HISTORICAL REALITY AND ILLUSION IN
F, SCOTT FITZGERALD*S FICTION
by
JUNE ELLEN LACKEY, B,A,
A THESIS
IN
ENGLISH
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Technological College
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved
May, 1966
20Z
\9U
L^oiro.3.
I am deeply indebted to Dr. E. A, Gillis for his direction
and helpful criticism of this thesis.
ii
CONTENTS
PREFACE
iv
I, THE JAZZ AGE
1
II. MORALS AND MANNERS
III, THE LOVE OF MONEY
IV, THE FLAPPER
V, THE SENSE OF TRAGEDY
18
30
48
57
CONCLUSION
67
NOTES
69
BIBLIOGRAPHY
79
PREFACE
Since the 1920»s in America were characterized by broad and
drastic change, a study of American literature of the decade demands a
careful consideration of the history of the times. This is especially
needful, for the literature of a period often furnishes historians
with data by i^ich they make their evaluations of any given era.
Literature as an index to an age is vividly seen in the works of F.
Scott Fitzgerald.
Spokesmen in many fields of endeavor, from fashion
to sociology, have chosen Fitzgerald's fiction as a basis for scrutinizing American history of the third decade of the twentieth century.
But to discover the degree which the history of the Jazz Age and the
picture of life presented in Fitzgerald's writings are synonymous
requires cumulative evidence.
The purpose of this thesis is to furnish such evidence by
examining and evaluating the accuracy with which Fitzgerald's work
reflects his age, that is, the degree of the reality and illusion
of histoiy in his works. Consideration of the history of the time
will be limited, first, primarily to the cultural history of the
period, and, second, to those facets of the period which are dealt
with in the principal themes of Fitzgerald's fiction,
Fitzgerald declares that the one duty of a sincere writer is
to set down life as he sees it as gracefully as he knows how. If
he successfully performed this task, we should readily accept the
confirmation of the press obituaries that he was "the historian of
the Jazz Age."
John K. Hutchens concedes that the statement is true,
but that it is absurdly far from being the whole truth.
The final question at issue is whether Fitzgerald, credited by
Arthur Mizener with having one of the finest imaginations of our times,
accurately reflected in his fiction the life during the period or
actually created an illusion of that life, a legend which has frequently been accepted as historical truth.
CHAPTER I
THE JAZZ AGE
According to Fitzgerald, the Jazz Age began in May, 1919f
with the I^y Day riots and plummeted to its doom in October, 1929*
Historians have stated it could not have had such a definite beginning, but the great crash of the stock market on Black Friday,
October 29, 1929t did bring it to a sudden end. However, Marvin
Barrett says:
"Never did a decade form itself so quickly or
self-consciously into an Age as did the Roaring Twenties, the Golden
Decade."'
This was a strange period in history—a time when millions
"began their fretful milling."^ It was a time whose courses, trends,
and movements are difficult to analyze into usual patterns. It was
"a mordant, light-hearted, serious-minded, complex and seminal time."3
Barrett describes it further:
"It was an interesting, colorful, be-
wildering, disagreeable time, i^en retreat into a cozy past was cut
off, and ahead, the angle of slope down which the world was sliding ,,^_
grew even dizzier."
And he adds, "Living them was an odd experience."^ /
The Twenties, called by many names—The I'fe.d Decade, The End of
Innocence, The Golden Age, The New Society, Indian Summer of the Old
Order, Roaring Twenties, Botched Civilization, and The Jazz Age, have
often been discussed as—"a sort of m.usical comedy peopled by John
Held, Jr. characters playing Mah Jong while resting up between
sex-and-gin bouts. The bouts took place all right. It was a
feverish time."5
The listing of factors contributing to these de-
scriptive titles of the age as well as to its development has not been
an easy task for the writers of history. Rapid technological change,
the failure of Wilson's idealism, urbanization, the shock of the war,
and the lack of a charted future are among the many causes suggested
for the resTJilting revolt against the past. Barrett describes the
situation as follows:
With the demands of idealism swept under the green baize, m.th. (
self-sacrifice and heroism abandoned at the moment vjhen they f
could have been most spectacularly put to use, the Years
Between addressed themselves to the pleasures of the body and
the imagination.^
In a period distinguished by change, perhaps the most notable
change was in the attitude of the American people toward morals. An
open revolt against the Puritannical code of the American conscience
became evident soon after the close of V/orld War I. As one historian
has stated it, people were tired:
tired of noble purposes, of life-
less religion, of Pollyanna parties.7
The War had contributed to the
enotional rebellion. Many of the returning young men were disillusioned by the kind of war it had been. In France, faced with the ^
possibility of death and little else, the men had seen laxity of sex
morals which they had not dreamed of in the small towns back home.
Prostitution had followed the flag.° American girls, as nurses and
other vrar workers, vrere influenced by the continental standards or the
lack of them. Conformity to authority thousands of miles distant was
deemed unnecessary.
Prior to America's entry into the War, the moral
standards had been set principally by the family, the local church, or
perhaps the outstanding families in the small town.
The authority of
the family was most often sufficient and final in the enforcement of
these moral standards. Social activity was largely limited to the
circumference of the home and church, and on special holidays to a
"whole town" celebration.
H. L. Mencken wrote of this time that over
the lives of men and women was the "fear that someone, somewhere, may
be happy."9
The new society of urban life, with new inventions—particularly
of the automobile—and industrialization, offered employment to the
youth of the small town.
The glamor and bright lights of the city
proved a powerful magnet for rural young people. An emphasis was
placed on advanced formal education and young people left the shelter
of home to attend school. The divisions of social strata were
becoming fluid.
Even the humor of the country was different. "De-
parting suddenly from the old homespun American tradition, the
Twenties' humor was usually insulting or at least supercilious and \
almost always consciously urbane.
"Restraint" and "decorum" |
were words which had become outdated and unpopular.
Hie influence of
religion on moral standards appeared insignificant.
It was said that
there wasn't enough religion left to get up a good church fight.''''
The first years of moral revolution were years of "almost pathological
unrest and mental panic,"'^ The stimulated emotions craved speed,^
excitement, and passion. As older Americans watched the younger
generation experiment in these fields, some of the oldsters decided
to try it for themselves. According to Hutchens—"the older generation—after exercising its historic right to denounce the loose ways
of the younger—crashed the party."^3 What has been described as a
"World-Series week spirit"—a contagion of delighted concern over
things that were exciting but didn't matter profoundly—was dominant.''^
Prohibition only seemed to make the speak-easy and the hip flask more
popular. Even "nice" girls were seen smoking cigarettes. One might
hear stories of all-night joy-rides and of drunks at well-chaperoned
parties.
The latest fads in dancing drew criticism from moralists.
The Catholic Telegraph stated:
The music is sensuous, the embracing of partners—the female
only half dressed—is absolutely indecent; and the motions—
they are such as may not be described, with any respect for
propriety, in a family newspaper. Suffice it to say that
there are certain houses appropriate for such dances; but those
houses have been closed by law, -^
Everyone wanted to be considered "wild," and one of the few entirely
safe generalizations about the Twenties that can be made is that )
16
they had an aversion to dullness.
