Holly Golightly as an icon for young women?

Content

1 Introduction
1.1 Information on the author
1.2 Summary of the novel
1.3 Summary of the film

2 Analysis
2.1 Characterization of Holly in the novel
2.1.1 Holly’s outward appearance
2.1.2 Holly’s choice of words
2.1.3 Holly’s relationships to other people
2.1.4 Holly’s character traits
2.1.5 Conclusion
2.2 Comparison to Audrey Hepburn's representation of Holly in the film
2.2.1 Holly’s outward appearance
2.2.2 Holly’s choice of words
2.2.3 Holly’s relationships to other people
2.2.4 Conclusion

3 Significance of the differences - Did the alterations of Holly Golightly’s character in the film adaptation influence the innovation of the perception of women?

4 Sources

1 Introduction

My interest in the question if Holly Golightly is an icon for modern women and why comes from my enthusiasm for the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, which I like especially because of the main character Holly and my passion for New York City. Having already seen the film, I remarked several differences while reading the book and since then I wanted to discover their significances; so when I had to choose a topic for my research paper, the comparison of the Holly in the novella and the Audrey-Hepburn-version of her was one of the topics that I gave most preference to.

In order to do that, I will first look at the author’s life and summarize the storylines of novel and film adaptation so that one can find the content-related differences early in the examination. The second part will contain a characterization of Holly in the novel, followed by a comparison to the Holly in the film. The third part of this paper will explain the differences and conclusively try to find the influences that Holly Golightly has on modern women.¹

1.1 Information on the author Truman Capote

Truman Capote was born as Truman Streckfus Persons on September 30, 1924 in New Orleans. After his parents got divorced in 1928, he lived with his grandmother in Monroeville, Alabama, next to the nowadays likewise famous author Harper Lee. In 1933, his mother remarried the Cuban Joseph Capote who renamed him Truman García Capote. The family moved to New York City in 1933 and lived on Park Avenue, where an inspiration for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” might have come from. This move preceded some big milestones in Capote’s life: he was soon introduced to New York’s high society by the artist Gloria Laura Vanderbilt (*1924) and Charlie Chaplin’s fourth wife Oona O’Neill (1925-1991). But even more important than that, New York City was the place where he discovered the theater and started writing at the age of eleven and when he was 18 he started working for The New Yorker. His first stories were published in 1945 and Random House published his first novel “Other voices, other rooms” in 1948.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s got published in 1958 and after the novella’s worldwide success Capote and Harper Lee traveled to Kansas in 1959 to write “In Cold Blood” (1965). This non-fictional novel tells the story of a family murder in west Kansas that Capote had read about in several newspapers. After its publication, Capote was exhausted and became an alcohol and drug addict.

In 1975, he published the first chapters of “Answered Prayers”, which was supposed to help him with his come back. Instead it lead to the millionaire’s widow Ann Woodward’s suicide because those excerpts revealed several secrets of New York City’s high society, including the story about how she deliberately shot her husband claiming that she took him for a vagrant.² After this incident, Capote’s family and friends turned away from him because he had been told those secrets in trust that was now broken. This caused depressions and the resumption of his drug addiction.

Capote died alone at the age of 60 in Los Angeles on August 25, 1984 due to a lethal dose of tablets.

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1.2 Summary of the novel

A nameless narrator moves to New York City to become a successful writer when he makes the acquaintance of his neighbor, the 18-year-old socialite Holly Golightly, who climbs into his bedroom window one night after he has already perceived her because of her mailbox and trashcan or late night home comings, when she rings him out of bed because she forgot her keys.

Due to his resemblance to her beloved brother, Holly starts calling the author after him, “Fred”, and instantly puts her trust in him.

She seems jolly and carefree on the outside, throwing wild parties and flirting with every man she meets. In addition to that, the narrator learns that she regularly visits the imprisoned criminal Sally Tomato because his accomplice, Mr. O’Shaughnessy, pays her for it. She likes and trusts the old man, despite his suspicious demeanor. Nevertheless, “Fred” soon remarks the actual despair of uncertainty behind the facade. As Holly’s husband in his fifties, Doc Golightly, appears, he tells “Fred” Holly’s real story, beginning with her actual name Lulamae: she and her brother came as homeless orphans to Doc’s house. After her voluntary marriage with Doc when she was 14, she soon ran away to explore the world. Doc now wants Holly to come home, but even though their reunion is full of harmony, she refuses, which he understands. Later, Holly’s attempts to marry the rich and powerful Brazilian diplomat José Ybarra- Jaegar, who asks her to move to Rio de Janeiro with him when they discover her pregnancy, annoy “Fred”, because he is afraid to lose his friend.

When Holly is informed about her brother’s death in war, she stops calling the narrator “Fred” and talking about him, which she used to do a lot before.

