49 pages • 1 hour read
Laurence LeamerCapote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Marital Game”
Slim decides to get out of her miserable marriage to Hawks by finding another wealthy man to marry. In 1944, she begins an affair with the movie star Clark Gable, who has recently returned from serving in World War II. Slim is chosen for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar as the quintessential California girl, a new archetype popular in post-war America. She has another baby who’s cared for by nannies when she travels to New York with other socialites. Bored of New York, she flies to Cuba to see Ernest Hemingway, a longtime friend of her husband who often flirts with her. While in Cuba, she meets Leland Hayward, a wealthy, married Hollywood producer, and begins an affair. The couple fall in love quickly, divorce their partners, and are married at the home of Bill and Babe Paley. Slim and Babe become close friends, throwing elaborate parties each weekend. Unlike Babe, Slim is reluctant to share her secrets with Truman, fearing he is untrustworthy.
Meanwhile, Truman struggles to establish his career in New York. He returns briefly to Monroeville, where he begins work on a new novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Back in New York, he begins publishing short fiction in women’s magazines like Mademoiselle and Harper’s Bazaar. His work at these publications introduces him to influential women like Carson McCullers, author of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, who helps him to sell Other Voices, Other Rooms. McCullers also arranges for Truman to stay at Yaddo, an artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs. There, he meets and begins an affair with Newton Arvin, a closeted literature professor from Smith College. Truman’s flamboyant nature contrasts Arvin’s reserved, secretive personality.
Slim’s relationship with her husband begins to fall apart when Hayward’s teenage children from his first marriage suddenly move in with them, and he expects her to parent them in his absence. She has an affair with one of his screenwriters, and he begins an affair with Pamela Churchill, a divorced woman notorious for having affairs with married men. In 1959, Slim and Hayward divorce, and Pamela Churchill begins planning her life as the next Mrs. Hayward.
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Notorious Mrs. C”
The scandal of Pamela’s affair with Leland Hayward rocks the New York social scene, with most women siding with the newly divorced Slim.
Pamela was raised in Dorset in the south of England on a large country estate. Because her younger brother was heir to the family estate, Pamela was raised understanding the importance of marrying a wealthy man. She’s overweight and awkward as a teenager, and although she has a formal debut at court, she does not have a successful social life. She begins spending time with Olive Baillie, a wealthy married woman who openly has affairs. Following in her example, Pamela begins having affairs with older, married men. She’s introduced to Randolph Churchill, son of politician Winston Churchill, who proposes to her, explaining that he is worried about dying in the upcoming war and wants to have a baby. Pamela accepts, knowing his family’s status.
Churchill has multiple affairs, including during Pamela’s pregnancy. Pamela moves in with her in-laws, where she meets W. Averell Harriman, the American in charge of the lend-lease program. Pamela and Harriman begin an open affair, with Harriman moving Pamela into an apartment and paying her a yearly salary. Although Pamela’s husband Randolph Churchill is also having open affairs, Pamela becomes the subject of vicious gossip. She eventually divorces Randolph and continues to pursue affairs with married men, including diplomats John Whitney and General Frederick Anderson, Jr., radio broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, and notorious Pakistani womanizer and socialite Aly Khan.
Truman’s novel Other Voices, Other Rooms is published in 1948, and although the book is a bestseller, it receives mixed reviews. The next year, Truman meets and falls in love with the writer Jack Dunphy, author of John Fury. Dunphy had been married to Broadway star Joan McCracken, but they divorced during the war due to her infidelity. Dunphy claims he likely never would have been with a man if he had remained married. Quiet and reserved, Dunphy is Truman’s polar opposite, but he remains committed to Truman throughout his life.
Chapter 7 Summary: “A Tub of Butter”
While in France with Aly Khan, Pamela meets Gianni Agnelli, the dashing heir to the Fiat auto fortune. Gianni is known for his love of partying—especially cocaine—and his womanizing tendencies. They begin an intense affair, and Gianni showers her with gifts and expensive trips. He is drawn to her insight into international politics and the connections she can offer him, but is not interested in sacrificing his freedom to be with her. Gianni’s family and friends repeatedly tell him that Pamela is not the type of woman he should be with, but Pamela works hard to make herself invaluable to him, sharing secrets from the diplomats she’s bedded and gossip about the elite of Europe. She converts to Catholicism, hoping to change his mind about marriage. When she becomes pregnant, Gianni insists that she have an abortion, and she agrees, hoping that it will draw them closer together.
