Foto dell'autore

Ursula Parrott (1900–1957)

Autore di Ex-Wife

11+ opere 115 membri 5 recensioni

Sull'Autore

Comprende il nome: Katherine Ursula Parrott

Opere di Ursula Parrott

Opere correlate

The Divorcée [1930 film] (1930) — Original novel — 6 copie

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Nome legale
Towle, Katherine Ursula
Data di nascita
1900-03-26
Data di morte
1957-07
Sesso
female
Nazionalità
USA
Luogo di nascita
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Luogo di morte
New York, New York, USA
Luogo di residenza
New York, New York, USA
Istruzione
Radcliffe College
Attività lavorative
novelist
short story writer
Breve biografia
Ursula Parrott was the pen name of Katherine Ursula Towle, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from Radcliffe College and then moved to New York City, settling in Greenwich Village and working as a fashion writer for newspapers. In 1922, she married Lindesay Marc Parrott, a reporter for The New York Times. Two years later, they had a son. However, she kept his existence a secret from her husband, who did not want a child. In 1924 when Lindesay Parrott found out he was a father, he divorced Ursula. After that, she married three other men, and was also rumored to have had affairs with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis. Her novel Ex-Wife, published anonymously in 1929, caused an immediate sensation. It became a bestseller of the Jazz Age that explored the heady new freedom from Victorian sexual norms -- which, however, left men and women being treated unequally. It was adapted into a movie called The Divorcée by MGM in 1930, starring Norma Shearer, who won an Academy Award as Best Actress for her role. Parrott's second novel, Strangers May Kiss (1930), was again quickly adapted into successful Shearer picture. All throughout the 1930s, Parrott remained in high demand. She published pulp romances such as Love Goes Past (1931) and Next Time We Live (1935), as well as short stories for magazines like Ladies' Home Journal and Redbook. Eight of her novels were made into films. Parrott's writings earned her $100,000 a year. about $1.8 million in today's money. However, by the end of the decade, the culture was changing, and Ursula Parrott became less popular. The Motion Picture Production Code created in Hollywood forced her style of flamboyant, liberated heroines out of films. In 1942, Parrott made national headlines when she was charged with helping a soldier desert from the army in Miami Beach. The soldier in question was her lover, Mike Bryan, a jazz guitarist who had played with Benny Goodman's band. At her trial, Parrott claimed to actually be working as a government agent breaking up a narcotics ring. The jury believed this improbable story and acquitted her of all charges. She published her last story, "Let's Just Marry," in 1947. After 22 books and more than 50 stories to her name, Ursula Parrott sank into alcoholism and stopped writing. She died destitute in 1957 in the charity ward of a New York City hospital.

Utenti

Recensioni

Extra-marital sex. Abortion. Substance abuse. Skepticism about the sexual revolution, and how it sure seems to just screw over women.

Is it the 1960s? The 1970s? No - it's 1925.

Definitely a fascinating look at sex and the (newly) single girl and the city back in your grandmother's day. It starts with our protagonist's husband's exit, and has a very nice twist of an ending, but the middle was too long and made me very impatient with Patricia's endless, mindless promiscuity. And I wish the heroine could have been given a bit more going for her besides her looks - that got very tiring to read about too. I was super sick of hearing about her "creamy" shoulders, and super sick of every man she met gushing over her beauty.

Good lines:

"New York's a jail to which, once committed, the sentence is for life; but it is such a well-furnished jail, one does not mind much."

"Great Lovers - men who've known a hundred women, and boast of it - they remind me of the man who wanted to be a musician and so took one lesson on each instrument in the orchestra... He couldn't play a tune on any of them in the end."
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
Tytania | 4 altre recensioni | Oct 19, 2023 |
Patricia is married to Peter and they live in New York City. She has a baby who dies, oddly with no further explanation. The odious Peter has an affair. Patricia forgives him. She has one and he treats her like trash. She becomes pregnant again and he throws her through a glass door. She won’t keep this baby either.

“I’m having an abortion this morning.” He had said. “Your show. Hope it’s not too bad.”

She gets advice. “In three years you won’t remember the colour of his eyes.”

Patricia dates other men, gets a new apartment, still wants Peter back, although at this point it’s difficult to say why. She eventually loses the need for him.

“I wished that I had never married him, never kissed him, never met him, never heard of him. Also, that I had a revolver and could shoot him.”

When she meets Noel, the second man she comes to love, he is married to a disfigured woman, Beatrice, who won’t divorce him. Patricia then helps Noel and Beatrice, him with his career, and her with her disfigured face, knowing that she will lose Noel forever. “God is an ironist.”

There’s a very good parting scene. She eventually marries a man who she likes but certainly doesn’t love.

A foreword and afterword put some context into this 1929 novel, the scandal it aroused, and the life of the author. A striking aspect of the novel is that Patricia is no 1920s housewife. She has a career in advertising and uses it to her advantage.
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
Hagelstein | 4 altre recensioni | Apr 18, 2023 |
Patricia and Peter split up after Pat sleeps with his friend. They have what we would now call an open marriage, but in the end it’s only open for Peter. Pat still loves him and wants him back. Hard to understand why – he’s such an unpleasant man – but life is difficult without a husband and a failed marriage is the woman’s fault.

Pat moves in with another ex-wife, Lucia. Pat spends her nights dancing and drinking at night clubs and sleeping with men she doesn’t much like. Lucia classifies ex-wives into three groups: class one “go in for celibacy and business success”; class two says, “Love is over, there remains …adventuring about.”; class three marries again.

Both women have well-paid jobs but neither sees herself as a career woman. Lucia describes marriage as the only alternative to becoming in her forties “a worn-out, irritable female sitting around an advertising office shivering every time they hire a bright young copy-writer just out of college, and being distressingly polite to an advertising manager ten years younger than myself.” A woman has to marry while she still has her looks.

The book seems surprisingly modern. Pat goes to the gym in the morning before her work as an assistant advertising manager. She and Lucia chat about contraception, feminism, men and clothes. They’re witty, amusing and well-read.

I loved the descriptions of the clothes, the décor, the speakeasies and the dancers in the Harlem clubs. The story rockets along energetically and entertainingly, with one unfortunate slow-down for a bit of melodrama towards the end. It’s as though a piece of a different book were inserted, self-sacrificing, uplifting and completely out of character for our appealingly mercenary and superficial heroine.

An entertaining picture of the changing roles of women in the permissive, hedonistic twenties.
… (altro)
1 vota
Segnalato
pamelad | 4 altre recensioni | Mar 16, 2009 |
Written in the 1920s, Ex-Wife is the first-person story of a young woman who sounds like a modern woman dealing with divorce, abortion, infidelity, one-night stands, and heartbreak. However, she does hold quite a few of the manners and habits associated with her era. Fascinating. This could be quite an eye-opener for those who think American women weren't sexually liberated until the Sixties.
1 vota
Segnalato
citygirl | 4 altre recensioni | Aug 15, 2007 |

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Statistiche

Opere
11
Opere correlate
1
Utenti
115
Popolarità
#170,830
Voto
½ 3.5
Recensioni
5
ISBN
4

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