Hi I love your history rants and I'm having a crap day so please tell me about Bonnie Parker???
I’m sorry you’re having a crap day
please let your day be improved by the story of
ACTUAL TEXAN DISNEY PRINCESS (+ADDICTION, +POTTYMOUTH, +PREMARITAL AND EXTRAMARITAL SEX, +TATTOOS, +A WHOLE SLEW OF NON-PRINCESSY THINGS)
BBY SPENT ALL HER XP ON LOYALTY AND LEFT NONE FOR THINGS LIKE SOUND JUDGEMENT, SELF-PRESERVATION, AND A STEADY MORAL COMPASS
so in October 1910, a baby girl is born to a bricklayer’s wife in Rowena, Texas, USA. her name is Bonnie Elizabeth Parker. little Bonnie has an interesting childhood; her father dies when she is 4 and her mother moves the family to West Dallas
aka Crap Dallas A Bit To The West That Dallas Renamed So They Could Distance Themselves From Poor People
despite living in Crap Dallas, the Parkers are at least able to keep above the water. Bonnie discovers two great artistic loves: poetry and theatre. she performs in school plays, often to great acclaim, and excels academically (particularly with her writing).
all of which means jack shit because OH HEY IT’S DUSTBOWL TIME
CRAP DALLAS IS NOW EVEN CRAPPIER BECAUSE NOBODY HAS ANY MONEY. AND EVERYTHING IS COVERED IN SAND
so teenage Bonnie has to put aside her Broadway dreams and get a series of waitressing jobs that keep not working out, at least one because she kept giving baked goods away to homeless people.
that’s right: half of America’s most notorious outlaw couple got fired for feeding the homeless. cue the bird friends
except wait! Bonnie does have one skill besides waitressing and art shit that can’t possibly go anywhere because she’s stuck in Crap Dallas: always having a boyfriend
so at the age of 16, Bonnie boyfriends her way out of high school by marrying a classmate named Roy Thornton. who…is basically in the same boat she is re: being dirt poor. so they move to a house in a slightly different part of Crap Dallas
(damn okay Bonnie I love you but you could at least marry for money. think big picture here)
but no Bonnie cannot marry for money because Bonnie is a serious romantic. she is in fact a terminal romantic, as time will tell.
Roy turns out to be a cranberry fucknut who sleeps around, may or may not have been physically abusive, stays away for weeks at a time, and ultimately gets arrested for robbery. they separate for good a year after their wedding, but Bonnie never divorces him. she claims it would be kicking Roy when he was down (but publically running around with another man isn’t??? idk)
she probably lived to regret the “Bonnie + Roy” heart tattoo on her upper thigh
no joke. she also died still wearing her wedding ring. anyway regardless it was very much over by New Year’s 1928. she wrote in her journal “Let all mengo to hell!”
anyway that lasts maybe two years before she’s making cocoa for a friend who’s broken their leg and who should walk into the kitchen but that friend’s other friend, Clyde Barrow
I don’t know that time stops and fireworks suddenly explode and angels sing around them but man I would not be surprised
because these two fall in ~*lurve*~ right off the bat
(Clyde has his own story but that’s another post. basics are: aspiring musician, car enthusiast and occasional thief, small-time crook, good marksman but doesn’t even like shooting birds, prefers shooting clay pigeons or tin cans to the point where the other boys think it’s kinda weird. that last bit is important)
anyway they date for two years, during which both parties do brief stints in prison.
