Introduction
In the summer of 1968, Valerie Solanas made a dramatic entrance into Andy Warhol’s sixth-floor office at 33 Union Square West, armed with two guns and harbouring a deep-seated grudge. Warhol was wounded so badly that it was a miracle he survived. The bullet struck his abdomen and impacted the vital organs. But at that moment, the assassin went outside and eventually surrendered herself to the police. What followed tainted her legacy until her death, she was reduced to a grudge-holding radical feminist who is till date studied in Gender and women studies course. In this article, we shall try to piece together a brief biography of the life of Valerie Solanas and why she shot Andy Warhol.
Early Life of Valerie Solanas
Born on April 9, 1936, in Ventnor City, New Jersey, on the Atlantic City boardwalk, Valerie Jean Solanas was the second of two daughters born to bartender Louis Solanas and dental assistant Dorothy Biondo. When Valerie was 4 years old, her parents got divorced in 1947 and both got married again. Louis, her father, who drank a lot, molested her. She was a drama queen in the classroom; she once attacked a nun at Holy Cross Academy. She had given birth to two children by the time she was fifteen. In the mid-50s, she enrolled in the University of Maryland, College Park, and wrote incessantly about the rampant sexism that existed within the campus in the local school newspaper. She started her master’s degree in the University of Minnesota but soon dropped out and hitchhiked around the country and ended up in New York, Manhattan. In the city, Solanas had trouble establishing stability.
Solana’s SCUM Manifesto and Andy Warhol’s Connection
Solanas finished writing “The SCUM Manifesto,” her most well-known book, in 1967. As Solanas ran her show “Up your ass” attended SCUM meetings and distributed her manifesto, she became well-known throughout New York. It was around this time that she was introduced to Andy Warhol and asked him to produce her play. However, Warhol declined to produce Up Your Ass. He misplaced his play copy, which angered Solanas. Still, he gave her a part in I, a Man, his 1967 production. She portrayed herself, as playfully snubbing a male character’s attempts on a sexual level. The rejections she faced from Warhol and subsequently Maurice Girodias, a publisher who was potentially interested in her work led her to enter the Factory one day and take that fateful shot at Andy Warhol.
Retaliation by the Radical Feminists and her Final Years
Many radical feminists came to Solanas’s defense, stating that she simply retaliated against ‘The Man’, however, Solanas excused herself from all feminists and people slowly due to the growing disorder within her which was paranoid schizophrenia. As a result of her action, Solanas was charged with attempted murder, assault, and possession of a dangerous weapon during her trial.
After being judged incapable of standing trial, she was taken to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens for a mental health assessment, where she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After she spent months in psychiatric facilities, she was released again. However, she threatened Andy Warhol again post her release and was held again at the Women’s House of Detention in Manhattan, then at Bellevue Hospital, before being sentenced to three years in prison in June.
Once she got out, she worked as an editor for Majority Report: The Women’s Liberation Newsletter, a biweekly feminist publication. However, During her final years, she resided in a solitary welfare hotel room in San Francisco, where she passed away in 1988, without company. The cause of her death was cited as Pneumonia and her name was even incorrectly spelled in the police’s report.
Solanas has sparked the interest of many post her demise, inspiring fictional episodes in cult TV series such as an episode of “American Horror Story: Cult,” where she is played by Lena Dunham. There were novels, and biographies written on her life, within which one truly gets to know about the life and work of Valerie Solanas. However, the feminist revolutionary largely remained overlooked whilst alive or dead.
Feture Image:Photograph from Bettmann / Getty
