Women in Truman Capote’s world

Covers of most of Capote’s novels, most of them featuring women whom he knew in real life.

Truman Capote, the American writer, who’s mostly known for his nonfiction book “In Cold Blood”, wrote a number of novels and short stories, and though their protagonists weren’t always female, there always seemed to be an interesting female character in everything he wrote, and the reason why they were so interesting is because they were mostly written with a real person from Capote’s life in mind.

Capote lived a troubled childhood, but he was always surrounded with interesting women, growing up with his best friend Harper Lee, or going to grandmother’s house, visiting his aunts, or living with his mom, and having female friends later in life, he was surrounded with all kinds of characters, that a novelist would need.

In Capote’s first novel “Other voices, other rooms” published in 1948, this novel besides being his first novel, it’s almost semi-biographical, we can see many similarities between Capote and his novel’s protagonist, Joel. The novel portrays Capote’s childhood, of being neglected by his parents most of the time, and unstable life with his mother and step-father after that. But it also introduces many of Capote’s family members, mostly being females.

One of the characters “Amy Skully” the sharp-tongued stepmother was actually a reminiscent of one of Capote’s older cousins he lived with in Alabama, Callie Faulk. She’s also a reminiscent of Capote’s maternal grandmother, Mabel Knox, who always wore a glove on her left hand to cover an unknown malady and was known for her Southern aristocratic ways. While Joel’s tomboy friend “Idabel” is an exaggeration of Capote’s childhood tomboyish friend, Harper Lee. Capote was even inspired by the cook named Little Bit who worked in the home he lived in while he was in Alabama as a child, and introduced her as “Missouri Fever”, another mysteriously interesting character in his novel.

The main theme of this novel was alienation, and it can be seen that this was what Capote himself felt throughout his life, especially around his family members. Capote was different, as a child he was sensitive, so he was picked on, but when he grew up and became openly homosexual, the gay characters in his writings had always some sort of connection, whether was it the narrator in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or Randolph in “Other voices, other rooms.”

It seems that Capote’s childhood in Alabama continued to inspire him, as it inspired him to write another novel called “The Grass Harp” which was published in “1951”. The novel talks of the treehouse in his Cousin Jenny’s backyard, where he used to spend time with her and Harper Lee and his cousin Sook, who inspired more of his stories. It retells the same story we see in his short story “A Christmas Memory”, of a young boy observing the world along his elderly lady friend, who is his cousin Sook in that case as well.

One of Capote’s famous photographs. (Wikipedia)

Sook, as Capote called her, was his mother’s distant relative named Nanny Rumbley Faulk. He described her in “A Christmas Memory” as a lady with a remarkable face, “craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind”. “A Christmas Memory” is yet another autobiographical story, which describes a period in the lives of the seven-year-old narrator and an elderly woman who is his distant cousin and best friend. The evocative narrative focuses on country life, friendship, and the joy of giving during the Christmas season, and it also gently yet poignantly touches on loneliness and loss. Sook’s character appears once again in “The Thanksgiving Visitor” which is a story about a boy’s bullying problem, and it’s considered to be the sequel for “A Christmas Memory”

Capote’s women are simple-minded and they had a big effect on him growing up, and when he started mingling with the high society of rich people, he couldn’t resist using these women in his writings, which angered most of them. One example is Mag Wildwood from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” which was an example of the girls and women Capote encountered in parties he loved being part of, he loved rumors and all that came with the spotlight.

Like many authors who used real-life friends and relatives in their writings, Capote did the same, the only difference was that Capote didn’t mind even using these people’s real names, which caused uproar and caused him to lose a lot of his friends and connections.

Truman Capote in a Jack Mitchell photograph. (Wikipedia)

Coming to Capote’s most famous character, Holiday Golightly from his novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, it’s said that his character 10-years-old Lily Jane Bobbit from his short story “Children on their birthdays” is considered to be the early inspiration for the young socialite Holly Golightly. But Holly Golightly is a mixture of different women Capote knew in his life, either friends or relatives or distant acquaintances.

A number of claims suggested which friends of his he used as a model for his lively girl, either socialite Gloria Vanderbitt, Oona O’Neill, writer and actress Carol Grace, writers Maeve Brennan and Doris Lilly, models Dorian Leigh and Suzy Parker. And according to Joan McCracken biographer, Capote used McCracken’s violent outburst in the Bloomer Girl dressing room in 1944, after learning of the World War II death of her brother, as a model for a scene in the novella in which Holly reacts violently after her brother dies overseas.

McCracken and her husband Jack Dunphy were close friends of Capote’s, and Dunphy became Capote’s romantic life-long partner after his divorce from the actress. Also in the novella, Holly Golightly is shown singing songs from “Oklahoma!” in which McCracken appeared.

But the most interesting thing is the claim that Holly Golightly is based on Truman Capote’s mother, Nina Capote. Some of the similarities they shared were, both women were born in the rural south with similar birth names that they changed (Holly Golightly was born Lulamae Barnes in Texas, Nina Capote was born Lillie Mae Faulk in Alabama), both left the husbands they married as teenagers and abandoned relatives they loved and were responsible for going to New York, and both achieved “café society” status through relationships with wealthier men.

Capote discovered his love for writing and telling the stories at the age of 11, and naturally at that age he’d start writing about what surrounded him, but the characters he chose made his stories fleshed out, and made him stand out.