The young ladies of the era appeared to out-do the young men in
efforts to gain moral freedom.
The campaign gave particular attention
to mode of dress.
In July, 1920, a fashion writer reported that the
American woman had lifted her skirts far beyond any modest limitation.
This meant that hems were nine inches from the floor and,
despite all predictions, continued to climb.
The flappers, bold
and unconventional, were alone for only a short while in wearingthin dresses, short-sleeved and occasionally (in the evening)
sleeveless; some of the wilder young things rolled their
stockings below their knees, revealing to the shocxved eyes
of virtue a fleeting glance of shin-bones and knee-cap; and
many of them were visibly using cosmetics,^'
In spite of nationwide cries of shock and horror, t h e —
Beaded, fringed, sequined, spangled, shot with gold and silver, the waistiess, bustless, hipless parrallelegram persisted. ^^
The materials used in clothing also gave cause for alarm.
Lingerie and hosiery industries discarded the heavy dark cottons
and wools for the light weight, flesh-colored rayons and silks.
The vogue of rouge and lipstick spread quickly from city to village.
The flapper bobbed her hair and dyed it raven black, and
the vogue soon became the vogue of middle-aged ladies across the
nation.
Written were bent on freedom , , . the quest of slenderness,
the flattening of the breasts, the vogue of short skirts
(even when short skirts still suggested the appearance of
a little girl), the juvenile effect of the long waist,^^
Indications were that the women of the day had become drunk at
the fountain of youth:
All were signs that, consciously or unconsciously, the women of
this decade worshiped not merely youth, but unripened youth:
they wanted to b e — o r thought men wanted them to be—men's
casual and light-hearted companions; not broad-hipped mothers
of the race, but irresponsible playmates.
The liberated woman was saying to the liberated man:
'You are tired and disillusioned, you do not want the cares of
a family or the companionship of mature wisdom, you want ex^
citing play, you want the thrills of sex without their fruition, and I will givepthem to you.' And to herself she added,
'But I will be free.'
Soon the limitation of "men only" at the bars gave way to the speak©g^sy, which catered to both men and women.
The night club and the
cocktail party were introduced to American society.
These trends
established a change in the symbolic ideal of American womanhood.
The traditional concepts of love and marriage were cast aside
as "Americans in the 1920's became obsessed with the subject of\
sex,"^^ A few American intellectuals had acclaimed Freudian
theory, and the average layman read only enough to convince himself that he had an understanding of it,
used to justify sexual freedom.
were replaced by libido,
Freudian principles were
Virtues of chastity and fidelity
Proponents of equality for women in-
cluded "the right, equally shared by men and women to free par23
ticipation in sex experience,"
Moral reasons for any prohibi-
tions in sexual life before or after marriage ceased to exist,
A mutual consent divorce, if there were no children, was proposed
by Judge Lindsay in I927. Although the proposal did not become
law, it was notable as a suggestion which would not have been considered by the previous generation.
The divorce rate cliiribed
steadily even without the suggested legal changes. The result of
these facts was that, in spite of the outward display of tolerance,
it was difficult for men and women, who had been trained from
childhood to cherish sexual purity, to be broad-minded if their
mates were expressing sexual freedom.
The possession of happi-
ness was not always found in the pursuit of sex.
Independence of women was also ejqpressed by increased numbers of women workers in offices and industry. With a job, women
co\ild "live their own lives." Authority of parents or of husband
was not binding on the working woman. If unmarried, it was not
necessary to stay in the small town and wait until the right man
came along.
The young lady could go to the city, live in an apart-
ment, work in an office, be free, and still be a Vlady," Married
working women did not feel tied down by household drudgery but
were free to enjoy the fellowship of adults and the power of the
paycheck. Under these circumstances, the feeling of economic independence on the part of the working wife convinced the husband
of his dispensability. In a book published in 1922, H. L, Mencken
commented:
At the present time ;>romen vacillate somewhat absurdly between
two schemes of life, the old and the new , , . they are in
8
revolt against the immemorial conventions. The result is a gen.
eral unrest, with many symptoms of extravagant and unintelligent revolt. 2^
To these flailing, frightened masses of both men and women
came the motion picture, the advent of which was like an opiate.
Barrett states:
"To a generation without a future, cut off from
the faiths of the past, Hollytrood unreality was realer than what
they saw around them." ^ It was glamor that Hollywood produced and
for the admission price of 25^ one could lose himself in the illusions of the current movie. The world of illusion could be "re-established each night on fifty thousand silver screens."
The ti-
tles of the movies were signs of the times: Restless Souls; Man,
Woman and Sin; The Flapper; Heart of a Siren; The Sheik; The Son of
the Sheik; The Dane in' Fool; Vfnat's Your Hurr^; J2i£ Eap:le; Souls for
Sale; and Madame Sphinx, The heroes and heroines of the nation
were the Hollywood stars. If they flickered or faded, it did not
matter. Others irauld rise to take their places. The showplaces
of America were the gaudy, over-done "homes" of the Hollyvrood
crowd. Marion Davies had a ninety-room beach cottage at Santa
Monica with t\io swimming pools, three dining rooms, a gold ceilinged drawing room, and a private theater—all of this ^•n.th a 2^,000acre front-yard.
It tended to be "less formal" than Mary Pick-
ford's estate at Pickfair where royalty and the elite came to dine
and "marvel at Llary Pickford's dynamic subjugation of life," as
9
Fitzgerald s t a t e d ,
places.)
(He and Zelda were welcome v i s i t o r s a t both
As quoted by B a r r e t t , Leo Rosten comments of Hollyvrood's
4
manners and mores:
"Probably never in history has so immature a
\
group been accorded such luster, such sanctions, and such incomes."^7,'
For those who could afford it, or could pretend they could,
visiting the Continent became a favorite pastime, Paris and the
Riviera were the two places most frequented, Barrett has called
Paris and Hollywood the "twin capitals" of the era. He dubbed
them the "City of Light" and the "City of Flickering Shadows," respectively:
For those subjected to the eddies and cross-currents of Babbitt ry and Boom, of ranpant materialism and craven procrastination, they seemed legitimate havens. For a few brief years
they remained Eldorados for the morally dispossessed,^^
Although Fitzgerald described those who visited Paris as possessing
"the human value of Pekinese, bivalves, cretins, goats," Barrett
claims:
"Nor was it all frivolity and self-delusion.
The fas-
tidious of the TTOrld were looking now to Paris for inspiration and
detraction."^9
Gertrude Stein provided one of the principal centers
of entertainment for those staying at the Ritz, and although she
called them "the lost generation," she welcomed the cortege of
would-be writers, artists, and musicians to her train of followers.
Many of them became bored (it seemed an easy thing to do at this
time) and tried the Riviera. According to Fitzgerald's contemporary report:
"They all just slip down through Europe like nails
10
in a sack until they stick out of it a little into the Mediterranean
Sea."30
ilrresponsibility characterized the American of the age at home
or abroad.
