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    Bernice Bobs Her Hair: Short Story
    Bernice Bobs Her Hair: Short Story
    Bernice Bobs Her Hair: Short Story
    Ebook41 pages31 minutes

    Bernice Bobs Her Hair: Short Story

    By F. Scott Fitzgerald

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Bernice, a wealthy, young Wisconsinite, travels to her aunt’s house to visit her cousin Marjorie. The pair have trouble connecting, however, and Bernice soon finds out that her cousin thinks she’s putting a damper on her social life. Bernice doesn’t know how to act at parties, so with her cousin’s help, she turns into a true society girl. Soon she is dancing and flirting, often suggesting she has plans to bob her hair—the trademark of the “liberated” woman of the time. However, as Bernice descends deeper into her new lifestyle, the fickle nature of the social scene becomes increasingly evident.

    F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” based on letters he had sent to his younger sister providing similar advice on how to become a more attractive society girl. It was originally printed in the Saturday Evening Post in 1920.

    HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 29, 2013
    ISBN9781443423229
    Bernice Bobs Her Hair: Short Story
    Author

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald’s masterpieces include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald’s fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.

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    Reviews for Bernice Bobs Her Hair

    4/5

    34 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I wish I'd read this prior to The Great Gatsby because I think it would have propelled an interest in his other works that Gatsby just didn't imbibe. I just wasn't dazzled by the Gatsby-glitz and I find/found school reading lists pretty claustrophobic. However, I find myself loving this short story. There's a lot of growth in character for Bernice in a very short page-span, the prose pulling it off quite winningly.
    • 5/5
      I liked the theme and the characters. The story was good too!
    • 3/5
      Early short stories showing promise of things to come, pervasive themes of class disparity, yearning and women’s role in society. Captures settings of rural/small town South, NYC and some Midwest very well. Characters know they want something but cannot say exactly what— yearning to be somewhere else. Eerie in sections where one feels the living memory of the Civil War (60 years ago or so): if you were in your 20s now, it would be absorbed memories of the 1960s from your older relatives.Slight overuse of adjectives (a painterly aspect?) and the dialog style may be distancing for readers; use of racist terminology and perspective may be off-putting but it is in keeping with the time period, as is its portrayal of women. Fitzgerald’s female characters do mostly have some sense that they are dealing with a stacked deck. While not many memorable lines, and later work is more deftly written, multiple images and characters in this collection stay with the reader. “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” The Ice Palace,” and “May Day” strongest; the only weak link is “The Offshore Pirate.”

    Book preview

    Bernice Bobs Her Hair - F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Book Cover

    BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    HarperPerennialClassicsLogo

    CONTENTS

    Cover

    Title Page

    Bernice Bobs Her Hair

    About the Author

    About the Series

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Bernice Bobs Her Hair

    I

    After dark on Saturdaynight one could stand on the first tee of the golf course and see the country club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean, so to speak, were the heads of many curious caddies, a few of the more ingenious chauffeurs, the golf professional’s deaf sister—and there were usually several stray, diffident waves who might have rolled inside had they so desired. This was the gallery.

    The balcony was inside. It consisted of the circle of wicker chairs that lined the wall of the combination clubroom and ballroom. At these Saturday night dances it was largely feminine; a great babel of middle-aged ladies with sharp eyes and icy hearts behind lorgnettes and large bosoms. The main function of the balcony was critical, it occasionally showed grudging admiration, but never approval, for it is well known among ladies over thirty-five that when the younger set dance in the summer time it is with the very worst intentions in the world, and if they are not bombarded with stony eyes stray couples will dance weird barbaric interludes in the corners, and the more popular, more dangerous, girls will sometimes be kissed in the parked limousines of unsuspecting dowagers.

    But, after all, this critical circle is not close enough to the stage to see the actors’ faces and catch the subtler byplay. It can only frown and lean, ask questions and make satisfactory deductions from its set of postulates, such as the one which states that every young man with a large income leads the life of a hunted partridge. It never really appreciates the drama of the shifting, semi-cruel world of adolescence. No; boxes, orchestra-circle, principals, and chorus be represented by the medley of faces and voices that sway to the plaintive African rhythm of Dyer’s dance orchestra.

    From sixteen-year-old Otis Ormonde, who has two more years at Hill School, to G. Reece Stoddard, over whose bureau at home hangs a Harvard law diploma; from little Madeleine Hogue, whose hair still feels strange and uncomfortable on top of her head, to Bessie MacRae, who has been the life of the party a little too long—more than ten years—the medley is not only the centre of the stage but contains the only people capable of getting an unobstructed view of it.

    With a flourish and a bang the music stops. The couples exchange artificial, effortless smiles,

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