Abstract

This paper examines adaptations of Her First Elopement (1920) and Are Parents People? (1925), based on novellas by Alice Duer Miller, in order to explore how both the underlying texts and the films derived from them explore the heroines’ desire for autonomy, which is achieved through their strategic cultivation and control of scandal. While the films met with widely contrasting receptions, their exploitation of Miller’s interest in scandal that gratifies rather than punishes the heroine suggests a complex relationship between a best-selling female author and the film industry in the first half of the 1920s.