Chocolates for Breakfast

Last updated
Chocolates for Breakfast
Chocolates for Breakfast First Ed Rhinehart.png
First edition
Author Pamela Moore
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Rinehart & Company
Publication date
September 1, 1956 (1956-09-01)

Chocolates for Breakfast is a 1956 American novel written by Pamela Moore. Originally published in 1956 when Moore was eighteen years old, the novel gained notoriety from readers and critics for its frank depiction of teenage sexuality, and its discussion of the taboo topics of homosexuality and gender roles. [1] The plot focuses on fifteen-year-old Courtney Farrell and her destructive upbringing between her father, a wealthy Manhattan publisher, and her mother, a faltering Hollywood actress.

Contents

Upon its release in 1956, the novel became an international sensation and was published in multiple languages, [2] with many critics drawing comparisons to the 1954 French novel Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan. [3] Chocolates for Breakfast went out of print in 1967, and was not reprinted in the United States until Harper Perennial re-released the novel in June 2013. [4] This marks its first re-printing in North America in over forty-five years.

Plot

The book opens with Courtney Farrell and her best friend Janet Parker at a New England boarding school, arguing over Courtney's attachment to her English teacher, Miss Rosen, whom Janet derides as "queer." Later the school pressures Miss Rosen to not talk to Courtney outside of class, and Courtney falls into a depression. She leaves school and joins her single mother, Sondra, in Hollywood. As Sondra struggles to find work as an actress, Courtney often has to take care of her and manage their situation. She also takes up with Sondra's friends, including Barry Cabot, a bisexual actor with whom she has an affair, though he breaks it off to return to his male lover.

Courtney often expresses a wish that she were born a man, as in this conversation with her teacher Miss Rosen:

"Don’t you think of yourself as a woman?” Miss Rosen said, amused.
"No, not really," Courtney said thoughtfully. "I don’t think the way they do. Men always tell me that I think like a man. It would be a lot simpler if I were a man. I guess. But maybe it wouldn’t be. .../... Since I can remember I’ve dreamt that I am a man. I hardly even notice now that in all my dreams I’m myself, but a man. I wonder why that is," she mused.

Courtney and Sondra move to New York, where Sondra hopes to work in television and where Courtney's father Robbie might be able to give them more support. There she reunites with her friend Janet and they go from cocktail parties at the Stork to all-night debutante balls on Long Island. Courtney becomes fascinated by Janet's friend Anthony Neville, an aristocratic esthete who lives out of the Pierre hotel and has homes in the Riviera and the Caribbean. She and Anthony become lovers but hide it from Janet, who was involved with him in the past.

Most of the characters in the book are heavy drinkers, [5] with the exception of Courtney and a young man named Charles Cunningham who gradually emerges as a love interest, although Courtney initially finds him too "straight arrow." Janet's father stands out as an alcoholic who "no longer cared for the niceties of companionship or ice in his bourbon." He often beats down the door behind which his wife and daughter hide from his rages. Janet leaves home to live with Courtney. When she returns, her mother has fled to a sanitarium and her father is alone and drunk, and blames his daughter for ruining their lives.

Coldly, with the full force of his body, he slapped her...He fell upon her and forced her onto the couch and lay above her as a lover might, and she was terrified . . . As her body went limp in his arms he rose and walked over to the window. Thank God, she thought. Thank God he got up."

Soon after, Janet jumps from the window to her death. In the aftermath, Courtney ends her affair with Anthony. The novel ends with Courtney on her way to see Charles Cunningham and her parents for dinner, while Anthony contemplates returning to his island in the fall. The last line notes "how quickly the summer had gone."

Critical and scholarly response

Chocolates for Breakfast is sometimes included in lists [6] [7] of early lesbian fiction, for the depiction of the relationship of two schoolgirls at an East Coast boarding school, Courtney's attachment to her teacher Miss Rosen, and the backlash against them from the other teachers and students. A detailed exploration of this genre, with a footnote linking Moore to the French tradition, appears in Contingent loves: Simone de Beauvoir and Sexuality by Melanie Hawthorne. [8]

Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of The Mists of Avalon , examined Chocolates for Breakfast in a 1965 article, "Feminine Equivalents of Greek Love in Modern Fiction," where she pronounced it "less melodramatic [than Faviell's Thalia] but perhaps more realistic and telling," and advanced the hypothesis that Courtney's 'sexual promiscuity and dissipation' could be traced to her rejection by Miss Rosen at the beginning of the book. [9]

In The Catalog Of Cool, filmmaker Richard Blackburn includes Chocolates for Breakfast which he describes as "the ultimate teen sophisticate fantasy." [5] [10] Writer Rachel Shukert selected a passage from Chocolates for Breakfast as her inclusion in an anthology of erotic writing, calling it "a product of an all-too-brief vogue for novels about sexually precocious poor little rich girls." [11]

Alternative rock musician Courtney Love has stated that her mother, Linda Carroll, named her after the protagonist of the novel. [4] [12]

As Robert Nedelkoff points out in his retrospective on the literary and social significance of Moore's work, the name Courtney became common as a girl's name only in the years after the novel's publication. [5]

In the series Feud, Joan Crawford is portrayed rejecting the book as a possible movie source.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simone de Beauvoir</span> French philosopher, social theorist and activist (1908–1986)

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.

