Blonde: A Novel

Norma Jeane has never believed she deserved to live. She gets the name of a man who may be her father. She drives up to his community, but she is turned away by security.

Otto wants to photograph Norma Jeane in the nude, but she has always resisted. Now she needs the money, and he relishes in her agreement, as many women swear that they would never allow nude photos, but they always find the need to. Norma Jeane thinks: “I was not a tramp or a slut. Yet there was the wish to perceive me that way. For I could not be sold any other way I guess. And I saw that I must be sold. For then I would be desired, and I would be loved” (225). After the photos are taken, Cass Chaplin comes out from where he was hiding in the studio.

She believes she saw Cass hanging on the wall of her mother’s apartment, and he tells her that they are familiar, as they were both abandoned by their mothers and fathers. He promises to love her “as a brother. As a twin” (237).