Pulitzer, Roxanne, and Kathleen Maxa.
The Prize Pulitzer.
New York: Ballantine, 1987.
Pulitzer, Roxanne, and Kathleen Maxa. The Prize Pulitzer. New York: Ballantine, 1987.
First, since I am a writer myself, I’d like to give my own
unsolicited advice, not the opinion of Blogger, GoodReads, or anyone else. Don’t be so impressed with the Pulitzer Prize;
buy one of poor Lily’s bracelets instead.
I wouldn’t be so leased with being its winner after reading about its
origins and descendants. This sordid
bunch of poor little rich children seems to exist to destroy other people’s
lives, especially if those people are young women.
True, generally, there are two sides to every story, but not
this one. It’s unfair to label a woman
as a gold digger because the history of marriage itself encourages “gold
digging” or marriage as a career goal, perhaps the only one for women. I’d even call it legalized prostitution at
its worst. Think.
In the Ancient World, marriage was a political treaty, meant
to seal the fate of nations and produce heirs. Review the sad history of Henry
VIII and his wives. As he says in one of the many literary accounts of the
marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn, Henry didn’t marry Catharine [of Aragon]; England
married Spain. Remember Princess Diana was hailed for
producing the “heir and a spare!” Or,
there’s the first Empress of Iran, wife of the modern, exiled Shah. They were compelled to divorce because she
couldn’t have children.
In many cultures “loss of consortium” is grounds for
divorce. That means, you are not
performing sexually, or performing “wifely duties.” Usually, it’s someone else’s fault. Nonperformance is due to injury caused by a
third party, but it could be something peculiar to the individual spouses. Maybe it works both ways where a husband is
concerned, but I don’t want to go off topic.
According to Coventry Patmore’s “The Angel of the House”,
women were meant to marry, to suffer
childbirth, take care of everyone else, and yet be childlike and submissive as
Hubby’s little angel. Patmore’s poem
could have been the updated script for Herbert Pulitzer’s guide to
marriage. He isn’t alone; his pal Jim
Kimberly is mentioned, as is many other crazy rich couple with nothing in
common but their coke and their cocktails.
Lolita, anyone?
Roxanne Pulitzer was the ultimate submissive wife; if she
enjoyed the perversions her husband encouraged, well, isn’t that the Patmore
school of happy marriage? Just read the
books on the topic, fiction and nonfiction.
In Othello, poor Desdemona
gets creamed just because of insinuations. Kate has to curb her strong
personality after all kinds of emotional abuse and games are forced on her in The Taming of the Shrew.
In “real life” genius
Sor Juan Ines de la Cruz went to the convent rather than enter an arranged
marriage.
Barbara Pym’s novels, letters, and journals are a study of
unsuitable attachments and male/female relationships of all kinds. She would have had an entire saga based on
the Pulitzer trial. For starters, read Excellent Women, An Unsuitable Attachment, and No
Fond Return of Love. Pym realized
that despite her love stories, there was often no happy ever after for the
heroine. Sometimes, the quest for a
woman to lead a full life involved filing that Holy Grail, something to
love. Something to love could be a
vocation, friendship, love of animals, or other passion. It didn’t have to be a man, husband, or
family. As another writer, Vera Brittain
put it, anyone can have a baby; only I can write my books. Virginia Woolf would
have called it finding a room of one’s own.
Contact me if you want to know more about thee authors.
In several Ancient Cultures widows were burned on funeral
pyres, otherwise killed, or just cast out.
Women beyond childbearing age were of no value at all. Marriage was the only hope, and a well suited
one at that. Hello!! Jane Austen’s everything, C. Bronte’s Jane Eyre, E. Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Sheila Jeffries’ study, The Spinster and Her
Enemies, Greer’s The Female Eunuch,
Susan Faludi’s Backlash, Betty Friedan’s The
Feminine Mystique, the history
around the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, the history behind the
suffragettes, the century’s old persecution of women as witches, still going on
in parts of the world today; it’s everywhere. All these texts explore the topic
of misogyny and marriage. So do Title
VII, and the many cases and legal treatises dealing with sexual harassment ad
discrimination.
