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Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany'sTison Pugh aa University of Central FloridaPublished online: 30 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Tison Pugh (2002) Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Explicator,61:1, 51-53, DOI: 10.1080/00144940209597753

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in her children, no matter how angry, calm, or frightened they are. Even Jim O’Connor’s exchanges with Amanda become more outwardly polite in subse- quent versions of the script. When the lights go out in the apartment, their exchange in the later versions lasts longer as Jim responds to her chatter about the fuse with a “Yes, ma’am’’ or an “I can, ma’am’’; in the Reading Edition he says nothing. All of these responses coincide with the progressive strengthen- ing of Amanda’s aggression and dominance in later editions.

The final emphasis on truth in character over experimental design domi- nates Williams’s reworking of the text. Although many more conclusions are available from this process, I have chosen to highlight the most drastic and those that signify mosl strongly the pattern of development that the playwright followed from version to version-particularly from the Reading to the Act- ing Versions. The struggle to produce realistic characters while carefully exploring a nonrealistic method of theatrical expression dominates the play- wright’s process and should inform any scholar or artist when approaching this classic text.

-ELIZABETH C. COBBE, Sun Francisco

NOTE

I . The Gfuss Menugerie also exists as two short stories, “Portrait of a Girl in Glass” and ‘The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin.“ For brevity’s sake, this study focuses on the dramatic versions and not the stories.

WORKS CITED

Beaurline. Lester A. “The Gl‘uss Menugerie: From Story to Play.” Tennessee Willianrs’s The Glass

Williams, Tennessee. The Gkuss Menugerie. 1945. New York: New Directions. 1973. Also known

. The Gloss Menugerie. 1948. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1976. Also known as

-. The Gluss Menugerie. London: John Lehmann Ltd., 1948. Referred to as the London

Menagerie. Ed. Harold Bloom. Introduction. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.

as the Reading Edition.

the Acting Edition.

Edition in this paper.

Capote’s BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S

The predominant heterosexuality of Holly Golightly’s lifestyle has eclipsed the queer thematics of Truman Capote’s Breakfmt at Tiffany’s, and thus the sub- tle homosexual presence in the novella has gone unnoticed by many scholars. To overlook the queer aspects of Holly Golightly’s world is to miss key moments of the text that provide a better understanding of the novella’s sexual dynamics.

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Foremost, Capote describes Holly’s two closest friends-the narrator and Joe Bell-as homosexuals, though he does so with such a delicate touch that many critics have failed to recognize these characters as gay. The first clue to the narrator’s homosexuality lies in Holly’s formulation of how to determine if a man is gay: “If a man doesn’t like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn’t like either of them, well, I’m in trouble anyway: he don’t like girls” (38). These words resonate in the reader’s mind when the narrator reports the contents of Holly’s bookshelves (“of the books there, more than half were about horses, the rest baseball”) and then feigns interest in horses: “Pretending an interest in Horseflesh and How to Tell It gave me sufficiently private opportunity for sizing Holly’s friends” (35). If this passage fails to convince us that the narrator holds no interest in horses and, therefore, no interest in heterosexuality, the episode when Holly takes him horseback rid- ing, to disastrous effect, also figures him as a homosexual under her horsehaseball rubric.

Second, when Holly tells the narrator that she will not testify against Sally Tomato, she calls the narrator a name laden with queer meaning: “Well, I may be rotten to the core, Maude, but: testify against a friend I will not” (102-03). In homosexual slang, “maude” signifies a male prostitute or a male homosex- ual (Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English). Third, the narrator himself makes a veiled reference to his homosexuality when he compares his rain-soaked trip from Holly’s apartment to Joe Bell’s bar to another difficult journey he had made years ago: “Never mind why, but once I walked from New Orleans to Nancy’s Landing, Mississippi, just under five hundred miles. It was a light-hearted lark compared to the journey to Joe Bell’s bar” (105). Nancy’s Landing is Capote’s creation; it does not exist geographically. According to A Dictionary of the Underworld, “Nancy” refers either to the posterior or to “an effeminate man, especially a passive homosexual.” “Nancy’s Landing,” then serves as Capote’s code phrase for a gay resort, a make-believe, southern Fire Island or Provincetown. Thus, the narrator’s coy rejoinder that the reader should “[n]ever mind why” he made the trip appears as a subtle move to direct attention away from his self-confession.

We perceive a hint of Joe Bell’s homosexuality in the list of his passions; he enjoys, in addition to hockey players and Weimaraner dogs, “Our Gal Sun- day (a soap serial he had listened to for fifteen years), and Gilbert and Sulli- van,” both of which indicate less stereotypically masculine aspects to his character. Capote develops the reference to Gilbert and Sullivan further, not- ing that “[Bell] claims to be related to one or the other, I can’t remember which” (4). Since Sullivan is rumored to have been a homosexual because of the many coded references to sexual partners in his diaries, the passage slyly hints that the bartender is part of Sullivan’s “family,” a fellow gay man to his beloved composer. One could, of course, argue that, because Capote does not

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specifically state to which composer Joe Bell is related, he could be “related” to the heterosexual Gilbert. Such an interpretation, however, would have to ignore a final touch of Capote’s characterization of Joe Bell that emphasizes the bartender’s feminine qualities: he “arranges with matronly care” the flow- ers at the bar (5).

Descriptions of Joe Bell’s bar also subtly hint that it is a gay bar: its anonymity suggests that it is hidden from general view; the narrator remarks that it has no neon sign to attract attention to itself (5). Gay bars did not advertise themselves as such in the 1950s, and patrons had to learn about their locations through word of mouth. Furthermore, the narrator mentions that the windows of the bar are mirrors ( 5 ) . Mirror windows allow patrons to see outside but do not allow passersby to look in; to this day many gay bars have such mirror windows to protect the privacy of their patrons. Though we see very few customers inside the bar besides Holly and the nar- rator, two men enter together when the narrator prepares to leave after con- versing with Joe Bell (10).

Critics have long recognized that Holly’s friendships with the narrator and Joe Bell are asexual, hut it is imperative to note the queer reasons for the pla- tonic nature of these relationships. Thus, we can see that Holly’s friendships with gay men are one sign of her progressive sexual politics. Indeed, Holly’s words to the narrator about gay marriage remain topical today: “A person ought to be able to marry men or women or-listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to hitch up with Man 0’ War, I’d respect your feeling. No, I’m serious. Love should be allowed” (83). (A possible irony: under Holly’s rubric of sexuality, in which love of horses indicates heterosexuality, would the nar- rator be straight if he loved Man 0’ War?)

Holly Golightly’s queer world marks her as a participant in the sexual struggle against conformity and conservatism, rather than as merely a lovely young innocent who inspires protective and paternal love. And Capote makes i t clear that she leaves a queer legacy behind her when Quaintance Smith, who “entertained as many gentleman callers of a noisy nature as Holly ever had” ( 1 lo), moves into her old apartment. The name “Quaintance” is an allusion to George Quaintance, a painter of the 1940s and 1950s, whose art bordered on soft-core gay pornography. Holly Golightly’s queer world lives on even after she flees the constraints of New York City for her own freedom.

-TISON PUGH, University of Central Florida

WORKS CITED

Capote, Truman. Breukfust uf Tfluny‘s und Three Stories. 1958. New York: Vintage, 1993. Partridge, Eric. A Dicrionurj ofrhe Underworld. New York: Macmillan, 1950. - . A Dictionup UfSlung und Unconventional English. 8th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1984.

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