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Bernice Bobs Her Hair (story) (1920)

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first popular short story–originally published in the May 1920 Saturday Evening Post–is based on pedantic letters to his sister about how to be popular. But then he gives it a twist that makes it an enduring–and I will argue surprisingly influential–tale.

The story is readily available to read on-line, to listen to at the great Classic Tales Podcast and in a full cast version from Radio Play Revival, so no apologies for spoilers. Please do read and/or listen first.

The eponymous Bernice is an awkward country cousin–from Eau Claire, WI–visiting with Majorie and her family in the big city. She finds herself largely ignored at dances and unsure of how to present herself. The self-absorbed Marjorie is little help, until a brutal incident intervenes and Bernice hears her aunt and cousin in conversation:

Bernice felt a vague pain that she was not at present engaged in being popular. She did not know that had it not been for Marjorie’s campaigning she would have danced the entire evening with one man; but she knew that even in Eau Claire other girls with less position and less pulchritude were given a much bigger rush. She attributed this to something subtly unscrupulous in those girls. It had never worried her, and if it had her mother would have assured her that the other girls cheapened themselves and that men really respected girls like Bernice.

She turned out the light in her bathroom, and on an impulse decided to go in and chat for a moment with her aunt Josephine, whose light was still on. Her soft slippers bore her noiselessly down the carpeted hall, but hearing voices inside she stopped near the partly openers door. Then she caught her own name, and without any definite intention of eavesdropping lingered and the thread of the conversation going on inside pierced her consciousness sharply as if it had been drawn through with a needle.

“She’s absolutely hopeless!” It was Marjorie’s voice. “Oh, I know what you’re going to say! So many people have told you how pretty and sweet she is, and how she can cook! What of it? She has a bum time. Men don’t like her.”

“What’s a little cheap popularity?”

Mrs. Harvey sounded annoyed.

“It’s everything when you’re eighteen,” said Marjorie emphatically. “I’ve done my best. I’ve been polite and I’ve made men dance with her, but they just won’t stand being bored. When I think of that gorgeous coloring wasted on such a ninny, and think what Martha Carey could do with it oh!”

[...]

"I think it's that crazy Indian blood in Bernice," continued Marjorie. "Maybe she's a reversion to type. Indian women all just sat round and never said anything."

"Go to bed, you silly child," laughed Mrs. Harvey. "I wouldn't have told you that if I'd thought you were going to remember it. And I think most of your ideas are perfectly idiotic," she finished sleepily.

Set aside the racism there for the nonce, but we’ll return to it. After a confrontation, Marjorie condescends to coach the ugly duckling and Bernice’s stock improves. But nothing excites more interest in her than her vow to get her hair bobbed, a shocking notion in a society where all the women/girls treasure their long tresses.

Well, Marjorie gets predictably angry when Bernice starts crowding into the limelight and stages a provocation that forces Bernice to go through with the promised shearing. The group of kids who go along to witness the barbering are all horrified by the results and Bernice is left worse off than before, so she packs her bags and determines to head home early.

But before she goes, she decides to take one action: she grabs a pair of scissors and snips off the two long braids of the sleeping Marjorie, a literal/figurative scalping. There’s a “reversion to type” for you.

The thought occurs that this is essentially the flapper-age version of Stephen King’s Carrie.

(Reviewed:24-Sep-24)

Grade: (B+)

Websites:

F. Scott Fitzgerald Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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    -MUSEUM: Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum
    -COLLECTION: The Matthew J. & Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald (University of South Carolina)
    -DOCUMENTARY SITE: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Sensible Thing (PBS: American Storytellers)
    -JOURNAL: F. Scott Fitzgerald Review
    -INDEX: F Scott Fitzgerald (Internet Archive)
    -AUDIO INDEX: F Scott Fitzgerald (LibriVox)
    -INDEX: F Scott Fitzgerald (LitHub)
    -STORY: Bernice Bobs Her Hair: From F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels & Stories 1920–1922 (Library of America: Story of the Week)
    -ETEXT: Bernice Bobs Her Hair
    -RADIO PLAY: S. 2, Ep. 7: Bernice Bobs Her Hair by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Radio Play Revival)
    -VIDEO: Fitz Tales: Bernice Bobs Her Hair (THE SCOTT & ZELDA FITZGERALD MUSEUM)
    -AUDIO: Bernice Bobs Her Hair (LibriVox)
    -STORY: Love in the Night: From F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby, All the Sad Young Men & Other Writings 1920–1926 (Library of America: Story of the Week)
    -STORY: Love in the Night [pdf]
    -STORY: How to Live on $36,000 a Year: From F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby, All the Sad Young Men & Other Writings 1920–1926 (Library of America: Story of the Week)
    -STORY: The Cut-Glass Bowl : From F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels & Stories 1920–1922 (Library of America: Story of the Week)
    -STORY: Porcelain and Pink: From F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels & Stories 1920–1922 (Library of America: Story of the Week)
    -STORY: Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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    -SHORT STORY: F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Winter Dreams” (Library of America)
    -ENTRY: Coma Berenices: Berenice’s Hair (Ian Ridpath’s Star Tales)

Berenice was a real person who, in 246 BC, married her cousin, Ptolemy III Euergetes (Hyginus says she was his sister, but that was a different Berenice). Berenice was reputedly a great horsewoman who had already distinguished herself in battle. Hyginus, who deals with the star group under Leo in his Poetic Astronomy, tells the following story.

It seems that shortly after their marriage (Hyginus says a few days, but in reality it was a few months) Ptolemy set out to attack Asia on the Third Syrian War. Berenice vowed that if he returned victorious she would cut off her hair in gratitude to the gods. On Ptolemy’s safe return the following year, the relieved Berenice carried out her promise and placed her hair in the temple dedicated to her mother Arsinoë (identified after her death with Aphrodite) at Zephyrium near the modern Aswan. But the following day the tresses were missing. What really happened to them is not recorded, but Conon of Samos (c.280–c.220 BC), a mathematician and astronomer who worked at Alexandria, pointed out the group of stars near the tail of the lion, telling the king that the hair of Berenice had gone to join the constellations.

I first watched the film adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel, Carrie, fittingly enough, at a sleepover with a bunch of adolescent girls I was half in love with and half terrified by. We were 12 or so. I didn’t know them well, and was still unsure about what sort of person I was trying to be (a mystery which would not be clarified for another decade and a half).

They were popular and rich, daughters of doctors and businessmen, with shimmering cascades of blonde hair. Two owned horses, that far-fetched dream of early girlhood. I was unlike them in most ways, or so it felt: lumpen and clumsy and anxious enough socially that the question of whether to cross my arms or put them in my pockets could consume whole days.

What we had in common, though, was a simultaneous lust and horror for the threshold of womanhood we all were approaching.