Yet, "while cultivating the attitude of indifference,
31
the Twenties grew excited easily."^
The impact of the forces of
disillusionment, the new freedom of women, prohibition, Freud's
doctrine of sex, the automobile, moving pictures, and the sex and
confession magazines, was greater than any set of outworn social
mores co\ild withstand.
Changing with moral idealism was the American philosophy toward the accumulation of wealth. With the arrival of such marvelous devices as the radio, the moving picture, the automobile, the
telephone, the sewing machine, and many other labor-saving, healthpreserving, beautifying contraptions that could be mass-produced,
the making of money became the most important purpose in life.
The majority of American citizens felt that the War had deprived
them of material possessions as well as certain pleasures.
were now to be obtained.
These
A booming economy helped to make these
dreams materialize.
But prosperity held perils of its own. It invested enormous
political and social power in a business class with little
tradition of social leadership. . . . It made money the measure of man.32
The advent of the salesman, the advertising agency, and the
11
installment plan persuaded the average man to "a broad misunderstanding of right methods—to say nothing of profligacy—in the use
of the family income,"33
This opinion, expressed by Pennsylvania
bankers, was an unheeded warning.
As the average man became more
and more eager to make money, his concern for others decreased.
resulted in a form of moral decadence.
This
Drama critic George Jean
Nathan's confession is pertinent:
The great problems of the world—social, political, economic
and theological—do not concern me in the slightest. If all
the Armenians were to be killed tomorrow and if half of Russia
were to starve to death the day after, it would not matter to
me in the least. What concerns me alone is myself, and the
interests of a few close friends. For all I care the rest of
the world may go to hell at today's sunset.-^^
The novelist Joseph Hergesheimer stated that sending money for the
relief of starving children abroad was one of the least engaging
ways in which it could be spent. Mencken observed once, that if he
were convinced of anything, it was "that Doing Good is in bad taste. "35
In the frenzy to get as much money as quickly as possible, people of
all walks of life tried the new get-rich-quick method of speculating
with common stocks.
Prices soared and unlimited wealth appeared
possible.
All one had to do was to buy and grow rich. Leading men of the
nation assured the people that it was so. A 'new era' had
dawned in which all were to have money and poverty was to be
abolished. As the decade drew toward its end, America was
living in the fantastic dreams oi opium or delirium,-^
Will Rogers had prophesied:
"You give the country four more years of
12
this Unparalleled Prosperity and they ;^11 be so tired of having
everything they want that it will be a pleasure to get poor again.37
An impending sense of disaster was prevalent, according to the
historians, but the prophets of doom were ridiculed or cast aside. If
the people needed reassurance, they only needed to listen to their
leaders in government. Prosperity was here to stay, the public was
assured. And, if individual fears increased, they were camouflaged
with a fa5ade of gaiety. Apathy was the fashion of the day.
Looked back upon from the late fall of 1929, a good deal that
was still vivid in memory did appear to be sinister or silly—
Teapot Dome scandals, acceptance of corruption, flagpole sitters.
Scopes Trial, Dr, Cou^ and his formula for self-improvement
("day by day in every way I am getting better and better,"),
the great confidence game known as the Florida Boom, intellectual forums on the new national institution called the petting
party, de-bunking of traditional heroes, bobbed hair, dancing
marathons.38
In discussing Middletoxm, a sociological study of small town life
during the Twenties made by Robert and Helen Lynd, Donald Sheehan notes:
the people of Middletown shared only a small amount of the
prosperity and participated little in the desperate pursuit of
happiness , . , Theirs was not the insecurity ivhich accompanied
speculation in submerged Florida real estate but that which comes
from the chilling fear of unemployment,-^°
The gay night life of the Twenties was not a part of their daily
existence for
"They could hardly have attended many all-night
drinking parties, since most of them were on the way to work by seven
o'clock in the morning."^
declares:
Commenting on Sheehan's remarks, Allen
"Instead of presenting a fond reminiscence of the days of
13
easy profits, he reveals the essential shallowness and the sense of
insecurity which characterized many of the people who shared in those
profits."^1
Although the Lynd's views are somevjhat dissimilar from
Allen's, they are not contradictory.
The focus is merely different,
Allen presents the history as "a broad panorama from New York to
Florida and from the Waldorf-Astoria to Senate hearing committees,"^2
The Lynds, on the other hand, being sociologists, concentrate their
intensive study on a small area, and conclude that even the small to\-m
citizen felt the desire and pressure for things which money could buy,
Allen notes:
One of the most conspicuous results of prosperity was the conquest of the whole country by urban tastes and urban dress and
the urban way of living. . . . the time had come when workingmen ox-med second-hand Buicks.^3
Ultimately, a rude awakening was to await the American people in
\
their delirious pursuit of happiness, and the inevitable crash sid-ftly ^
came. Yet, strangely, the admiration which the average man had felt
for money continued to be maintained, even during the dark depression
days; and it actually increased, despite the total loss of his dream
of -abounding X'jealth. Materialism was king,
/ The concensus of opinion of literary historians of the period
seems to be that Fitzgerald wrote honestly of the era. His contemporaries may not have admired him whole-heartedly.
They may have
deplored his waste of talent and lack of concentrated effort. They
may have recognized that his characters \-jere not always "true to
character." Yet most of them regarded him as the spokesman for the
rebellious youth of the nation. /
Glenway Wescott called him:
One little man i-jith eyes really ;d.tnessing; objective in all he
uttered, even about himself in a subjective slump; arrogant in
just orie connection, for one purpose only, to make his meaning
clear.^^
Wescott also proclaimed This Side of Paradise as a novel which
"haunted the decade like a song,"
In speaking of Fitzgerald before
The Great Gatsby was published, Paul Rosenfeld declares:
Not a contemporary American senses as thoroughly in every fiber
the tempo of privileged post-adolescent America, Of that life,
in all its hardness and equally curious softness, its external
clatter, movement and boldness, he is a part; , , . and what he
writes reflects the environment not so much in its superficial
aspects as in its pitch and beat. He knows how talk sounds, how
the dances feel, how the crap-games look. Unimportant detail
shows how perfect the unconscious attunement.
He continues in his praise of Fitzgerald's capture of the spirit of
the time:
Not another has gotten flashes from the psyches of the golden
young intimate as those Wnich amaze throughout The Beautiful and
Damned. And not another has fixed as mercilessly the quality of
brutishness, of dull indirection and degraded sensibility running through American life of the hour,^
Critical acclaim after his death collaborated Wescott's observations,^
^ Other clues to the authentic portrayal of the times of which an
author writes may often be discovered by examining his sources,
Fitzgerald simplifies this search by his admissions in his letters and
notes of certain autobiographical and biographical references in his
fiction. In the Basil stories, Fitzgerald makes use of numerous
boyhood happenings which he recorded with exactitude in a notebook
called his "Thoughtoook,"
Basil's "Book of Scandal,"
In the stories Fitzgerald's book becomes
l^pical of the entries is an incident
which occurred to Fitzgerald at I-Iiss Nardon's Academy in Buffalo, an
incident that appears in the account of Basil's life at school. Scott
advised his teacher that Central America did not have a capital city.