One week prior to her planned emigration to Brazil, Holly gets arrested for delivering secret messages between Sally Tomato and Mr. O’Shaughnessy (in ignorance). Her former agent from her acting days, O.J. Berman, buys her free, but because of an accident that happened immediately before the arrest she loses her baby. Even though José breaks up with her because of negative press, Holly sticks to her plan and goes to Brazil to continue her search for the place where she belongs.

1.3 Summary of the film

On October 5, 1961, Paramount Pictures released the film adaptation of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, directed by Blake Edwards. It was a huge success with a box office of 14 million dollars. The main characters Holly and “Fred” are portrayed by Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. The music by Henry Mancini, especially the title song ‘Moon River’, has become very famous and won most of the film’s prices.³ Paramount offered Truman Capote to write the screenplay himself, however he turned it down because he did not “like to do scripts of [his] own work”, so in the end George Axelrod wrote it.⁴

Concerning the content, the film is rather based on the novella than an adaptation of it. Many dialogues have been taken over completely, but the plot is in some ways largely different: “Fred” has a real name, Paul Varjak, and has a paid affair with his decorator. When he meets Holly, they soon fall in love. He ends his affair, but Holly has laid eyes on José. She never gets pregnant but still wants to go to Brazil and gets arrested after her good-bye dinner with Paul. When O.J. Berman buys her free, Paul picks her up from jail with a cab to the airport. On their way, Paul confesses his love, but Holly still wants to leave, even though he has brought her José’s break-up-letter. When she abandons her cat, Paul runs looking for it and she decides to follow him. They find the cat and the film ends with Holly and Paul kissing in the rain in the streets of Manhattan.

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Original promotional poster

2 Analysis

2.1 Characterization of Holly Golightly in the novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”

In Truman Capote’s novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1958), the reader soon is introduced by the unnamed narrator to Holly Golightly, an 18-year-old socialite who lives on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Following, Holly’s character in the novella will be analyzed, especially concerning the scenes when the narrator first meets her⁵ and the ending scene of the story.⁶ To get a closer imagination of Holly’s demeanor in public, first her outward appearance will be regarded, followed by her choice of words, because it shows her intellectual background, and her relationships to other people, which will be analyzed in the subsequent paragraph. The last part of this characterization will deal with Holly’s character traits and motives that lead to her actions.

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First edition of the novella (Random House, 1958)

2.1.1 Holly’s outward appearance

As one can find out a lot about a person looking at his or her outward appearance, this will now be analyzed in detail.

Holly Golightly uses her exterior to build up a facade and cover her true identity. Her hair is died in “ragbag colors […], strands of albino-blond and yellow” (p.12, l.19f.) and her eyes are always “blotted out by a pair of dark glasses” (cf. p.12, l.27) when she is in public, along with fresh looking make-up. This and her classic style, like a “slim cool black dress”(p.12, l.22), make it impossible to guess her real age, when the narrator first sees her, i.e., he thinks “her anywhere between sixteen and thirty” (p.12, l.29f.). Furthermore, this look symbolizes her freedom, as it is “an art work of her own creation”.⁷ Holly chose it herself and people seem to appreciate it, which gives her strength and self-assurance.

The impersonality of her looks goes along with the significance of her full name Holiday Golightly. She changed her actual name Lulamae (probably inspired by Capote’s mother who’s name was Lillie Mae⁸ ) when she ran away from home and left her husband, brother and old life behind. The new first name ‘Holiday’ shows that she tries to live her life easy going or, in combination with her real last name since her wedding, to ‘go’ ‘lightly’ through it. But the name also exhibits her insecurity and the fear of bonding to a place or person. She has not found her home yet, which one can also see looking at her mailbox which reads “Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling” (p.11, l.17). The lack of a place to call home is also a similarity to Capote’s own experience, as he moved a lot when he was a child, his mother looking for a qualified man to be the head of their little family, just like Holly.

What this all amounts to is that Holly Golightly uses her outward appearance as a masquerade that conceals her weaknesses and her real personality to make other people, especially men, admire her and in addition to that give herself the aplomb that she needs to act out the advantages of this facade.

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¹ All of the information told in this paragraph are according to: CapoteBio: Biography 3

² Wikipedia (2011): William Woodward Jr.

³ Wikipedia (2012): Breakfast at Tiffany’s (film)

⁴ Grobel, Lawrence (1985): Conversations with Capote (New American Library), p.158, l.4 5

⁵ Capote, Truman (2008): Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Vintage Internationals), p.11, l.12 - p.21, l.4

⁶ Ibid.: p.104, l.6 - p.109, l.19 (All of the following bracketed quotations are descended from this novella)

⁷ Kimball, A. & Shelby, Christina (2006): Breakfast at Tiffany's Themes.

⁸ Wasson, Sam (2010): 5th Avenue, 5 a.m. - Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the dawn of the modern woman (Harper Collins), p.1, l.2