Marry and listen to your husband, or else. Don’t read A Vindication of the Rights of Women, or even Miguel de Unamuno’s Nada menos de todo un hombre. Stay away
from historical texts like The Plantation Mistress and A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Roxanne Pulitzer had been married before Pulitzer, and it
didn’t work out. She was young and
inexperienced. It happens. Her life was unremarkable; she had worked,
tried marriage, and underwent trials many young women of the 70s and 80s
struggled with
These struggles threw her into the path of her famous
husband, whose family worked menial jobs as entertainment when they were bored,
while others fought to get those jobs to survive. While his obituary exalted him as a philanthropist,
sportsman, business man, etc., he was another rich, controlling playboy who got
away with a lot of emotional abuse.
He had no business marrying a young woman who lacked his
experience any more than Milton, whom I usually adore for his poetry, had any
business marrying an illiterate 16 year old when he was 33 and spoke at least
seven languages. Mr. Kimberly had no
business at 60 something marrying a 19 tear old he’d met when she was 17. She later committed suicide in her late
fifties, after her apartment roommate and friend, another woman, died. Kimberly tried twice to divorce his wife, and
he succeeded the second time.
The Judge who wrote the Pulitzer opinion, published at the
end of the book, was arcane in his thinking.
The standard even then was that the divorced wife receive enough
monetary support to maintain the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed
during the marriage. He took the word of
the husband in this case, without looking to the evidence that must have been
everywhere about the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in his jurisdiction. Mr.
P was no angel, and his own drinking, cocaine use, and predilection for
threesomes should have found its way into the testimony.
Instead, a naïve young woman who couldn’t have had those experiences
on her previous salary was vilified. He didn’t want to pay child support, the old
cheapskate, and he wanted to hide his oedipal problems with his daughter from a
previous marriage, so he sacrificed his wife.
Similar cases in the same time period declared that a mother
was still presumed to be the custodial parents under the tender year’s
doctrine, lifestyle notwithstanding. It
was clear he didn’t want his kids even on family vacations, while she wanted
the boys with her. A mother’s lifestyle
does not interfere with a custody award to her unless it can be shown it
affects her children adversely. That
finding was lacking and weak in the Pulitzer case.
Anyone who wants to read more case law, let me know. I have gobs from Prof. S’ family law class,
which I was taking when this trial was going on.
During the Renaissance, there was a backlash against aristocratic
women speaking their minds; they could only do it in the face of impending
death, or if they were deemed mad.
Scolds bridles and other fun toys existed to shut them up. Read the works of Lady Jane Grey, the little
Anne Boleyn left behind, Catharine of Aragon’s last letter, Mary Cary’s plays,
the letters of Jane Anger, and their biographers and editors like Mary Ellen
Lamb and Ann Rosalind Jones.
500 years later, or so, we see this stifling of “wealthy”
women taking place in the Pulitzer trial.
Eerily, it was the legal “foreplay” foreshadowing the O.J. Simpson
murder trial that would occur some seven years later, when the victim, Nicole
Simpson’s lifestyle was put on trial.
Ironically, Simpson is mentioned in The Prize Pulitzer briefly.
Furthermore, Ms. Pulitzer was chastised by the Judge and it
seems the public, for dating after divorce papers were filed. This should never have been brought up. Once the papers are filed, that’s it. Matters of custody and alimony are left to be
worked out. Unless they can prove her
after divorce-filing dates caused the break up in the marriage, hands off! If Ms. Pulitzer’s friend were involved in the
divorce, it would have been mentioned in the original papers first filed.
Even more medieval is the judge’s insistence on making Ms.
Pulitzer’s religious beliefs an issue. I know I am being simplistic, but boys
and girls, even judicial boys and girls, please read The First Amendment, and
all of the legal analysis it has caused to be published. Religious practice can be monitored and
controlled, e.g., human sacrifice is no longer allowed. Belief, however, cannot be punished. Pulitzer
was obviously punished at least in part, for what she believed.
So, the double standard lives on. Roxanne Pulitzer seems to
have moved on and found peace, her twin boys are grown, their father gone
recently to his heavenly reward. Hers
was indeed a cautionary tale that could have been part of The Canterbury Tales. She has survived the “cruel world of the very
rich” (Author Pat Booth’s review) and
managed to support herself and maintain her sanity. We wish her the best.
As the Village Voice said, “Might not win The Prize
Pulitzer, but does have the dish heavenly.”