Gianni is involved in a serious accident, and his sisters use his recovery as an opportunity to separate him from Pamela by introducing him to their friend Marella. Gianni impregnates and marries Marella, breaking Pamela’s heart. As a parting gift, he gives Pamela a Paris apartment, a Bentley, and a massive cash payment. Pamela uses her newfound wealth to focus on beautifying herself for her next husband. She aggressively pursues Leland Hayward, and marries him in 1960 just months after his divorce from Slim. She recenters Hayward’s life away from the theater crowd to her jet-setting friends. They remain married until his death in 1971. As a result of Hayward’s alcoholism and excessive spending, Pamela decides she must marry again. She arranges a meeting with the recently-widowed W. Averell Harriman, and marries him just six months after Hayward’s death.
From 1949 to 1959, Truman and Dunphy spend most of their time in Europe and North Africa. They live in Tangiers, Algeria for several years, and Truman returns to work on an abandoned project called Summer Crossing. They then move to the small seaside town of Taormina, a popular Italian resort near Sicily. There, Truman abandons Summer Crossing and begins work on a new novel, The Grass Harp. Truman and Dunphy are visited by friends and family, including Truman’s mother Nina, who hates Dunphy and is often cruel to Truman. The Grass Harp is published in 1951 to positive reviews.
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
These chapters of Capote’s Women follow the structure established in the first section: each chapter weaves the biography of a specific swan with details from the life of Truman Capote. For example, Chapter 5, “The Marital Game,” begins and ends with scenes from Slim Hayward’s tumultuous marriage to producer Leland Hayward. Slim’s narrative is interrupted by a brief overview of Truman’s early attempts to establish his career in New York. Although this section concerns Truman’s life before he met Slim, Leamer makes an explicit connection between their lives, noting that “Truman’s story of his early adult life was as intriguing as any of the plays Leland [Hayward] was producing” (78). This pattern continues in subsequent chapters, as Leamer punctuates the narrative of Pamela Hayward’s life and relationships with more scenes from Truman’s life, using connective transitions each time. This unique structure suggests that Truman and the swans were moving in similar circles and confronting similar challenges even before they officially met.
Leamer’s depiction of Slim Keith and Pamela Churchill Hayward highlights the text’s thematic interest in Self-Presentation as an Art Form and demonstrates their powerful political influence. Leamer argues that Slim’s rise to popularity as an icon of American fashion is the result of post-war attempts to define American identity. In the midst of a “life-and-death struggle” to establish power after the war, Slim represents “a bright optimism about a new postwar world” (73). In the post-war years, Leamer asserts, Slim’s home state of California acts as “an American metaphor for freedom and lives of endless promise,” and California women like Slim represent “a new, casual, uniquely American style” that is distinct from the tradition of French fashion (73). These passages reflect a close association between California women and American identity that underscores the political influence of socialites like Slim Keith.
Although the women in her social circle criticize Pamela Churchill Hayward as a serial adulterer, Leamer suggests that her many romantic pursuits made her an important force in Anglo-American wartime relations. He outlines her various relationships with British and American men, positioning her as an important source of emotional support and information on both sides. After her marriage to Randolph Churchill, son of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Pamela begins to spend the weekends in at her in-laws’ country house, “often dining with world leaders and top British officials” (101). The relationships she develops through the Churchills, Leamer indicates, eventually come to bear in her years-long affair with American diplomat W. Averell Harriman, who “understood little about the power dynamics of London and the people key to his mission” (104). Pamela not only knows the parties involved but also shares with Harriman “shrewd insights that no one in the American embassy could possibly match” (104). Although Truman himself wrote that Pamela “has absolutely no intellectual capacities at all” and compared her to “some sort of marvelous primitive,” Leamer depicts her as a key political player in elite society, positioning social capital as a kind of political power.
These chapters introduce the book’s thematic interest in Parenting Among the Social Elite in Mid-Century America through Leamer’s depiction of Slim and Pamela’s emotionally distant approach to motherhood. When her baby is “only two months old,” Slim moves from California to New York, “leaving the child in the hands of the nanny. It was party time” (74). Around the same time, Pamela moves to Paris, leaving her young son Winston “in London to be brought up largely by his nanny” (112). Leamer notes that Winston “was no impediment to Pamela’s new life” in Paris (112). In both instances, the women rely on nannies to raise their children while pursuing their own goals, an implicit critique in which Leamer aligns the privilege of wealth with parental neglect.
