This thesis is a study of the importance of objects within Dorothy Parker’s poems and
short stories and how her use of material items as metaphors for the restricted roles available to
women of her day simultaneously intensifies and challenges these gender-related limitations.
The essay draws upon the tenets of feminist theory that call for a pluralistic reading of female
texts and an appropriation of “feminine” items within a literary language, as well Karl Marx’s
theories of commodity in which material objects serve the primary purpose of capitalistic
exchange and Laura Mulvey’s study of pleasure- viewing in which women play specific roles
designed for them by men. This study of how Parker illustrates her heroines through the material
objects surrounding them serves to highlight her writing as an innovative subversion of the
commonly accepted parameters for the women of her era
