Lee Miller

Lee Miller is the subject of the biography. She was born Elizabeth Miller in April of 1907. Her parents were Theodore and Florence Miller and she had an older brother, John, and a younger brother, Erik. The Miller children grew up on “a small farm of 165 acres outside of Poughkeepsie on the Albany road” and referred to as Kingwood Park throughout the biography (9). From a young age, Lee had an adventurous and rebellious spirit, and displayed a ready disinterest in abiding by cultural expectations of femininity. When Lee was seven years old, she was “the victim of a sexual molestation with savage consequences” (12). Not long later her first love died. Because of these traumatic experiences, Penrose holds that Lee’s parents became more lenient with her and “indulged her shamelessly” (12). Throughout her adolescence and young adulthood, Lee pushed boundaries at home and school. When she was 18, she...