Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker
Quick answer: Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker: summary with the ending, Hazel Morse the good sport, Herbie, the men who follow, the veronal, and the craft of a life told in summary.
Hazel Morse is a large, fair woman of the kind men call a good sport, and she has learned that being a good sport means never once, in a decade, being seen unhappy. Dorothy Parker published Big Blonde in The Bookman in February 1929, and it won the O. Henry Memorial Award for the year's best short story.
It is the story most often chosen to show that the author of the light verse could write a slow, exact tragedy about drink and dependence.
The story in brief, ending included
Hazel models for a wholesale dress house in New York and is popular for laughing at men's jokes. She marries Herbie Morse, and marriage lets her stop performing; she cries easily, and Herbie, who wanted the good sport, grows irritable and drinks. She discovers that whisky steadies her into cheerfulness, and the couple settle into quarrels and hangovers until Herbie leaves for Detroit. Through her neighbour Mrs Martin she meets Ed, a married businessman who pays her rent and requires her to be gay; then Charley, Sydney and Art, all insisting she cheer up.
Her days shrink to sleep, the speakeasy, and a maid named Nettie. Watching a horse fall in the street, she thinks how easy it would be to stop. She buys veronal in New Jersey, swallows the tablets, and lies down. Nettie finds her the next day and fetches a doctor who revives her with open contempt. Nettie tells her to cheer up. Hazel asks for a drink and, half-praying that she will be allowed to stay drunk, agrees with the maid that she will, sure, cheer up. The story ends there, on the word of assent she has spent her life saying.
The characters
One woman and a queue of men.
Themes: the good sport and what it costs
The standard readings are the trap of the agreeable woman, alcoholism as a slow substitute for feeling, and the economics of dependence in the 1920s, when a woman without work lived on men's moods. The horses Hazel pities are the emblem of a creature worked past its strength.
The sharper point is that the story's cruelty is tonal. Parker never raises her voice; the sentences stay level, ironic and precise while Hazel disintegrates, so that the prose itself performs the good sport's smile over the wreck.
The craft: a life in summary with two scenes
Most of the story is summary across years, which classrooms warn against, and Parker proves the rule wrong by making the summary specific: brand names, furniture, the men's habits. The turn is the fallen horse, the one image that stops the drift. Then the story slows into scene for the veronal and the revival, so that the only fully dramatised moments are the attempt and the failure.
The technique to steal is proportion inverted: years in a page, one night in a chapter. The ending on a single word of agreement shows how a closing line can repeat a whole life.
For class and essays
Model answers, vocabulary, one misreading.
What writers can take from this
- For exams, name the good sport as the story's central concept and show what it costs.
- Cite the fallen horse as the image that gathers Hazel's exhaustion into one picture.
- Discuss tone: the level, ironic narration against the misery it reports.
- Writers: make summary specific enough to carry years, then slow to scene for the crisis.
- End on a word the character has said all her life.
Try it yourself
Write a story that covers ten years in summary, following a character praised for one quality everyone around them depends on. Make the summary concrete with brands, rooms and habits. Slow to a full scene only for the night the quality finally fails, and end on a word the character has used a thousand times.
Questions
What is the theme of Big Blonde?
The cost of being agreeable: a woman required by every man in her life to be a cheerful good sport drinks to keep the performance up and finally tries to stop altogether. Dependence and tone are the story's twin subjects.
What happens at the end of Big Blonde?
Hazel survives her overdose of veronal. Her maid Nettie tells her to cheer up, and Hazel, asking for a drink, agrees that she will, ending the story on the assent she has always given.
Did Big Blonde win an award?
Yes. It won the O. Henry Memorial Award for the best short story of 1929.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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