Words of wisdom about women can come only from some other women… I have Dorothy Parker on my mind at the moment but my endless search of wisdom won’t be stopped here, be it light or not.
Why is it, when I am in Rome,
I’d give an eye to be at home,
But when on native earth I be,
My soul is sick for Italy?
And why with you, my love, my lord,
Am I spectacularly bored,
Yet do you up and leave me – then
I scream to have you back again”
(On Being a Woman by Dorothy Parker)
Words of wisdom about men….
- They hail you as their morning star
- Because you are the way you are.
- If you return the sentiment,
- They’ll try to make you different;
- And once they have you safe and sound,
- They want to change you all around.
- Your moods and ways they put a curse on;
- They’d make of you another person.
- They cannot let you go your gait;
- They influence and educate
- They’d alter all that they admired.
- They make me sick, they make me tired.”
- (Men, Dorothy Parker)
„Oh, is it, the Utopian
To hope that I may meet a man
Who’ll not relate, in accents suave,
The tales of girls he used to have?”
( De Profundis, Dorothy Parker)
- ….and roMANce!
By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Indefinite, undying-
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.”
(Unfortunate Coincidence, Dorothy Parker)
Last (poem) but not least, my dears:
- „Women wants monogamy;
- Man delights in novelty.
- Love is woman’s moon and sun;
- Man has other forms of fun.
- Woman lives but in her lord;
- Count to ten, and men is bored.
- With this gist and sum of it,
- What earthly good can come of it?”
(General Review of the Sex Situation, Dorothy Parker)
p.s. Dorothy Parker had a major influence& contribution to my diploma paper some years ago! Still does! However, I do think about Her from time to time.
Mirela's Mood 
This is about as far from wisdom as you can get. It’s definitely romantic and that always makes great poetry, but nothing more than that.
On Being a Woman should be called On Being Human, Men should be called Men Do It Too, I have no opinion on De Profundis and Unfortunate Coincidence is just ridiculous. General Review of the Sex Situation somewhat get’s it, if you can get over the lie at the beginning and the rest being just exaggerated and overly generalized. 🙂
🙂 I’m subjective here & can’t help myself to call it wisdom even if people consider Dorothy Parker ‘light literature’.’You know, sometimes stating the obvious it’s harder than we can imagine.
I’ve never even heard of Dorothy Parker before reading your post. And yes, stating the obvious is not always easy. That’s why I like comedians… it’s basically what they do. But it only works if there is truth in there, it’s only funny when they cut through the veil of society that blinds us most of the time. And I don’t think Ms. Parker did that, at least not in what you quoted. She makes us sound different while we’re very much alike. Men and Women are made of the same stuff, we just dance to different tunes.
Dorothy Parker’s point exactly: we dance to different tunes. 😛
Btw, nice manner of putting together all these pieces. 🙂
P.s. Haven’t heard of her until my diploma paper which was mostly about stylistics and ways of rendering humour in her poetry and that of Wendy Cope’s. I chose postmodernist poetry because I really liked the teacher I worked with & coordinated papers in that direction.
And, by the way, Miss Parker wasn’t the happiest female author & men around her might have influenced her romantic ‘thinking’.
Well, she grew up in the aftermath of the Anglo-Saxon war on sex, more commonly known as the Victorian era, so I’m not surprised 😉