His teacher, determined that Mexico City should be the capital of
Central America, rebuffed the suggestion, only to have Fitzgerald's
rejoinder:
"There's no use teaching us wrong." Within minutes Scott
had received the principal's unjust but undivided attention,^7 [(£))
'^Basil's brief and unprofitable employment at the Great Northern is
the relation of an actual experience of Fitzgerald at the Northern
Pacific carbarn in St. Paul, even to the loss of his new four dollar
overalls.^^
"A Night at the Fair" is based on notes in Fitzgerald's
ledger, which tell of his first significant notice of the opposite
sex.
In referring to other publications, Fitzgerald acknowledges in
a letter to Maxwell Perkins that "The Sensible Thing" is a "(story
about Zelda and me, all true),"^9
in a letter to Shane Leslie, he
asserts that he married the Rosalind of the novel This Side of
Paradise.^'^ In another letter to Leslie, Fitzgerald admits that the
description of Monsignor Fay's funeral in This Side of Paradise was
taken entirely from Leslie's own letter,^'
The description of
/16
a walk through a cemetery by Sally Carrol Happer and Harry Bellamy
in "The Ice Palace" is depictive of a walk Fitzgerald and Zelda
themselves made on one of his Montgomery visits before their marriage, ^2
The I-Ir,-In-aiid-Mr,-Out episode of "May Day" was based on
a viild party in May, 19191 ^^ich Porter Gillespie, a college friend,
and Fitzgerald carried on until morning at DeLmonico's,
"Well into
the next morning they breakfasted on shredded wheat and champagne,
carrying the empty bottles carefully out of the hotel and smashing
them on the curb for the benefit of the churchgoers along Fifth
Avenue."53
A visit by Fitzgerald to White Sulphur Springs, Itontana,
in the summer of 1915* at the ranch of a Princeton friend. Sap
(13)
Donahoe, provided the setting of "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,"5^
In Fitzgerald's second novel. The Beautiful and Damned, the parties
given by its principal characters "occur in a cottage in Connecticut
like the one the Fitzgeralds rented in Westport in May, 1920."55
The practice of using characters in his fiction based on friends
and acquaintances often made his friends uncomfortable victiins. For
a period of three years, 1926 to 1929t at Antibes, Fitzgerald studied
the Gerald Murphys, who were to be reincarnated as the Dick Divers
in Tender l£ the Night,
"This analysis got to be too much for the
Murphys, for when Fitzgerald was drinking he did not hesitate to give
them the benefit of it,"5D
Fitzgerald, in a letter to Sara Murphy
dated August 15, 1935, niore than a year after the publication of
Tender Is the Night, gives reasons for his use of her as a model and
confesses:
"I used you again and again in Tender,"57 Ginevra King,
his first love, became Judy Jones in "Winter Dreams" and was "to
make the ideal girl of his generation" in Fitzgerald's fiction,
Ginevra is characterized as Josephine Perry in a series of later
stories,5^ Dick Diver's memories of his father are derived from
Fitzgerald's memories of his father and their times together—going
for the papers together, the "liar" argument, and the Civil War
stories.59
Por Fitzgerald's incompleted novel. The Last Tycoon.
(H,
Irving Thalberg was the model for Stahr,^^^ Mizener states that, in
I
t I
1
\
t
a
1 1
general, "back of every other character in the book, • , • lay
•
1
t
Fitzgerald's acute observation of a real person 1.61
«
«
y
CHAPTER II
MORALS AND MAIII^RS
As a young author living during the greatest change in moral
standards in the history of a modem nation, Fitzgerald could not
easily ignore in his fiction the American revolt against Puritannical
purity and Victorian tradition. As a matter of fact, Fitzgerald has
been credited by Allen with calling the revolution of morals to the
attention of American parents.
"i
1
It was not until F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had hardly graduated
from Princeton and ought to know what his generation x^jere doing,
brought out This Side of Paradise in April, 1920, that fathers
and mothers realized fully what was afoot and how long it had
been going on. Apparently the "petting party" had been current
as early as I916, and was now widely established as an indoor
sport.°2
Perosa proclaims Fitzgerald as "the mouthpiece or the singer of the
jazz age" and has given him the title of its "lucid accuser," "He
was well aware of its equivocal dangers, of its irresponsible attitudes, and he pitilessly exposed its disastrous consequences,°3
In a study of Fitzgerald's writings, one is sometimes amazed at
the naivete of Fitzgerald's characters when judged from the standpoint of the typical "morality" of the sixties. From this viewpoint,
the deviations from accepted morality which Fitzgerald's early characters exhibit seems rather Puritannical,j Amory Blaine is concerned
with sex but, though he is daring by the standards of 1920, he is
upset by a kiss he has bestowed on Myra:
18
"sudden revulsion seized
1
J
)
•
19
Amory, disgust, loathing for the whole incident. He desired frantically to be away, never to see Myra again, never to kiss any one,"°^
Fitzgerald has endowed Amory with "a puzzled, furtive interest in
sex."^5
Yet, as his temptations come, Amory sees visions represent-
ing evil and death, which cause him to panic and run. This Side of
Paradise is a novel which makes unorthodox mention, for 1920, of
s
•I
•
]
petting and other "revolutionary" behavior.
]
Eating three o"clock, after-dance suppers in impossible cafes,
talking of every side of life with an air half of earnestness,
half of mockery, yet viith a furtive excitement that Amory
considered stood for a real moral let-do;m,^°
The youth of the land and Amory were disauieted, for Amory admits:
]
I
'
"My whole generation is restless,"°7
5
According to Perosa, the novel
expresses the desire for freedom from "bourgeois morality."°°
Alfred
Kazin states that the novel "announced the lost generation."^9
Fitzgerald was criticized severely by many religious groups for
the subject matter of the novel, but Fitzgerald disclaimed any
exaggeration. In a letter to Shane Leslie written in the fall of 1920,
he remarks:
One Catholic magazine, America, had only one prim comment on my
' book "a fair example of our non-Catholic college's output,"
My Lord! Compared to the average Georgetown alumnus Amory is an
uncanonized saint, I think I laundered myself shiny in the
book!70
Writing to Marya Mannes in October, 1925, Fitzgerald reveals that
his ideas regarding the morals of American youth have not changed.
The young people in America are brilliant vrLth second-hand
sophistication inherited from their betters of the war generation.
j
*
20
. . . They are brave, shallow, cynical, impatient, turbulent
and empty.
. . . America is so decadent that its brilliant children are
damned almost before they are bom,7''
From this early glimpse of moral revolt in This Side of Paradise.