<i>At Bertrams Hotel</i> 1965 Miss Marple novel by Agatha Christie

At Bertram's Hotel is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 15 November 1965 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at sixteen shillings (16/-) and the US edition at $4.50. It features the detective Miss Marple staying at an upmarket hotel which is at the centre of a mysterious disappearance.

<i>Clarissa</i> 18th century epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson

Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady: Comprehending the Most Important Concerns of Private Life. And Particularly Shewing, the Distresses that May Attend the Misconduct Both of Parents and Children, In Relation to Marriage is an epistolary novel by English writer Samuel Richardson, published in 1748. It tells the tragic story of a young woman, Clarissa Harlowe, whose quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her family. The Harlowes are a recently wealthy family whose preoccupation with increasing their standing in society leads to obsessive control of their daughter, Clarissa. It is considered one of the longest novels in the English language. It is generally regarded as Richardson's masterpiece.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paula Fox</span> American author

Paula Fox was an American author of novels for adults and children and of two memoirs. For her contributions as a children's writer she won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978, the highest international recognition for a creator of children's books. She also won several awards for particular children's books including the 1974 Newbery Medal for her novel The Slave Dancer; a 1983 National Book Award in category Children's Fiction (paperback) for A Place Apart; and the 2008 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for A Portrait of Ivan (1969) in its German-language edition Ein Bild von Ivan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Duncan</span> Scottish author

Jane Duncan was the pseudonym of Scottish author Elizabeth Jane Cameron, best known for her My Friends series of semi-autobiographical novels. She also wrote four novels under the name of her principal heroine Janet Sandison, and some children's books.

<i>The View from Saturday</i>

The View from Saturday is a children's novel by E. L. Konigsburg, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 1996. It won the 1997 Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature, the author's second Medal.

Marianne Wiggins is an American author. According to The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, Wiggins writes with "a bold intelligence and an ear for hidden comedy." She has won a Whiting Award, an National Endowment for the Arts award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2004 for her novel Evidence of Things Unseen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarojini Sahoo</span> Indian (Odia) Writer

Sarojini Sahoo is an Indian feminist writer, a columnist in The New Indian Express and an associate editor of Chennai-based English magazine Indian AGE. She has been enlisted among 25 Exceptional Women of India by Kindle Magazine of Kolkata. and is an Odisha Sahitya Academy Award winner.

<i>Mary: A Fiction</i> 1788 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary: A Fiction is the only complete novel by 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. It tells the tragic story of a woman's successive "romantic friendships" with a woman and a man. Composed while Wollstonecraft was a governess in Ireland, the novel was published in 1788 shortly after her summary dismissal and her decision to embark on a writing career, a precarious and disreputable profession for women in 18th-century Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Koomson</span> English writer (born 1971)

Dorothy Koomson is a contemporary British novelist, who is of Ghanaian descent. She has been described as "Britain's biggest selling black author of adult fiction".

<i>Friends, Lovers, Chocolate</i> 2005 novel by Alexander McCall Smith

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate is the second of the Sunday Philosophy Club series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featuring the protagonist Isabel Dalhousie. It was first published in 2005, and is the sequel to The Sunday Philosophy Club.

<i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i> 1858 short story collection by George Eliot

Scenes of Clerical Life is George Eliot's first published work of fiction, a collection of three short stories, published in book form; it was the first of her works to be released under her famous pseudonym. The stories were first published in Blackwood's Magazine over the course of the year 1857, initially anonymously, before being released as a two-volume set by Blackwood and Sons in January 1858. The three stories are set during the last twenty years of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century over a fifty-year period. The stories take place in and around the fictional town of Milby in the English Midlands. Each of the Scenes concerns a different Anglican clergyman, but is not necessarily centred upon him. Eliot examines, among other things, the effects of religious reform and the tension between the Established and the Dissenting Churches on the clergymen and their congregations, and draws attention to various social issues, such as poverty, alcoholism and domestic violence.

<i>Pastors and Masters</i> 1925 novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Pastors and Masters is a short novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett published in 1925. Called "a work of genius" by The New Statesman, it was the author's second novel and the first in which she introduced the characteristic style of clipped, precise dialogue that was to make her name. It is largely a character study, dealing with themes of tyranny, female subservience and unconventional sexuality within the setting of a boys’ preparatory school.

Linda Carroll is an American writer, marriage counselor, and family therapist. Carroll received national attention in 1993 when one of her patients, the fugitive Katherine Ann Power, turned herself in to authorities after spending twenty-three years eluding police. Carroll is best known professionally as a couples therapist and as an author of three books, the latest being Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love, in 2014.