    -ESSAY: Female Consciousness by Stream of Consciousness—Analysis of Bernice Bobs Her Hair (TAN Xiaojia, US-China Foreign Language, July 2022)
    -ESSAY: Recentering "Crazy Indian Blood": Reversion to Type in "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" (Robert Dale Parker, 2023, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review)
    -ESSAY: Literary Critique on “Bernice Bobs her Hair” (Rainy Bailey, January 11, 2012, American Studies Blog)
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    -PODCAST: Tender is the Night with Titus Techera (John Miller, 4/08/25, National Review: Great Books Podcast))
    -PODCAST: 150: “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Why is this Good?, April 15, 2025)
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    -PROFILE: That Sad Young Man: F. Scott Fitzgerald is wary of the limitations of his experience. (John C. Mosher, April 9, 1926, The New Yorker)
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    -ESSAY: One Half-Tipsy Yank with a Typewriter: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby at 100. (Nic Rowan, Apr 28, 2025, American Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby Turns 100. Time To Admit It’s Crime Fiction.: Chistopher Chambers makes the case for reading Gatsby as noir (Christopher Chambers, 4/18/25, Crime Reads)
    -ESSAY: Not as advertised: The false god in 'The Great Gatsby': Revisiting that infamous billboard on the novel’s 100th anniversary. (Karen Swallow Prior, April 9, 2025, RNS)
    -ESSAY: From the jazz age to the Trump age: The Great Gatsby at 100: Newly minted millionaires, corruption, nostalgia ... Fitzgerald’s novel has never felt more relevant. Jane Crowther explores its resonance in popular culture from Taylor Swift songs to her own gender-flipped retelling (Jane Crowther, 10 Apr 2025, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: Gatsby @ 100: American Classrooms, American Dreams? (Andrew Newman, 4.10.2025, Public Books)
    -ESSAY: America the Beautiful: The Great Gatsby as Romantic Poetry (John Pistelli, 4/07/25, Metropolitan review)
    -ESSAY: It’s Gatsby’s World, We Just Live in It (A.O. Scott, Mar. 27th, 2025, NY Times)
    -ESSAY: The great American classic we’ve been misreading for 100 years: ?The Great Gatsby is more than cocktail parties and color symbolism. (Constance Grady, Mar 7, 2025, Vox)
    -ESSAY: Careless People in the Great American Novel (Harrison Layman, January 8, 2025, Online Library of Liberty)
    -ESSAY: The Great Gatsby at 100: Fitzgerald’s novel has lost neither its glamour nor its moral force. (Jonathan Clarke, 1/18/25, City Journal)
    -PODCAST: Poured Over: Min Jin Lee on The Great Gatsby (BN Editors/August 31, 2021, Barnes & Noble)
    -PODCAST: Mike Palindrome on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Masterpiece: From The History of Literature Podcast with Jacke Wilson (LitHub, August 14, 2023)
    -ESSAY: The Beautiful and Damned: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s drink-fueled behavior became notorious during their summers on the Riviera, where they were joined by Ernest Hemingway, the Marx Brothers, and Dorothy Parker (Jonathan Miles, AirMail)
    -ESSAY: F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Psychic Cost of Selling Out: $55,000 for a Magazine Feature? It's Hard to Blame Him (Anne Margaret Daniel, April 25, 2017, LitHub)
    -VIDEO: The Great Gatsby Explained: How F. Scott Fitzgerald Indicted & Endorsed the American Dream (1925) (Open Culture)
    -LETTER: The author intended the story to be repugnant: Maxwell Perkins defends The Great Gatsby (Shaun Usher, Jan 28, 2025, Letters of Note)
    -ESSAY: How we misread The Great Gatsby: The greatness of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel lies in its details. But they are often overlooked. (Sarah Churchwell, 1/22/25, New Statesman)
    -ESSAY: Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires: How The Great Gatsby Changed the Landscape of New York City: John Marsh on Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Culture of Environmental Waste (John Marsh, November 13, 2024, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: Scott Fitzgerald’s Last Act: The author’s final, unfinished novel fused intimations of American decline with an encroaching sense of his own mortality. (Jonathan Clarke, Summer 2024, City Journal)
    -ESSAY:The Crack-Up: How individual and civilisational identities collapse. (Peter Hughes, 2 Feb 2023, Quillette)
    -ESSAY: How the Male Point of View Shapes the Narrative of The Great Gatsby: Jillian Cantor Reimagines Fitzgerald’s Classic Novel from the Perspectives of Women (Jillian Cantor, February 1, 2022, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: On Jay Gatsby, the Most Famous North Dakotan: Sarah Vogel Traces the Humble Midwest Origins of an Iconic Character (Sarah Vogel, November 2, 2021, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: Why Do We Keep Reading The Great Gatsby? (Wesley Morris January 11, 2021, Paris Review)
    -ESSAY: The world's most misunderstood novel (Hephzibah Anderson, 9th February 2021, BBC)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: On Heartbreak, Absence, and Falling in Love with The Great Gatsby (David Stuart MacLean, January 21, 2021, LitHub)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: The Imperfect and Sublime ‘Gatsby’ (Min Jin Lee, January 21, 2021, NY Review of Books)
    -ESSAY: The Greatness of The Great Gatsby (Elizabeth Stice, March 7, 2025, Current)
    -ESSAY: 100 years later, 'The Great Gatsby' still speaks to the troubled dream of America (Maureen Corrigan, 4/08/25, NPR: Fresh Air)
    -ESSAY: Up Close With the Beauty of Gatsby: On Teaching (And Reading) an American Classic (Emma Heath, 4/09/25, Metropolitan Review)
    -ESSAY: The Great Gatsby at 100: this great American novel is a universal meditation on time and change (William Blazek, pril 8, 2025, The Conversation)
    -ESSAY: Gatsby's America: You probably don’t know Gatsby, and you probably don’t know America (Alexander Raubo · 10 April 2025, IM-1776)
    -ESSAY: The Man Without a Past: On the Sublimity of Jay Gatsby (George Monaghan, 4/10/25, The Metropolitan Review)
    -ESSAY: The Green Light that Still Burns: Celebrating 100 Years of The Great Gatsby (Cara Rafferty, April 11, 2025, B&N Reads)
    -ESSAY: The five minute guide to 'The Great Gatsby', a century on from its publication: 'The Great Gatsby' sold poorly the year it was published, but, in the following century, it went on to become a cornerstone of world literature. (Carla Passino, 4/14/25, Country Life)
    -ESSAY: Will There Ever Be Another “Great Gatsby”?: A century on, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great Jazz Age novel still speaks to what ails America. (Mark Chiusano, 4/15/25, The Nation)
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    -REVIEW: of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (H.L. Mencken))
    -REVIEW: of Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Short Story Magic Tricks)
    -REVIEW: of Bernice Bobs Her Hair (A Striped Armchair)
    -REVIEW: of Bernice Bobs Her Hair (My Life 100 Years Ago)
    -REVIEW: of Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Clothes in Books)
    -REVIEW: of Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Rob Reads For You)
    -REVIEW: of Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Sitting Bee)
    -REVIEW: of Some Unfinished Chaos: The Lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Arthur Krystal (William H. Pritchard, WSJ)
    -REVIEW: of Tales of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Anne Margaret Daniel (Joseph Bottum, The Lamp)

FILM:

    -FILMOGRAPHY F Scott Foitzgerald (IMDB)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976) (IMDB)
    -FILM REVIEW: Bernice Bobs Her Hair (NY Times)
    -FILM REVIEW: Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Dove)
    -FILM REVIEW: Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Postmodern Pelican)
    -FILM REVIEW: Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Dreams are What Cinema Is For)
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Bernice Bobs Her Hair (story) (1920)

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