Fitzgerald's portrayal of moral decay enlarges in The Beautiful and
Damned. where, it is declared, a vjhole race was "going hedonistic,
deciding on pleasure."72
And Fitzgerald himself describes his new
novel as the stor>' of how Anthony Patch "and his beautiful young xd.fe
are wrecked on the shoals of dissipation,"73
Filled with their own
delusions as to their own worth, the do-nothing couple finds itself
drifting dot^mward from one drunken party to another, to infidelity—
toward what should be an awakening. But, typical of the generation
they represent, neither Anthony nor Gloria display any awareness of
their true degradation and continue, to what should be the climax of
the novel, to live in a dream-world, "damned" but not "beautiful,"
Fitzgerald'q short stories of the period also depict his personal
reactions to the youth of the age. Dolly, who tries every scheme to
catch "The Rich Boy," was—
what is known as "a pretty little thing" but there was a certain
recklessness which rather fascinated me. Her dedication to the
goddess of waste would have been less obvious had she been less
spirited she viould most certainly throw herself away.7^
Another pretty little thing, Marcia of "Head and Shoulders," declares:
"'Ats all life is. Just going around kissing people,"75
In "Babylon Revisited," Charlie Wales has a full realization of
his own loss caused by moral decadence and demonstrates his progress
21
toward moral integrity.
"I heard that you lost a lot in the crash,"
"I did," and he added grimly, "but I lost everything I
wanted in the boom,"
Charlie came to believe in character—"to jump back a whole generation
and truso in character again as the eternally valuable element.
"'I*
Everything else wore out,"76
The wrong-doer in "Dalyrimple Goes Wrong" determinedly makes one
J
moral compromise after another, excusing himself by emphasizing "it
I
was being hard that counted."77
u
Contrariwise, Fitzgerald was to
write in a letter:
t
Your sense of superiority depends upon the picture of yourself as
being good, of being large and generous and all-comprehending,
and just and brave and all-forgiving. But if you are not good,
if you don't preserve a sense of comparative values, those
qualities turn against you—and your love is a mess and your
courage is a slaughter.7°
The absolute amoral attitudes expressed by Braddock Washington and his
family in "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" may be considered an ex-
*
treme example, but Fitzgerald is again accenting his conviction of
i
»
moral deterioration caused by greed,
>,
•3
"May Day" presents a wide contrariety of characters floundering
in varying degrees of moral degradation.
The story was intended to be
the history of "the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated
the Jazz Age,"79
Gordon Sterrett has been ruined by the war and his
own weaknesses, including his proneness to drink, Gordon is told by
Dean, from whom he is trying to borrow money:
"You seem to be sort of
j
bankrupt—morally, as well as financially. "^^N i^j.^^. and emotiohal
bankruptcy, even more than financial bankruptcy, were to Fitzgerald
matters of the gravest concern., In a letter to his daughter, he
tries to convince her of their importance.
Our danger is ^imagining that we have resources—material and
moral—T'jhich we haven't got. One of the reasons I find myself
so consistently in valleys of depression is that every few
years I seem to be climbing uphill to recover from some bankruptcy. Do you know what bankruptcy exactly means? It means
drawing on resources which one does not possess.^'
possess. •
Describing hijnself in The Crack-Up. Fitzgerald uses the quotation
from Matthew 5:13:
J
I
"Ye are the salt of the earth. But if the salt
hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?"
Illustrated also in "May Day" is the destructive power of mob
violence and a description of those left with "nothing."
Examples
are two recently discharged soldiers who are now in the vaguely uncomfortable state before they "sign up" for their next bondage.
They are uncertain, resentful and some^^at ill at ease.^^ The exsoldiers manage to steal, get drunk, take part in a riot, and break
a man's leg; one of them gets himself shoved out a window to his
death and the other is thrown in jail, all within a period of twelve
hours.
Fitzgerald evokes the sympathy of the reader, however, for
such wasted lives and causes one to join him in more harsh censure
of another character in the story, Edith Bradin. Wrapped in her own
arrogance, Edith is disdainful of any indication of lack of sophistication in others to the revelation that outward sophistication is all
11 >
/ 23
she possesses.
The wild parties of the Twenties which were characteristic of
the decade's social setting also appear in Fitzgerald's fiction. Jay
Gatsby is the host to the numerous bizarre festivities in The Great
Gatsby.
The manners of the guests are apparent
"Once there they
were introduced to somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with
an amusement park."33
Extravagance—in food, in music, in entertain-
ment, in number of guests, in length and frequency
describes Gatsby's
parties. Early in the evening, the party is pictured by Fitzgerald
as follows:
The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails
permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter
and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten
on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never
knew each other's names.^^
As the evening progresses—
the fraternal hilarity increased. When the Jazz History of the
World was over, girls were putting their heads on men's shoulders
in a puppyish, convivial way, girls were swooning backward playfully into men's arms, even into groups, knowing that some one
would arrest their falls.--5
Guests were not always eager to leave. Some lingered for days. Others
were removed forcibly by their husbands or wives. There were also
those who found it difficult to leave by automobile because of their
intoxication. One such guest insisted there was "no harm in trying"
to drive his car even though it had lost a wheel and gone into a ditch.
24
The wild parties of the parasitic "friends" of Gatsby constitute
only a glimpse of superficial moral abandonment in comparison with
the lack of morals depicted in the lives of the principal characters
of TJie Great Gatsby,
The novalin, Nick Carraway, is the only major
character who retains his moral integrity.
Nick is attracted by
Jordan Baker, who is "incurably dishonest" and "had begun dealing in
subterfuges when she was very young."
Nick recalls:
"When we were on
a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a borrowed car out in
the rain with the top down, and then lied about it."^^
bored, haughty face and a cool insolent smile.
Jordan has a
There had been a near-
scandal regarding a semi-final round in a big golf tournament vjhen a
caddy accused her of moving her ball from a bad lie. Nick notices that
she avoids shrewd men and is more comfortable in an atmosphere where
no deviation from a moral code would be considered possible.
Tom
Buchanan is contemptible in his arrogance and pride, in addition to
his corruption as demonstrated by his affair ;d.th Myrtle Wilson.
Tom
exhibits physical cruelty and breaks the nose of his mistress with
his open hand.
He manifests cruelty in his speech and by his silence
in the hit-and-run accident, and he feels justified in doing so.
His
marriage to Daisy for a period of five years has been punctuated by
one affair after another,
Tom suggests to Myrtle's distraught hus-
band that Gatsby was probably her lover and the one who ran over her
with the car.
tions.
Gatsby's subsequent murder only fulfills Tor.'s expecta^
Daisy is totally despicable and yet pitiable.
She proves to
(9
have no moral conscience, even to the point of manslaughter, for which
another is allowed to assume the blame. There is no repentance or
remorse shown by either Daisy or Tom, even at Gatsby's death, Gatsby,
who has made his riches by bootlegging and gambling, introduces Nick
to Meyer Wolfsheim with a flourish akin to pride as the gambler who
c
"fixed" the Worldis__3eries in 1919. ^ The world of The Great Gatsby is
a world of moral corruption and carelessness.