<i>Its a Date</i> 1940 film by William A. Seiter

It's a Date is a 1940 American musical film directed by William A. Seiter and starring Deanna Durbin, Kay Francis, and Walter Pidgeon. Based on a story by Jane Hall, Frederick Kohner, and Ralph Block, the film is about an aspiring actress who is offered the lead in a major new play, but discovers that her mother, a more experienced actress, was hoping to get the same part. Their lives are complicated further when they both get involved with the same man. Distributed by Universal Pictures, It's a Date was remade in 1950 as Nancy Goes to Rio.

Pamela Moore was an American novelist best known for her debut novel Chocolates for Breakfast. She published her first novel, Chocolates for Breakfast, at age eighteen, which garnered her critical attention for its provocative themes involving its teenage protagonist.

Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante's books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works. Time magazine called Ferrante one of the 100 most influential people in 2016.

<i>Sensible Sensuality</i>

Sensible and Sensuality is a collection of essay by Indian feminist writer Sarojini Sahoo. Published in 2010, the book contains the author's view on feminism. Sahoo is a key figure and trend-setter of feminism in contemporary Indian literature. She has been listed among 25 exceptional women of India by Kindle English magazine of Kolkata. For Sahoo, feminism is not a "gender problem" or confrontational attack on male hegemony and, as such, differs from the feminist views of Virginia Woolf or Judith Butler.

<i>The Crazy Man</i> 2005 Canadian childrens novel by Pamela Porter

The Crazy Man is a 2005 Canadian children's novel written by Pamela Porter. This realistic family novel told in free verse has received many awards and was selected for the Governor General's Literary Award. The story is about a girl named Emaline who lives on a farm. Emaline's family falls apart after a terrible tractor accident. After chasing her beloved dog, Emaline's father accidentally runs over her leg with a tractor leaving her permanently disabled. Because of guilt, Emaline's father shoots her dog, Prince, and ends up leaving Emaline and her mother on their own. The narrative follows Emaline as she deals with prejudice, fear, her disability, and the absence of her father.

<i>Henrietta</i> (novel) Book by Charlotte Lennox

Henrietta is an 18th-century novel by Scottish author Charlotte Lennox. The first edition was published in 1758, and the second edition, revised by Lennox was published in 1761.

References

  1. "Home". Chocolatesforbreakfast.info. Retrieved 2013-06-26.
  2. Moore, Pamela (June 2013). Chocolates for Breakfast. Harper Collins. ISBN   9780062246912.
  3. Moore, Pamela (25 June 2013). Chocolates for Breakfast. HarperCollins. ISBN   978-0062246912.
  4. 1 2 Matheson, Whitney (June 26, 2013). "I love this book: Chocolates for Breakfast". USA Today . Retrieved March 2, 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 Nedelkoff, Robert (1997). "Pamela Moore Plus Forty". The Baffler (10): 104–117. doi:10.1162/bflr.1997.10.104. Archived from the original on October 28, 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
  6. "Chocolates for Breakfast", Lesbian Fun World, archived from the original on 2013-10-01, retrieved 2012-10-03
  7. "Goodreads:feminist--queer-and-sexxeee" . Retrieved 2009-04-24.
  8. Hawthorne, Melanie (2000). Contingent loves: Simone de Beauvoir and sexuality . University of Virginia Press. pp.  82 n. 61.
  9. Marion Zimmer Bradley (1965). "Feminine Equivalents of Greek Love in Modern Fiction" (PDF). International Journal of Greek Love (1): 48–58. Retrieved 2012-08-06.
  10. Gene Sculatti (October 1982). The Catalog of Cool . Warner Books. ISBN   978-0-446-37515-3 . Retrieved March 2, 2015.
  11. David Lehman (5 February 2008). The best American erotic poems: from 1800 to the present. Simon and Schuster. p. 273. ISBN   978-1-4165-3745-8 . Retrieved 22 May 2011.
  12. "Courtney Love Discusses the Origin of Her Name". VH1.com. 2010-06-21. Archived from the original on June 28, 2010. Retrieved 2013-06-26. My mother named me after a book called Chocolates for Breakfast. That book's crazy, I didn't believe it was real. I find it on eBay, you know what it's about? It's about a fading has-been alcoholic actress who lives in the Chateau Marmont and the Garden of Allah [...] and her gay friend, in the Chateau [...] She and her mother both have sex by meeting at Schwab's, which is, by the way, my local drug store [...] This thinly-veiled bad boy method actor from New York, Brando-esque— not a James Dean type, because Frances read it and said "definitively Brando"— [anyway], they both have sex with him, and she eats chocolate for breakfast, and you know, has gin for dinner. It's, like, this fuckin' crazy book. Me and Frances were reading it, and I was like "Who's who? What's what?" It's obviously about a malignant narcissistic mother... why my mother named me [after it], I don't know.