Miss Lonelyhearts as the Victim

***To save your time on reading this extremely long free-write, I thought I would just ask you guys to address these points in the comments. I want to write about victimization, and how women in the story are cast as victims (passive, defective, burdened)--does this seem like an arguable point? I plan on using the passage about the heart shaped cookie cutters, the flowers being watered by tears, the no nose and the Catholic woman are examples--do you think some work better than others?***

Miss Lonelyhearts, like many of his female readers, is not in a position to make drastic changes in his life. Working in a guaranteed job during the Great Depression, Miss Lonelyhearts is battling a severe case of depression due to the content of his readers’ letters and the impact they have had on his life. Miss Lonelyhearts, writing an advice column that appeals to mostly women, suffers a nervous breakdown due to being oppressed by being forced to stay in a position that causes him emotional distress. By examining his interactions with the letters he receives, one notices that he tries to temporarily align himself with the powerful male gender role, but his efforts are for naught, since he cannot escape his oppression.

From the very beginning of the novel, gender roles are submerged in irony, with the advice column of “Miss Lonelyhearts” being penned by a man, “no one could fail to recognize [as a] New England Puritan” (3). Not only is Miss Lonelyhearts a man, he is a man with a strict and faith-based heritage that is plagued by these “profoundly humble pleas for moral and spiritual advice, that they are inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering” (32). Even if quitting were an option for Miss Lonelyhearts, he “wouldn’t be able to forget the letters, no matter what [he] did”, because the letters have forced Miss Lonelyhearts to reevaluate his moral and religious code (32).

            Instead of trying to help his readership in productive ways, Miss Lonelyhearts reacts to his letters in ways that reveal his resistance against a feminine gender role. After reading a letter from a 16-year-old girl without a nose whose father speculates that the reason behind her physical deformity is due to something she did, “in the other world before I was born, or that maybe I was being punished for his sins”  (2-3). Miss Lonelyhearts, having lit a cigarette before reading the letter, found that the, “cigarette was imperfect and refused to draw. Miss Lonelyhearts took it out o his mouth and stared at it furiously. He fought himself quiet, then lit another one” (3). With each letter, Miss Lonelyhearts lights a cigarette and the way he interacts with this one in particular reveals his dissatisfaction with his job and life. Like “Desperate”, the author of the letter, the cigarette is “imperfect” and “refused to draw” (3). Without a nose, drawing air through the sinus cavity would be nearly impossible, and thus the nose has lost a primary function—that is, providing an alternate way of breathing. The cigarette, “refusing to draw”, is also failing at its capacity to provide a person with the nicotine it seeks and has also lost its primary function (3).

 In response to this failure, Miss Lonelyhearts,  “stared at it furiously” much like the girl’s mother “crys terrible” when she looks at her daughter and similar to how her father tries to offer a reason behind her deformity (2). By staring at his cigarette “furiously”, it appears Miss Lonelyhearts is trying to place blame upon his self (for some unknown act that caused the cigarette to not draw) or the cigarette itself (for being manufactured unable to draw). In this way, Miss Lonelyhearts is trying to remove his self from the feminine gender role (in which one is passive, and blamed directly and indirectly for something beyond human control), and place his self within the male gender role (in which one is aggressive, and has the capacity to place blame).

The desire to rebel against a feminine gender role is best exemplified when Miss Lonelyhearts tries to explain why his job makes him so unhappy. He tells his girlfriend, Betty, that, “For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the values by which he lives. This examination shows him that he is the victim of a joke and not its perpetrator” (32). Like his female readers, Miss Lonelyhearts is not in a position of power, and therefore cannot be the “perpetrator” joke. Rather, his position is one of a “victim”, someone who is powerless to change the punch line or render the joke powerless by laughing—he must simply endure and stay in his position.

Miss Lonelyhearts, working at a job that blurs gender roles, suffers a nervous breakdown due to the fact that he, like his female readers, must be oppressed and be the “victim” of life’s big joke. Had Miss Lonelyhearts been assigned to write the sports column, he surely never would have had to re-evaluate his moral and spiritual values and thus would not have been relegated to being in the position of a “victim”—someone who is powerless to change the terms under which they live and are judged. Although he tries to refute this “victim status” by aligning his actions with those of the males within the letters (i.e., blaming the cigarette), he nevertheless must continually return to a hated job that drains him completely.  For Miss Lonelyhearts and his faithful readers, there is no escaping the fact that they are the punch line of a cruel joke.