Representative of Fitzgerald's later development of the theme of
morality is his novel Tender Is the Nig:ht. The theme revolves about
:
a group of people determined to provide a charming and alluring
j
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*
society but whose depravity eludes the fabrication. Incest, adultery,
5
J
I
homosexuality, and all forms of deceit are practiced with moral
apathy. The glamor of life with A:nericans abroad fades into dismay
and disgustW Miller describes the encompassing power of the novel:
Tender Is the Njgjht tends in its thematic complexity to move
rhythmically both inward and outward, inward to an exploration
in depth of the spiritual malaise of Dick Diver, outward to an
examination in breadth of the sickness of a society and a
culture.^7
In Perosa's analysis of the novel, he states:
, . • the entire novel, in its formulation and general lines,
is an attempt to illustrate and comment on a fundamental dramatic
conflict of the ethical and sociological order, Ta^ single
characters stand for definite social and moral positions and
exemplify in their conflicts a contrast of wider social implications and of larger moral and s^.^bolic significance,^^
Tender Is the Night has a different structural approach to the theme
of morals and manners of Fitzgerald's age than does The Great Gatsby,
26
In The Great Gatsby the principal revelation of the morals of its
characters is through dramatization. In Tender Is the Ilirht. treating
his characters psychologically, Fitzgerald develops an interwoven
/
arrangement of detail that makes the web of moral disorder strong and
binding.
The greater part of the immorality of the novel emerges from
sexual themes. Nicole is a victim of her ovm father's lust and, as
Fitzgerald describes it, the debased but wealthy society of Chicago.
From the psychological clinic, she is released to the care of a husband,
doctor who is "purchased" for the purpose. Nicole and Dick Diver,
linked by marriage and her need for him, appear as the ultimate in
evolution toward sophistication in the personal judgment of Rosemary,
the most innocent of the characters. To her, the effort exerted by
the Divers in attaining a blase manner is not discernible, Rosemary
ias amused that Nicole has made Dick some black lace swim trunks which
require close examination to reveal that they are lined. Overwhelmed
by his charm, Rosemary offers herself to Dick and is refused, Dick
does not seem particularly interested in Rosemary until he hears a
story about Rosemary and another man, and the vision haunts him
thereafter.
Dick finds that he is attracted more and more often to
women—even mental patients, Fitzgerald describes Dick's feelings—
"Yet in the awful majesty of her pain he went out to her unreservedly,
almost sexually,"^9
A flirtatious affair with a daughter of a patient
27
of the clinic precipitates an attempt by Nicole to wreck the car
with the entire family in it. Dick meets Rosemary in Italy—"She
wanted to be taken and she was, and what had begun with a childish
infatuation on a beach was accomplished at last."90 Dick makes a
game of drawing women to him. Even as Dick is leaving Nicole, he
iti
stops for a drink with Mary North, and—"felt the old necessity of
!
convincing her that he was the last man in the world and she was the
j
last woman," He leads Mary on—"His glance fell soft and kind upon
hers, suggesting an emotion underneath; their glances married suddenly,
bedded, strained together."91
Dick disappears from sight but one of
I
ii
K
'I
the last things the reader hears is that "he became entangled with a
girl who worked in a grocery store."^2 Nicole, in her struggle to
find a new life for herself, drains much of the strength from Dick,
but cannot continue as his wife vjhen she feels she no longer needs him.
Her affair with the crude Tony Barban seems to aid in her final break
with Dick, Nicole, newly confident in her o^m strength, recognizes
Tony's power and "his assertion seemed to absolve her from all blame
or-responsibility,"93
Lesser c h a r a c t e r s show similar sexual deviation.
Mary North and
Lady Caroline pretend to be s a i l o r s on leave and pick up two g i r l s and
are l a t e r a r r e s t e d when the g i r l s report them.
Lady Caroline feels no
remorse and Mary i s only afraid her husband Hosain w i l l hear about
it.
Fitzgerald gives us Dick's reaction—"The lack, in Lady C a r o l i n e ' s
il
2^.
face, of any sense of evil, except the evil wrought by cowardly
Provencal girls and stupid police, confounded him."9^ Girls v;a'/c
panties from the windows in farewell to sailors; Baby V/arren does not
shrink from the nudity of Collis Clay; and the homosexuality of yo-:: Francisco is a story frequently heard by Dick, Nicole's father orly
temporarily repents of incest and then flees in fear from her before
he can ask her forgiveness. Hints of immorality envelop the society
in which they>move until all dialogue and action seem sexually motivated only.
Other moral weaknesses are exhibited by the novel's characters,
Abe North and Dick both succumb to the weakness of drink. Baby
Warren is guilty of false moral superiority, Kaethe is malicious with
her tongue. Bribery and falsehood are essential to their way of life,
Mrs. Speers, Rosemary's mother, surprises Dick by her amorality.
With evident disregard of any harmfiil consequences to Rosemary, Mrs,
Speers tells Dick:
"She was in love with you before I ever saw you,
I told her to go ahead,"95
Neither Nicole nor Nick can find enough
moral fiber to stand alone. Few characters exact the sympathy of the
reader, and the moral tragedy draws to a close idth redemption unearned by the players.
The writings of Fitzgerald clearly substantiate Shain's description of Fitzgerald as America's most sentient novelist of manners,9^
Moral standards were at a new low, and
*
29
even the lightest, least satirical of Fitzgerald's pages
bear testimonial to the prevalence of the condition. A moralist
could gather evidence for a most terrible condemnation of
bourgeois America from the books of this protagonist of youth,97
. . .
Fitzgerald wrote to advise an acquaintance:
"If you are in any mess
caused by conflict between old idealisms, religious or social, and the
demands of the present • , , That is all too frequently a problem of
these times,9^ He offered a coherent description of these problems
and the inner conflicts which resulted in the low state of morals and
manners in the era.
CHAPTER III
THE LOVE OF MGIIEY
Fitzgerald's attitude toward wealth reflects the compulsion which
his generation had for the earning and spending of money, though critics
are not in complete agreement as to the exact fascination which money
held for him, Charles E, Shain states that Fitzgerald's "attitude
toward money and moneyed people has been much misunderstood,"99
There
)
i
was, he points out:
•
the general charge against Fitzgerald made frequently in the
thirties that he was captivated by the rich and their expensive
manners, and forgot that too much money in America is always
supposed to be a sign of vulgarity and wickedness. Applied to
Fitzgerald's fiction this moralism is simple-minded. To disprove it there_is exhibited in the novels and stories all the
morai^^ener^ tjiat Fitzgerald spent "fixing" the rich.
Shain further insists:
We do him an injustice if we assume at the start that in order
to understand the dreadful sanctions of social prestige—that
is, money Fitzgerald had to make a fatal submission of himself
to the glamorous rich,"*^^
Others, literary men in particular, criticized Fitzgerald for his
absorption with the subject. In a letter to Hemingway, Fitzgerald
complains that John Bishop wrote of "how I am an avrful suck about the
rich and a social climber."'•^I
Hemingway hiinself, as shown below,
wrote of Fitzgerald and money in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Hemingway's hero, Harry, is musing about the rich. They were dull or they
drank too much or they played backgammon too much. In the original
version, Hemingi-^ay used Fitzgerald's name in the following passage:
30
1
31
He remembered poor Julian and his romantic awe of then and how
he had started a story once that began, "The very rich are different from you and me," And how some one had said to Juliar..
