The Feminist King: Dolores Claiborne

Abstract

Dolores Claiborne has aged well. Now in my mid-fifties, I see this character as something of a role model. In some ways, I am Dolores. Mind you, I did not murder my ex-husband, but I have to admit the thought did cross my mind. I admire the way Stephen King fashioned a female character unfettered by others’ opinion of her. He crafted a woman with a brusque surface, but a deep underlying sense of love and purpose. She is a character who acted with intensity and evolved over time. Her story pivots around the year 1963. Stephen King chose the year well. That was the year a full solar eclipse crossed Alaska, central and eastern Canada, and Maine. The event drew a great deal of media attention and a beautiful article about the eclipse appeared months later in the pages of the November 1963 issue of National Geographic (Espanek). One can imagine a young Stephen King perusing the article. Coincidently, that was also the year feminism reemerged from its years of remission after women’s suffrage in 1920. It was the year feisty young women who grew up in “a man’s world” would be presented with the option to “become the men we wanted to marry” (Steinem 263). Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was released in 1963. It was also the year of the Equal Pay Act and the publishing of the Report on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt until her death in 1962.

In the world we live in, feminism is a commitment and entertainment can be a luxury. My writing is entertainment.

Stephen King (Owen 47)