Me. Myself and I.

 To say that Monroe was born on the wrong side of the tracks is an understatement. She spent her childhood moving in and out of foster homes in Los Angeles, living for a few snatched years with the mother who had reclaimed her before being dragged off, watched by her daughter, to a mental home. When Monroe was sent to an orphanage at the age of nine, she protested she was no orphan, since her mother was still alive, as she would go on insisting until the end of her own life. The story has been told many times, not least by Monroe herself; some of the details have been contested, but it is mostly accepted as true. Paradoxically, however, it is the truth of the story that has allowed it to become part of her façade – the rags to riches tale which makes her the embodiment of the American dream. For Monroe, this story was no romance. She was far more precise. ‘The lack of any consistent love and caring. A mistrust and fear of the world was the result. There were no benefits except what it could teach me about the basic needs of the young, the sick and the weak,’ she observed in the 1962 notes: ‘I have great feeling for all the persecuted ones in the world.’ [x]