Yes they have more money. But that was not humorous to Julian.
He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found
they weren't it wrecked him just as much as any other thing that
wrecked him. ^^"^
Heming^^ay's criticism was called the "public burial of a has-been
writer,"''03
Evidently Heming^jay respected the feelings of Fitzgerald
enough to change the name in the story for—as it is quoted here from
a collection of short stories—the name Julian has been substitued for
Scott Fitzgerald,
The reference offended Fitzgerald to say the least.
He wrote a letter to Hemingway:
«
•
I
I
It
Please lay off me in print. If I choose to vrrite die pro fund is
sometimes it doesn't mean I vjant friends praying aloud over my
corpse. No doubt you meant it kindly but it cost me a night's
sleep. And when you incorporate it (the story) in a 'oook would
you mind cutting my name?
It's a fine story—one of your best—even though the "Poor
Scott Fitzgerald, etc." rather spoiled it for me. , , . Riches
have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm
or distinction.^0^
Malcolm Cowley chose the title of "The Romance of Money" for his
introduction to the 1953 edition of Tne Great Gatsby. Cowley expresses
his belief that Fitzgerald differed from other serious writers of the
era in his attitude toward money.
The serious vrriters also dreamed of rising to a loftier status,
but except for Fitzgerald—they felt that money-making was the
wrong way to rise. They liked money if it reached them in the
form of gifts or legacies or publishers' advances, but they were
afraid of high earned incomes because of what the incomes stood
for: obligations, respectability, time lost from their own
work, expensive habits that would drive them to earn still higher
incomes; in short, a series of involvements in the commercial
culture that was hostile to art.
i
i
32
Cowley continues his reminiscing as to what the writers thought of
money:
"If you want to ruin a \^n:•iter," I used to hear them saying, "just
give him a big magazine contract or a job at ten thousand a year."
Many of them tried to preserve their independence by earning only
enough to keep them alive while vjriting; a few liked to regard
themselves as heroes of poverty and failure."'^5
Fitzgerald, however, did not choose to separate himself from the
business world.
Cowley considered the teaching of money as the reward
of virtue an important influence upon Fitzgerald's concepts of money.
Fitzgerald and the younger generation "had been taught to measure
success, failure, and even virtue in monetary terms."^0° As evidence
of his opinion of money, Fitzgerald kept an accurate record of his
earnings but had little knowledge of his expenditures.
Paradoxical as it may sound, Fitzgerald did not care enough about
money ever to manage it in a businesslike way. ^Vhat he did care
for was that vision of the good life which he had come to feel
was, at least in America, open only to those who command the
appurtenances of wealth. . . . He strove, therefore, to become
a member of the community of the rich, to live from day to day as
they did, to share their interests and tastes, 0'
He often wrote his publishers to determine the extent to which he had
drawn on future earned monies and was alvrays shocked to hear the
amount.
He had little interest in money for itself and less in the physical objects it would buy. On the other hand, he had a great
interest in earning money, lots of it fast, because that was a
sort of gold medal av/arded with the blue ribbon for competitive
achievement. Once the money was earned he and Zelda liked to
spend lots of it fast, usually for impermanent things: not for
real estate, fine motorcars, or furniture, but for traveling
33
expenses, the rent of furnished houses, the wages of nurses and
servants, for entertainments, party dresses, and feather fans of
five colors.
The sensation of well-being that money could bring was enjoyed to the
fullest by both Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald—
Zelda was as proudly careless about money as an eighteenthcentury nobleman's heir. Scott was more practical and had his
penny-pinching moments, as if in memory of his childhood, but
at other times he liked to spend without counting in order
to enjoy a sense of careless potency.*"^Fitzgerald was forced by Zelda Sayre to consider money as fulfill•
ment of promise. Although all of the responsibility for his desire
for money cannot be placed at Zelda's feet, Fitzgerald found money,
and the security which it proffered, essential to the ^d.nning of the
girl he loved as his wife. He remembered that
"Zelda was cagey about thro;>rLng in her lot with me before I vias
a money-maker, • ." Zelda wanted, just as Fitzgerald did, a
luxury and largeness beyond anything her world provided and she
had a certain aLmost childlike shrewdness in pursuing it,^09
Returning from a visit to I-Iontgomery, Fitzgerald boarded a Pullman
as he bid Zelda farewell and then sneaked to a day coach, which vras
all he could afford.
He had spent the visit, however, trying to
convince Zelda that he was rich enough to make her happy, Zelda
"was inevitably dravm toward 'the stream of life,' a stream with such
a high concentration of money in it that it shone,""'''^ Fitzgerald
used this feeling of Zelda's in a story, "The Bridal Party." After
This Side of Paradise was accepted for publication, Fitzgerald
became exuberant about his writing prospects. He wrote and revised
j
3^
several short stories which he sold to the Post, Zelda finally, after
having been courted by telegrams announcing sums of money received for
his works, renewed their engagement, Fitzgerald was also delighted
with the money.
He celebrated by buying Zelda an expensive feather
fan, buying his friends pints of Scotch from his own private bootlegger, and dressing for a date with hundred dollar bills protruding
from his pockets in a conspicuous fashion. His friends finally took
five to six hundred dollars from him and had it put in the hotel
vault,
"He was drunk with the excitement of money, "*'''''
There were few times in Fitzgerald's life during which he could
ignore the need for money. Within three months after his marriage he
suddenly found that he did not have left any of the $18,000 he had
made during 1920, and he owed Reynolds $650 for an advance on an
um^ritten story. The Fitzgeralds continued to live above their income
as his "How to Live on $36,000 a Year" attested,
"Scott was extrava-
gant," said I4ax Perkins, "but not like her; money went through her
fingers like water; she wanted everything; she kept him writing for
the magazines."'''*2 j ^ a letter to Edmund Wilson, dated February 6,
1922, Fitzgerald says that "it would be absurd for me to pretend to
be indifferent to money, and very few men with a family they care for
can be."''''3 He had written to Wilson the month before about their
baby girl.
" . . . The baby is T^II—we dazzle her exquisite eyes
with gold pieces in the hopes that she'll marry a millionaire.""^I^
35
The preoccupation with the occupation of mal<ing money could not
be obliterated from Fitzgerald's life nor from his work. As Malcolm
Cowley points out:
"In dealing with the romance of money, he chose
the central theme of his American age,
'Americans,' he liked to sa^s
'should be b o m viith fins, and perhaps they were—perhaps money was a
form of fin.'"''''5 The development of the theme of money progresses in
'"
It
t
Fitzgerald's fiction as his own attitudes toward money were revised.
