A Feminist Approach to a Reading of A Telephone Call
...aybe he is coming on here without calling me up. Maybe he’s on his way now. Something might have happened to him,” (102) showcase the intensity with which the woman is fretting about over an encounter with someone she has become infatuated with. The language of the story also feeds the notion that women are to be viewed as servile neurotics when it comes to love, and depend on male strength to lead them through life, with phrases such as, “Maybe it wouldn’t be a foolish thing to do” (103) and “I’ll be quiet” (104). Dorothy Parker writes, “He’ll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don’t like you to cry. He doesn’t cry”(102). She also laments, “They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games” (102). Both of these statements convey the hidden rules that females have been taught to abide by in society. The fact that Parker is a female, and able to draw from personal experience, lends credence to the validity of these forced stereotypes. Dorothy Parker writes as if she’s hushing herself and resorting to an angry whisper. She bites her object of desire with barbs: “I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell” (102). She also scolds herself for allowing her emotions to get the best of her: “This is such a little thing, for me to be bringing in pride, for me to be making such a fuss about. I may have misunderstood him” (103). The style of writing that Parker delves into is nothing more than stream-of-consciousness ramblings, and it definitely allows the reader to experience the turmoil a female might endure while playing the passive and patient suitor. It provides insight into stigmas surrounding what females must be thinking after a male feigns interest in them and “promises” to contact them. Even males can relate to a lot of the emotions and passionate stances that Dorothy Parker includes in her story. Everyone has felt rejection and loneliness at some point in their lives, and when Parker writes, “Oh, all the books are about people who love each other, truly and sweetly. What do they want to write about that for? Don’t they know it isn’t true? Don’t they know it’s a lie, it’s a God damned lie?” (102...