THEY HAD BEEN DATING 8 TIMES THE LENGTH OF KIM KARDASHIAN’S FIRST MARRIAGE BEFORE THE WHOLE “OUTLAWS ON THE RUN” THING STARTED
in 1932, everything kind of starts to go smash. Bonnie smuggles Clyde a gun in prison, enabling him to break out. he is captured in Ohio and would have received a relatively light sentence- except that the Texas governor wanted to seem like he was cracking down hard on crime. all crime. therefore, a petty criminal and first-offense jailbreaker wound up sentenced to 14 years at Eastham Prison Farm. aka the worst prison in 1930s Texas
Bonnie is heartbroken, but eventually starts dating a bit again. when Clyde is paroled later that year, suffering severe PTSD and paranoia as a result of being brutally and repeatedly raped by another prisoner (and minus two toes he cut off in an attempt to be released on medical grounds- not an uncommon practice at Eastham), he showed up at her house as she was about to leave on a date. apparently she shouted, “darling!” and ran into Clyde’s arms
man can you imagine being her date though? kind of feel sorry for the guy. anyway
Clyde’s personality has apparently done a trauma-induced 180, as he is now paranoid and quick to anger. the only thing the same, according to his younger sister Marie, was his love for Bonnie
he starts robbing again, with the help of his brother Buck, Buck’s wife Blanche, and Bonnie. apparently this is the Same First Letter method of outlaw gang recruitment. anyway, a robbery goes south. Clyde feels he has no choice but to shoot a policeman- the first person he’s killed in his criminal career
now things are more serious. now it’s murder, not just robbery, and in Bonnie’s case accessory to murder. Bonnie tells her mother she’s gotten a waitressing job in Utah or somewhere, and they run
over the next two years, they do the same thing: rob and run. and in some cases, when Clyde thinks it’s necessary, murder and run. Bonnie never actually shoots anyone, despite rumors (some of them quite lurid), but she does help reload Clyde’s and Buck’s guns during shootouts. she’s pretty definitively accessory to several murders, and she’d probably get a steep sentence if they were caught- or be executed alongside Clyde, who’d almost certainly get the chair. one gang member will later report that they had a suicide pact in case one got captured
through it all, though, they never stop doting on Bonnie’s niece and nephew and both are crushed when the children die young. they try to always pay the people who shelter them, sometimes with their only gas/food money. they once stop to give two children a ride to school, at the end of which Bonnie gives them both gum and tells them “We were going to take you with us because no-one would shoot if we had two children held up in the windows, but we found we couldn’t do it. Never get in another car with someone you don’t know”
Bonnie keeps writing poetry. she buys a rabbit for her mother one Easter, who she names Snowball. the pair visit their families as often as they can. everyone tells her to leave Clyde, even Clyde himself. she refuses.
in spring of 1934, at 24 years old, addicted to alcohol and painkillers to ease the pain of the horrific leg burn she suffered from battery acid in a car accident, unable to walk more than a few steps unaided, Bonnie Parker is gunned down with Clyde on a lonely road in Louisiana. she apparently outlived him by a few seconds
there are many other factoids I could tell you, like that Bonnie was apparently a bit psychic and that’s how the pair evaded the police’s best-laid traps so consistently. I could tell you how she wrote in a poem “To few it’ll be grief/To the law a relief/But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.” I could tell you how she didn’t smoke cigars, and was adamant that the press should stop claiming she did. I could tell you all these things, but in the end, it doesn’t change who she was.
Bonnie Parker was a young woman who loved, as she said “but unwisely.” she loved for better or worse, and aided in some pretty terrible things because she believed in that love and the man that was her beloved. she was a kid, young and not very bright in some respects
WOW THAT STOPPED BEING FUNNY
OKAY SO THE MEDIA LOVES BONNIE AND CLYDE AND THE ONLY THING THEY LOVE MORE IS HATING ON BONNIE
“Bonnie was an evil harlot homicidal bitch”
“Clyde was the psychic one and he let the ambush happen as a ~noble sacrifice~ to rid the world of Bonnie’s senseless, irredeemable evil” (I’m looking at you here History Channel miniseries)
um. excuse me, but she never actually pulled the trigger here. are you going to talk about her trying to get a pony for her niece and nephew? are you going to talk about the fact that she and Clyde prayed regularly and she died wearing a cross necklace? are you going to talk about the fact that THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO FUTURE FOR THEM BUT A LIFE OF ABJECT POVERTY IN THE DALLAS SLUMS AND THAT MAY- JUST MAY -HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE WHOLE ROBBERY THING?
are you going to talk about anything that doesn’t fit your nice, easily-packaged “devil’s whore” character?
the most accurate fictionalization of Bonnie’s story to date, the Broadway musical Bonnie and Clyde, was critically panned for not being “glamorous enough” or “interesting enough.” and if that’s not cruel irony, I don’t know what is
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