Virginia Byde Pacetti
Mrs. Jernigan
AP English IV
31 January 2011
Third Quarter Poetry Response #2
Poet Edgar Lee Masters’ writes as the apparently now dead Dora Williams, in the aptly named dramatic monolog, Dora Williams. Dora retells her life in less than twenty-five lines, starting as a late teenager or young adult and proceeding forward, which simply entails reciting a list of all her boyfriends and husbands, as well as the places she moved to with one or after a one’s death or brake-up. Dora, who dies a Countess presumably poisoned by her Count, speaks bluntly, sardonically, and pompously to anyone who might hear her from beyond the grave. Or maybe she just calls out to the sea who inscribed “Contessa Naigato/ Implora eternal quiete” on her head stone. This translates to “Countess Navigato/begs for eternal peace” in Italian, one of the four languages she can speak upon her death. Such an epitaph, with deepness in sharp contrast to the rest of the story told in a rather pedestrian air, suggests that after three attempts at gold digging, and two more even less successful relationships (which she clearly wishes to push to the back of her mind as she glosses over the saying no more than, “[he] ran away and threw me,” and characterizes the other only as “villain”) she would rather let the quest for men be and rest.
She moved from Springfield to Rome making the logical steps between from Chicago to the more prestigious and pretentious New York and more elitist Paris as a woman “insidious, subtle, [and] versed” as her fortune grew. In Paris the reader becomes aware that her money accumulated from her two prior marriages is quite the little fortune. Both men, extremely affluent, she disliked one as life with one was “wretched” and the other an old man infatuated with her, who’s death grossed her out, and easily garnered her profit that nearly caused “a scandal.” Context clues such as the scandal and the line “he was mad about me—so another fortune” most likely imply she came into money life-long family members may have been entitled to. She tricked her first husband into marriage as he was drunk at the time, yet she was only grateful when it was over. This fortune provided what it seems she was always searching for, the bigger and better: hobnobbing with nobles and the artist crowd.
