Role of Women in The Great Gatsby
The deep-seated conservative quietism that circumscribed Fitzgerald's temperament, for all his vaunted brawls and flamboyant public misdemeanors, takes also one other and subtler form of nostalgia and retreat than those proclaimed in his nostrums: one evident in his presentation of women. We have seen that Fitzgerald's metaphysics of defeat stipulates high political gloom; and, despite some sharp ambivalence toward the elite, we shall see that his perspective on the underclass is marked by a fearful alienation. In these tense conditions, Fitzgerald opts (one might say opts out) for the solace of a purely individualist gratification.
Although at one level the "fast" life of his heady, competitive success culture is elating (Nick enjoys "the racy, adventurous feel of [New York] at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye" [57]), the cumulative strain is telling. "It was borrowed time," Fitzgerald later wrote, "the whole upper tenth of a nation living with the insouciance of grand dukes and the casualness of chorus girls. . . . A classmate killed his wife and himself on Long Island, another tumbled 'accidentally' from a skyscraper in Philadelphia, another purposefully from a skyscraper in New York. One was killed in a speak-easy in Chicago; another was beaten to death in a speak-easy in New York and crawled home to the Princeton Club to die. . . . [M]oreover these things happened not during the depression but during the boom" ("Echoes" 18, 16). Cold shadows of violence flicker over the names of the partygoers on the blue lawns: "Civet, who was drowned last summer[,] . . . Edgar Beaver, whose hair they say turned cott...
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...e condition of blissful inaction, self-loss in ease and union. In the last analysis, then, woman haunts the novel as the lost and craved womb: refuge from economic injustice and political tension, solace of quietistic individualism. Ascending from the seductive to the maternal, she confers sublimity upon opting out.
Works Cited
Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978.
Raleigh, John Henry. "F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby." Mizener 99-103.
Sklar, Robert. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Last Laocoon. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1967.
Spindler, Michael. American Literature and Social Change. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983.
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Literature. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, xi-xxiv. Print.
Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
...e views of his elders pushed down him made it a struggle growing up in the small town.
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
... did not stop it, it was the people with no weapons but their hands. It was the people, whom the government should have been protecting and did not.
...ald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
Gidmark, Jill B. “F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Cycolpedia Of World Authors, Fourth Revised Edition (2003): 1-2. Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
Certain authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, wanted to reflect the horrors that the world had experienced not a decade ago. In 1914, one of the most destructive and pointless wars in history plagued the world: World War I. This war destroyed a whole generation of young men, something one would refer to as the “Lost Generation”. Modernism was a time that allowed the barbarity of the war to simmer down and eventually, disappear altogether. One such author that thrived in this period was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young poet and author who considered himself the best of his time. One could say that this self-absorption was what fueled his drive to be the most famous modernist the world had seen. As The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean mentions in her literary summary of Fitzgerald’s works, “I didn’t know till fifteen that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty” (Orlean xi). One of the key factors that influenced and shaped Fitzgerald’s writing was World War I, with one of his most famous novels, This Side Of Paradise, being published directly after the war in 1920. Yet his most famous writing was the book, The Great Gatsby, a novel about striving to achieve the American dream, except finding out when succeeding that this dream was not a desire at all. Fitzgerald himself lived a life full of partying and traveling the world. According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, “In the 1920’s and 1930’s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally equally famous as a writer and as a celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920’s he stood for all-night partying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the 1930’s he stood for the gloomy aftermath of excess” (Baym 2124). A fur...
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s consideration of gender roles throughout The Great Gatsby reflect the sheer unbalance between the value of men and women in traditional households. Throughout the novel women are seen living a life controlled by men, and accepting their loss of independence for the materialistic values of life. Women follow the social code of the 1920’s to seem ladylike, leading them to succumb to uniform and object like personas. Scenes of blatant sexism are the strongest representation of the gender gap and the loss of morals throughout the 1920’s.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most compelling twentieth century writers, (Curnutt, 2004). The year 1925 marks the year of the publication of Fitzgerald’s most credited novel, The Great Gatsby (Bruccoli, 1985). With its critiques of materialism, love and the American Dream (Berman, 1996), this dramatic idyllic novel, (Harvey, 1957), although poorly received at first, is now highly regarded as Fitzgerald’s finest work (Rohrkemper, 1985) and is his publisher, Scribner 's most popular title, (Donahue, 2013). The novel achieved it’s status as one of the most influential novels in American history around the nineteen fifties and sixties, over ten years after Fitzgerald 's passing, (Ibid, 1985)
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is seen as one of the greatest American writers, admired by his contemparies and by modern audiences of today. Fitzgerald was very much in tune with the early twentieth century American culture. He is credited with capturing the ‘Jazz Age’, which he described as “a generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken”. Fitzgerald observed the culture around him with a critical eye. Despite being able to depict America like few others could, many see Fitzgerald’s writing as an indictment on its values.
It seems that all that we know about Daisy Buchanan comes through Nick. Most readers see her as superficial, shallow and foolish but this outward appearance is Daisys attempt to conceal how she really feels. Nick tells the reader that Daisy purposely tries to avoid her true feelings because she knows about the severe pain that goes along with facing them.