I always think a lot of talk is depressing and worries your brains with things

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you never even think of when you are busy,” (Loos). Here one notes that she strays from

intellectual thought because it worries her “brains” and that is a huge cue to subordinated

language. Another clue that might hint at this transition she is experiencing, is the fact that she

is always able to spell champagne correctly but stumbles on many other common words and

concepts such as, “So we had another bottle of champagne and she became very [intreeged]

about Christian science because she said that she really thought it was a better religion than

[Prespyterians],” (Loos). Here both women are unable to identify that they are talking about

the same religious sect, perhaps due to the champagne, however Lorelei in an attempt to sound

of higher class adds science to the term and it becomes something the other woman is

“intreeged” about. So though the subordinate language combined with a more Latinate lexicon

is a difficult combination to master, it appears Loos did it through Lorelei in a very comedic way

and so that our heroine may continue in her social mobility movement of gold-digging.

So far most of Lorelei’s acts seem innocent enough to the reader, most can be brushed

off as a portrayal of an ignoramus, but one very meditated act stands out and that is her greed

for the tiara. Such jewelry was typically reserved for royalty, and in London the group

encounters aristocrats selling their family jewels, so naturally she wants the crown because of

its exclusivity. The cost is not relative in the matter and does not so much attract her as it does

deter her, or make her determined to have a man buy it for her. The fact that she is attracted

to the exclusivity over the tiara’s worth is how the reader knows that she is digging for social

change and not directly for gold. The way she approaches this is to cozy up to the wealthiest

looking man in her presence, Piggie, and convince him that it would bring her the same

happiness she brings him. She devises a scheme involving first obtaining her own orchids to

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make Piggie comfortable spending money on her through giving him the idea that he should be

purchasing orchids for her:

So this morning Harry, the boy friend of ours who is the bell hop, waked me up

at ten o’clock because he had a box of one dozen orchids from Piggie. So by the

time Piggie pays for a few dozen orchids, the diamond tiara will really seem like

quite a bargain. Because I always think that spending money is only just a habit

and if you get a gentleman started on buying one dozen orchids at a time he

really gets very good habits (Loos).

Though this is clearly an act of gold-digging, Lorelei is simply playing at Piggie’s emotions, she is

also unknowingly playing at his capitalist reactions to evoking love emotions to acquire the

tiara. Murstein comments on love in contemporary America when saying, “At the center of

arguments is the perception of love as a drive or state of tension which, with a minimum of

satisfaction, keeps the individual in a hyperactive state. He is not nourished by tangible reward,

but by hope and expectations of bliss,” (384). Therefore one can conclude that Piggie is being

nourished ‘by hope and expectations’ after presuming the future may hold a kiss for the pair if

he keeps Lorelei’s attention by purchasing her orchids and a tiara. Cheating is another factor

that entices Piggie, he has been married for many years and the romantic love element has

faded to static, so he seeks excitement and by finding that in Lorelei, he compensates her with

gifts (Murstein 385). Lorelei is not to blame for Piggie’s capitalist need to acquire romantic love

and feel as though he has won a prize, being an ignoramus, she is just simply able to achieve

her tiara goals by flaunting her beauty and watching Piggie respond. This act takes hardly any

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effort on Lorelei’s end other than maintaining her appearance, but for Piggie, it will lighten his

wallet quite a bit, though for a good cause.

Loos’ novel, commenting on a new cultural trend, was probably a bit of a subtle guide

for some women that also wished to advance their social standing through use of their body as

a commodity in a capitalist patriarchy. Many women could both laugh at and learn from her

humorous work in order to break that patriarchal mold and embrace the first wave or flapper

culture. Gold-digging in the modern day is far less necessary and as acceptable as Lorelei

makes it look in 1925, and one would then have to agree with Robertson that it is ridiculously

greedy; however, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, it is a totally acceptable act of social agency to

better one’s socioeconomic status.

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Works Cited

Balakrishnan, Radhika. "Capitalism and Sexuality: Free to Choose?" Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World's Religions. Ed. Patricia Beattie. Jung, Mary E. Hunt, and Radhika Balakrishnan. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2001. 44-57. Print.

Barry, Kathleen. The Prostitution of Sexuality. New York: New York UP, 1995. Print.

Bressler, Charles E. "Feminism." Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. 167-90. Print.

Bressler, Charles E. "Marxism." Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. 191-211. Print.

"ˈgold-ˌdigger, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2014. Web. 20 November 2014.

Loos, Anita. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Liveright, 2012. Kindle AZW file.

Murstein, Bernard I. Love, Sex, and Marriage through the Ages. New York: Springer, 1974. Print.

Robertson, Pamela. "Feminist Camp in Gold Diggers of 1933." Hollywood Musicals, the Film Reader. Ed. Steven Cohan. London: Routledge, 2002. 129-42. Print.

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