TrishaWehrle

Girl Heroin Not Whore

After reading David Belasco's "The Girl of the Golden West," the first thing that came to my mind was Zach Harvey's presentation on his second paper draft. I had a lot of respect for the girl after I read the play and Zach's portrayal of her as being a "whore" kept popping into my head. I must be honest and I did not read the play until over Thanksgiving break, but I went into it knowing a lot of background so I really enjoyed reading it. After Zach's presentation I was waiting for a scene where the girl showed even a little but of slutiness, but it just was not there. Instead of classifying her as a whore, I would call her a smart business woman who followed her heart when she found love.

I realize that this play is a melodrama and it certainly contains all of the aspects of a melodrama: Good guys, bad guys, overacting, and fantastic spectacle. I really wish that I could have seen this play being done to get the true "sensory experience" that the drama entails. It would be interesting to see the people cast as the characters because after you read something and picture what you think that everyone will look like, its cool to see who the director casts in the show. I read that Belasco did not want his play to be read but only seen, but I disagree with that because he used extremely detailed stage directions that helped me visualize the play and the set as I read it.

I agree with Zach's statement that the Girt is the center of the play because she is the center of the mining camp, the polka, and the hearts of all the men at the camp. When Zach went on to say that the girl is out of place at the camp, I strongly disagree. When the girl first enters the scene of the Polka for the first time, "she has a thorough knowledge of what the men of her world generally want. She is used to lfattery-- knows exactly how to deal with men-- is very shrewd-- but quite capable of being a good friend to the camp boys." She seems to fit right in. She is the motiviation that drives the men to work hard and strike it rich, she is the dainty lass that keeps them ruly and trying to be gentlemen like. The girl keeps the boys of the camp happy not by giving out sexual favors which would make her a whore, but by accepting drinks they buy her as a good business move so they keep buying drinks for themselves at her very successful Polka. For example, when Blonde Harry sends her a drink, she says, "Here, give it to me-- (pouring it back into the bottle)-- and say it hit the spot."

The girl is anything but a slut. She refuses to marry Jack Rance because she knows that he has a wife in New Orleans and even though he tells her "my wife wont know it," she still refuses the offer. She is looking for true love, the kind that her parents had. As she remembers her childhood she says, "Lord! How they loved each other, it was beautiful!" She is saving her first kiss to give to her true love and she finds it in DIck Johnson. At the end of the novel, she tells him that "all that mother was to Father, I'm going to be to you." She has finally found the one person that she loves and she will not give him up. She has ended the love triangle and even gives up her business for the man she loves.