Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Window Into the 1950's Brook Jolley

Truman Capote's masterpiece of American literature, Breakfast at Tiffany's, is a wonderful story about misguided love. The novel is well deserving of a place within any compilation of literature and is epically deserving of a place within a collection of women's literature, as it presents a snapshot of a very human woman from the 1950's era United States. Holly is not a woman you might want to frame, or one that you might aspire to become, foremost because her flaws are exposed for all to see. However, she most definitely is defining of a cultured woman of the American 1950's, a modern debutant, carefree and aloof. Her character is defining of the societal changes which took place during the post World War II 1950's, when women gained independence they had not previously shared with men before the war, and the growing up period which was inevitable as they learned to walk on their own, free and spirited; women gained independence, but they had not yet gained the ability to support themselves: this was a fault of the society. The novel shows this change beautifully, from the perspective of a man who falls in love with one of these new wild and spirited creatures that he does not completely understand.

The...