Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era

Babe Paley (1915-1978) was an American socialite and a close friend of Truman Capote. The “statuesque, five-feet-eight-inch-tall” (9) Babe was “often called the most beautiful woman in the world” (4). In Capote’s Women, Leamer depicts Babe as a stylish, creative woman whose obsession with marrying rich leads her to an emotionally unfulfilling marriage. Truman’s belief that Babe is “an artist who ha[s] created herself as an inspired work of living sculpture” for the world to admire. Leamer argues that “fashion [is] her skin, her real skin, and she adore[s] the whole process” of inventing herself. The repetition of the phrase “her skin, her real skin” blurs the line between the artifice and the real when it comes to the swans—a distinction Truman himself grapples with in his relationships with them and in his work.

Despite the fact that Babe is “a talented, creative person and probably could have become a leading fashion editor,” she maintains a belief that “to be a Cushing mean[s] to marry well,” and gives up her promising career at Vogue magazine to pursue a wealthy marriage (18). Leamer emphasizes that Babe was willing to give up her career because her parents instilled in their daughters “not just the aspiration but the necessity that they marry rich, socially prominent men,” pointing to the text’s thematic engagement with Parenting Among the Social Elite in Mid-Century America (19).

Gloria Guinness (1912-1980) was a Mexican socialite and close friend of Truman Capote. In Capote’s Women, Leamer portrays her as the smartest of the swans, and the most thoughtful in her use of style to craft her self-image. Leamer describes Gloria as a “fiercely intelligent and perceptive” (5) woman with “savage opinions” and a “rapier wit” (165) that she used “like a scalpel” (147). The use of fighting and weapon imagery in these excerpts suggests that Gloria adds to the sense of Gloria as a force among New York’s social elite. Leamer suggests that Gloria’s intelligence is what initially draws Truman to her, and that he believes that “there was nothing [Truman] could not discuss with her” (5).

Leamer asserts that Gloria uses her considerable intelligence to intentionally craft her self-image—a central element of which was pursuing and marrying men that would enhance her elite status, highlighting the text’s thematic interest in Marriage as a Business Arrangement. Although she is born into a working-class Mexican family, Gloria eventually “spen[ds] $250,000 a year on her clothes, at least $1.5 million in today’s money” (146). Leamer makes clear that her interest in clothing is not merely surface level, as it is with some of the other swans: “it wasn’t just the dresses that mattered but the whole ceremony of presenting herself to the world in the best possible light” (164). For Gloria, “fashion [is] not just clothes, it [is] a philosophy, a way of seeing” (169). These passages suggest that Gloria intentionally uses fashion as a tool to create an image of herself that advances her social capital.

Slim Keith (1917-1990) was a fashion icon, socialite, and close friend of Truman Capote. In Capote’s Women, she is characterized as “the quintessential California girl” whose intelligence matches her beauty (50). Leamer argues that, in the years after World War II, California acted as “an American metaphor for freedom and lives of endless promise” (73). In turn, Slim acts as an embodiment of this California ethos: “there [is] a casualness to her, no matter what she [wears] or where she [goes], and an athletic ease that seem[s] a statement about freedom and openness (50) Even when she dresses formally, Slim possesses a “spur-of-the-moment, windblown quality to her beauty, as if it [is] a blessing nature ha[s] given her” (83). These passages suggest that Slim’s open, casual beauty epitomizes an aspirational image of the nation’s goals in the postwar years.

Although Slim is known for her beauty, Leamer suggests that Truman values her because she can “match Truman bon mot for bon mot” (4). “Droll and supercharged,” Slim entertains Truman with her “ready wit [with] an acerbic edge to it” (84). The emphasis in these passages on Slim’s willingness to exchange witty barbs with Truman and others reflects Slim’s keen intellect and charisma.

Pamela Harriman (1920-1997) was an English diplomat and socialite, and a close friend of Truman Capote. Although contemporaries claimed that Pamela “wasn’t beautiful,” she was “adept at projecting sensuality” that drew men to her (97). In Capote’s Women, Leamer depicts Pamela as a woman who successfully uses men to support herself financially. Leamer’s comparison of her sex life to Truman’s serves to cast it in a negative light: while Truman is open to relationships of all types, Pamela pursues men “only if it might advance her position in the world” (94). Truman is repulsed by Pamela’s “shameless” attempts to “get and keep the attention of the rich men upon whose good graces she depended” (4). The critical tone of these passages exemplifies Truman’s judgmental posture toward the swans throughout the text.

However, Leamer attributes Pamela’s “staggering array of affairs” (89) to the fact that she was a woman living under the rules of primogeniture. Because she would inherit nothing from her father, “if Pamela did not find a worthy husband, there were nothing but dispiriting possibilities out there” (95). Leamer frames Pamela’s “shameless” pursuit of wealthy men as a means of survival—an attempt to financially provide for herself in a world built to benefit men.

C.Z. Guest was an American socialite and a close friend of Truman Capote. In Capote’s Women, Leamer depicts her as “an elitist of the first order […] roundly dismissive of people she thought unworthy” (5). According to Leamer, she believed that “God had placed the rich just where they belonged—at the top of everyone and everything” and that “the upper-class was better in every way” (203). C.Z. often cited examples of famous public scandals as evidence of these beliefs—claiming, for example, that “if Nixon had the proper breeding, Watergate would never have happened” (203). Although these passages highlight her undeniably elitist worldview, Leamer suggests that C.Z. truly believed that she and other elite women were “inspiring others to higher standards” (204).

Leamer highlights an element of irony in C.Z.’s lack of success in her chosen career as an actress, suggesting that, because of her privileged upbringing, C.Z. was “totally unprepared to spend the time it might take to hone her craft and find her place” in the entertainment industry (187). Because “the auditioning process was often humiliating, nothing but rejection after rejection,” C.Z. eventually “began to lose interest in acting as a profession” (187). Despite her belief in the inherent superiority of her elite upbringing, Leamer asserts that her privilege ultimately left her without the necessary stamina and work ethic to build a successful career.

Lee Radziwill (1933-2019) was an American socialite and close friend of Truman Capote. In Capote’s Women, Leamer portrays her as intensely jealous of her older sister Jackie Kennedy and obsessed with royalty. Although Truman “thought Lee far more beautiful and a far better (and more interesting) person than her famous sister,” Lee herself was “consumed with jealousy” and constantly compared herself to Jackie. Leamer frames Lee’s jealousy of her sister as “the most painful secret of her life” and one that took up nearly all of her energy: “it was all she could think about, all she could talk about” (253). Even when Lee married a European prince, she worried that “Jackie would always be lurking there somewhere,” ready to take attention away (266). These passages position Lee’s jealousy of her sister as her defining characteristic, dominating her life.

Perhaps because of her sister’s role as First Lady, “Lee was obsessed with royalty, celebrity [and] noble lineage” (264). Leamer highlights the ways in which Lee maintained a “fairy tale view of the world,” and used the title “Princess Radziwill” after her marriage to Stanislaw Radziwill in 1959, suggesting that her use of the title “sanctified her worth” as a member of the elite (266). Lee’s fascination with nobility and insistence on using the title Princess reflects an attempt to craft a romanticized public persona to shore up her self-worth, highlighting the novel’s thematic interest in Self-Presentation as an Art Form.