Bedside manners in Dorothy Parker's "Lady with a Lamp" and Kay Boyle's My Next Bride

Studies in American Fiction, Autumn, 2007 by Meg Gillette

At stake for My Next Bride is the question of how others will respond to women having abortions. Anxious about the response of Victoria's peers, the novel elects to begin its abortion plot not with Victoria's discovery of her pregnancy (which might seem natural considering the novel is focalized through her point of view), but rather, with Victoria's appeal to her friend Estelle for help: "Victoria sat down on the bed and suddenly she began talking to Estelle, quickly, under her breath. 'Estelle, I think I am pregnant. I don't know what to do,' she said" (272). The suddenness of Victoria's announcement circumvents the crises of secrecy and communication that energized earlier abortion narratives such as Stein's "The Good Anna" (1913), Wharton's Summer (1917), Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927) and Delmar's Bad Girl (1928), (31) and after dispensing with Victoria's announcement, the novel waits with her to see how Estelle will react:

Estelle had begun to yawn, and the yawn stopped short in the middle. She lay still for a moment, expressionless, looking at Victoria, the eyes fixed in their blue, callous, stony stare.

"My God, you would be," she said, slowly. Her square red mouth was a little open, like a chipmunk's mouth, wanting the yawn again that she had left midway. It was swelling at her jaws, like a mouthful of nuts. "My God," Estelle said to Edmond. "Victoria's pregnant. Victoria would have to get pregnant, wouldn't she?" She took a nail-file off the table by the bed. "Edmond will get you some pills the kind the girls at the theatre use."

Edmond was filling up the glasses, carefully pouring the green drink out into the three of them and adding the water from the carafe. He watched the milkiness gather and spread, watched the absinthe-pale tide mount in the tumblers and the flat gold halo lie high along the rim. When he turned to them with their drinks in his hands, his lips were bunched up ruby-red under his neat little greying moustaches.

"You'd better not let on to Matilde," he said, tasting his pernod. "She'd put it on to Sorrel."

Victoria took her drink in quick, nervous swallows, sitting on the edge of the divan by the firm, white languid body of Estelle who lay at rest in her black chiffon gown. The nail-file was busy in her fingers, but the china-blue eyes were examining Victoria, were turned in opaque speculation on her face, her hands, her breasts, her hair. She observed it all, scrutinized, considered without question, without a flicker of emotion the details of what Victoria's life had been.

"How long?" said Estelle lazily at last.

"I don't know," Victoria said. "Perhaps two months--I can't say exactly."

Estelle lifted her glass and sipped it evenly, her eyes unaltered over the thick tumbler's brim. (272-73)

Though Estelle is "examining" Victoria, My Next Bride is examining Estelle, describing her irrevocable yawn, uninterested manicure, and indifferent stare. Edmond's languorous pouring also attracts the narrative's attention, and his speech, which stresses Sorrel's feelings about the pregnancy, persists in making others' responses to the pregnancy the object of narrative inquiry: