Blonde: A Novel

Otto wants to photograph Norma Jeane in the nude, but she has always resisted. Now she needs the money, and he relishes in her agreement, as many women swear that they would never allow nude photos, but they always find the need to. Norma Jeane thinks: “I was not a tramp or a slut. Yet there was the wish to perceive me that way. For I could not be sold any other way I guess. And I saw that I must be sold. For then I would be desired, and I would be loved” (225). After the photos are taken, Cass Chaplin comes out from where he was hiding in the studio.

She believes she saw Cass hanging on the wall of her mother’s apartment, and he tells her that they are familiar, as they were both abandoned by their mothers and fathers. He promises to love her “as a brother. As a twin” (237).

Shinn gets Norma Jeane an audition for a Goldwyn-Mayer film. The director has no plans to cast Norma Jeane. During her audition, however, Norma Jeane lies down on the ground because the character is supposed to start the scene asleep.

Norma Jeane and Cass become lovers. He believes photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are pornography.

After the screening of her film, men ask who the blonde actress is. Norma Jeane is upset that Cass has not come to the screening. He does not apologize and instead talks about his own relationship with his father. Shinn and Cass dislike each other. Norma Jeane wanted to invite Cass to a post-screening dinner, but Shinn advised against it because of Cass’s reputation as a drunk.

Cass and Norma Jeane’s love is fierce. She feels he gave her the strength to do her first legitimate film. Cass helps her rehearse, but he gets frustrated when she falls too deeply into Angela’s character. He believes movie acting is easy because a director will tell her what to do and lead her through the scenes. She starts to experience insomnia, and she hears mocking voices in her head. To Norma Jeane, failing at acting is the same as failing to “justify her wrongful birth” (254). Cass wants her to take barbiturates to help her sleep, but she says no. She believes he is the devil sometimes. She believes she is “Norma Jeane playing ‘Marilyn’ playing ‘Angela’—like a Russian doll in which smaller dolls are contained by the largest doll which is the mother” (256). After the film screening, Norma Jeane goes to Cass and finds Eddy G, another man, in bed with him.

Norma Jeane starts taking a poetry class, going by the name Gladys Pirig. Gladys is frequently silent in class. One day, she reads the poem “The Altar” aloud, and people are shocked by her voice and applaud her. She explains that the layout of the poem is an actual altar. One day, a fellow classmate comes to class with a copy of a magazine in which Marilyn Monroe is featured, and they realize that she is their classmate. She is confronted when she gets to class, and she leaves, never to return.

Shinn asks Norma Jeane to marry him. He promises that he will divert all of his wealth away from his family and leave it to her if she will agree to be his wife. She hopes, secretly, to marry V, who has become a secret lover. She does not know if Shinn knows about V, and she never told Shinn about the excessive amount of barbiturates she took after seeing Cass with Eddy G.

Norma Jeane must go meet with W, a man who hates women but who is the leading man in a film she wishes to be in. She realizes that she still has to make him desire her even though he hates her.

Norma Jeane believes she is her role, Nell. Her costar gets frustrated because he feels he cannot act with her because she is too deep in the character. He also gets frustrated by the number of times she insists on redoing scenes to make them perfect. She tells the director that she wants to add lines because she understands Nell, and the character has taken night-school poetry classes. At the Studio, there is a doctor who wants to prescribe pills for Norma Jeane’s nerves, but she turns them down.

Shinn calls Norma Jeane screaming about the nude photos that Otto sent to Golden Dreams that have reappeared. The next day, he dies. The studio is furious about the pictures. The last words Shinn spoke to Norma Jeane were “‘Marilyn’ was mine, you dumb broad. ‘Marilyn’ was beautiful, and she was mine; you had no right to despoil her” (306). 

Norma Jeane goes to the studio, summoned by a group of angry executives. After she goes home, she takes a razor blade, but she fumbles it when the phone rings. Where she once turned to prayer, she now uses medication to get her through her troubles. She takes three pain pills. The person on the other end of the phone tells her that Mr. Shinn is dead. Eventually, she takes 15 more pills.

Norma Jeane is scared because she knows that she is not Rose, her character. She is back on better terms with the Studio, as the men increased her salary and forgave her after she performed sexual acts on them. She moves her mother to a smaller mental-health-care facility so that people do not find out that her mother struggles with mental-health issues. Norma Jeane is lonely because Shinn was the only one who ever really looked out for her. Cass and Eddy G watch Norma Jeane. She loves V even more than she loved Cass, but she wonders if he cares for her at all. Someone called the Sharpshooter is outside in the night with his rifle, watching the party unobserved. He works for the US government. He keeps Norma Jeane in sight. She tells V she wants to leave. Misters Z, S, D, and T touch Norma Jeane intimately and wink at V to let him know that they have all been with Norma Jeane. He leaves, and she goes after him saying she had not really been with them, but she is unconvincing. Cass and Eddy G take her hands. Cass tells her to come with them because she does not belong with all of these people who have no feelings for her.

Norma Jeane believes that this is the first night of her new life. She wonders if three people can be in a relationship like two people can. Both Cass and Eddy G Robinson Jr. are “despised sons of famous fathers” (321).

Norma Jeane feels energized without V. She loves both Cass and Eddy G, but she loves Cass more and wants him to father her baby. Norma Jeane believes that Rose, her character, had a baby who died. Some people claim that Norma Jeane does not have to act to play the promiscuous Rose, but others claim she is a genius. When she has to leave town to go on location, she wants her lovers to join her, but they refuse. One day, Norma Jeane believes she is pregnant, but then another excruciating period comes, and the doctor gives her a large dose of painkillers and warns her not to drink. While away, Norma Jeane realizes how devastated she would be if Cass and Eddy G were with another woman, as her power lies in the fact that she is the woman in the relationship. Their laughter at her, however, is sometimes similar to that of older brothers and other times is crueler. Sometimes, being with them sexually is so painful that she has to take painkillers. The lovers occasionally call her Fish, which refers to a stink of being female.

When Norma Jeane returns, Cass and Eddy G look different. News reports write about the three being seen out in public together. The three discuss the celestial stars, and Norma Jeane remarks that human stars, like celestial stars, must have some substance. Cass has started drinking more. The three call themselves the Gemini and swear to always love each other. It is that night that Norma Jeane believes their baby is conceived. 

Norma Jeane is happy because she believes she is a real actress because Rose was her creation. When she finds out she is pregnant, she cries out of happiness and then calls her lovers. She believes that once a woman has a baby, she becomes part of the club of women. The men know that she would never have an abortion. The three go out drinking, and when Norma Jeane sees a stuffed tiger like she used to own, Eddy G breaks the window and steals the tiger from the toy store.

Eddy G decides to stop using substances. Norma Jeane is the first woman he and Cass really love.