Miss Lonelyhearts, the Female Parallel, and Christ as the Answer

Throughout the story, the main character is referred to as “Miss Lonelyhearts”, despite being a man.  The reader is never presented with Miss Lonelyhearts real name, and is instead left only with an image of a depressed man seeking a way out of his lonely life.  The fact that he is given the title of “Miss” is significant in that it parallels Miss Lonelyhearts with the females who write the letters of despair through the mutual lack of Christ in both parties lives.

By referring to him with a female title, West uses irony to describe Miss Lonelyhearts’ inability to help the women who to write him by showcasing his connection and understanding of their feelings. Miss Lonelyhearts describes how “the letters were no longer funny” and that they had all been “ stamped from the dough of suffering with a heart-shaped cookie knife” (1).  Here we see a metaphor not only for the letters themselves, but also to Lonelyhearts’ connection to the female sphere.  West connects the letters to baking, seen as primarily a female activity (especially in that time period), and emphasizes how Miss Lonelyhearts can understand the pain in them, claiming that what he once thought funny no longer is.  The fact that he once found the suffering of women as humorous can bee seen as a reference to when he was more of a “man”, before the persona of “Miss” overtook him. 

As “Miss Lonelyhearts”, Lonelyhearts is left with a need to help the women who write him. He explains to Betty how he “can’t quit…even if [he] were able to quit, it wouldn’t make a difference. [He] wouldn’t be able to forget the letters” (32).  Despite this desire to help the women, he finds himself unable to.  The monotony of the suffering that filtered through to his desk everyday had left him numb and cold.  He knew that “Christ was the answer, but, if he did not want to get sick, he had to stay away from the Christ business” (3).   This idea that he knows that the best way to help these women is by leading them to Christ, yet it is the one thing he is unable to make himself do.  He himself is unable to find Christ, despite his awareness for his need, and this inability to find Christ not only causes him physical illness, but also makes him miserable.  He connects so deeply to the women who write him through his title as “Miss Lonelyhearts” that he begins to feel their pain himself.  Physically sick with their pain, Miss Lonelyhearts is trapped in a cycle that never ends, and reflects how “Shrike accelerated his sickness by teaching him to handle his one escape, Christ, with a think glove of words” (33).  Here we see how Miss Lonelyhearts understands that finding Christ will save him, but is prevented to find Christ himself because he is prevented from helping his readers to find Him. As long as the women in the story are deprived of this escape, so will Miss Lonelyhearts be, so long as he is Miss Lonelyhearts.

Although he is in all actuality a man, Miss Lonelyhearts still feels the pain and suffering of the women, unable to use Christ as his escape as long as the readers cannot. The significance of Miss Lonelyhearts as the only male character to truly feel despair and hatred comes with his title as “Miss Lonelyhearts”.  Not only do his readers view him as a woman, but also his actual job as an advice columnist is the very thing that connects him with the suffering of the writers. Because he is the only male who has to directly read the letters and is the only male who has the power to help give the women Christ as the answer, he is the only man in the story who can be paralleled with them, and therefore the only one to feel as they feel.  It is this unique ability that gives his title as “Miss” importance, and is the reason that he cannot simply quit, as Betty wishes him to. His only escape from his title and his pain is to deliver the answer to the women, so both parties may be saved.