S
]
il
His conception of the importance of money does not basically change,
i
but rather the potential results from its possession. In 19191
\
Fitzgerald \Trote
to Alida Bigelow declaring that the three unfor-
givable things in life were toothpicks, pathos, and poverty,''''^ In
1935. he advised a young married woman that Samuel Butler was right
in placing health and money as the first and second most important
things in life,''''7 Even in his final but uncompleted work, Th£ ^^^t
Tycoon. Fitzgerald portrays the glamor of the life of the very rich.
He also includes the conflict between right and wrong which he believed came in a particiaar way to those who had many possessions. He
succeeded in showing that "many possessions" was a relative idea.''''^
In the same way that the necessity for money plagued Fitzgerald
from time to time, it plagued some of Fitzgerald's characters as well.
In one of his early stories, "Head and Shoulders," its chief character
finds it necessary to take employment in an inferior position that
does not give proper play to his remarkable intellectual capacity.
36
His dreams and purposes of an outstanding career fade, and he finally
discovers that it is his wife who is considered the intellectual
whereas he himself is only the "shoulders," He had chosen love—and
anonymity. Also included in his first collection of short stories.
Flappers and Philosophers, published in 1921, is the tale of "Dalyrimple Goes Wrong."
Dalyrimple goes wrong because:
Happiness was what he x^ranted a slowly rising scale of gratifications of the nonnal appetites—and he had a strong conviction
that the materials, if not the inspiration of happiness, could
be bought with money,''''9
Dalyrimple was not convinced "—that honest poverty was happier than
corrupt riches,"''^^ He is Fitzgerald's representation of the young
war hero coming home to find that his war-won glory was short-lived.
Yet, although Dalyrimple chose the immoral way, toward riches, he
found himself rewarded in spite of his lack of "virtue,"
Dexter Green, in "Winter Dreams," did not need money for food nor
to care for a family:
he had a dream of glittering things of ^diich
Judy Jones, daughter of "a rich man," is the symbol. As Fitzgerald
describes him:
he was bothered by his scanty funds. But do not get the
impression, because his viinter dreams happened to be concerned
at first xvTLth musings on the rich, that there was anything
merely snobbish in the boy. He wanted not association with
glittering things and glittering people—he wanted the glittering things themselves,'
Ultimately, Dexter manages to make money. Soon after earning his
college degree, and becoming the successful owner of a string of
37
laundries, Judy Jones again came into his life,
Judy Jones had left a man and crossed the room to hir.—Judy
Jones, a slender enamelled doll in cloth of gold: gold in a
band at her head, gold in tvjo slipper points at her dress's
hem. The fragile glow of her face seemed to blossom as she
smiled at him,''22
She was the emblem of wealth—not earned, but established—which he
could only touch—not possess. Years later, when Dexter learns of her
faded loveliness, he realizes his winter dreams have also faded and
left a nothingness.
Another Fitzgerald character who, as one of his chief traits,
admires money is John Unger of Hades, Mississippi, v/ho attended St,
Midas' School near Boston, One of his rich acquaintances is Percy
Washington, Invited to his friend's home for a visit, John learns
that Percy's father possesses "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,"
"'He must be very rich,' said John simply,
'I'm glad, I like very
rich people. The richer a fella is, the better I like him,'"''23
John is amazed by the wealth of the Braddock Washington chateau,
located in a hidden valley beside a diamond mountain. He falls in
love with a daughter, Kismine, and then leams he will not be allowed
to leave the secluded treasure trove alive. The day prior to his
scheduled m.urder, planes arrive to bomb the valley. As a 'oomb hits
the slave quarters, Kisnine exclaims, "There go fifty thousand
dollars' worth of slaves at prewar prices. So few Americans have any
respect for property,"''^^ John, Kismine, and her sister Jasmine
escape before the mountain is purposely destroyed by Braddock
38
Washington when God refuses his bribe. Mistaking rhinestones for
diamonds in their hurry to escape, Kisnine and John find they have
nothing of value left except their love for one another, Fitzgerald
manifests in this story the amorality which he felt was a frequent
companion of wealth. Mr, Vlashington had been sure that God had his
price; he was only fearful that he had not made his bribe large
"
I"
enough. After all, wasn't "God made in man's image?"''25
Anson Hunter, in "The Rich Boy," was born to inherit, with other
!i
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*
•
»
children of the family, a fortune of fifteen million dollars. The
j
assurance of established wealth contributed to Anson's self-reliance
and a confidence iriiich was displayed in the foi^n of condescension or
toleration of those who vjere not as "solvent" as he. He fell in love
with a rich girl but soon found he could not give to Paula what she
required—himself. The discovery, several years later, that Paula
was happy without him vias a tremendous blow to his ego, leaving him
purposeless and old. Fulfillment of his desires was impossible, for at
every opportunity Anson found a withholding of himself which formed an
impassable gulf to others. Yet, when others were sho\>ri.ng him affec-
t
i
tion or revering his supremacy, Anson enjoyed a kind of happiness.
I don't think he was ever happy unless some one was in love xd.th
him, responding to him like filings to a magnet, helping him to
explain himself, promising him something. What it was I do not
know. Perhaps they promised that there x^rould alvrays be x-nDmen in
the world who XTOuld spend their brightest, freshest, rarest
hours to nurse and protect that superiority he cherished in his
heart,''2D
fimrniirirn ini ii-frfi iTiiiifllM«ili*lii-MMrniiiiffri
• •^•-*-••-••• ^- -
- -. .
Although the theme of money runs through most of Fitzgerald's fie
tion, perhaps the greatest emphasis is placed on it in his novel The
Great Gatsby.
"Tne Romance of Mon»," as Cowley has called it, is
representative of Fitzgerald's best work. Considering primarily the
money theme, we note that Fitzgerald has contrasted "acquired wealth"
and "established wealth." .'Established wealth is represented by Tom
and Daisy Buchanan, and by other residents of East Egg, a region of
"white palaces" which "glittered along the water" of Long Island
Sound, Tom, who was a college-mate of Nick Carraway, the narrator
of the novel, controlled inherited wealth.
His family were enormously ^.-lealthy—even in college his freedom
with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago
and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away;
for instance, he'd brought 6o\m a string of polo ponies from
Lake Forest, It was hard to realize that a man in my own
generation ;^s wealthy enough to do that,''27
Their house was quite elaborate, a red and white Georgian colonial
mansion on the bay. But the viealth which they possessed had not
brought them happiness. They had lived in France for a year and
moved "from place to place "wherever people played polo and were rich
together,"
Tom pretended to a culture i^ich he did not possess and
Daisy could not conceal her "basic insincerity" no matter how often
she repeated:
"Sophisticated—God, I'm sophisticated,"''28 Later
Fitzgerald was to describe Daisy by saying that her voice was full
of money.
That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full
of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell
i
^0
in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it . , . High in
a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl.''^9
Across the bay on the tip of West Egg lived another rich man. Jay
Gatsby, Gatsby, as a young army officer, had fallen in love with Daisy
in Louisville, Gatsby had been amazed at the things she took for
granted.
Her beautiful house "was as casual a thing to her as his
tent out at camp was to him,"''30 in Louisville, Gatsby had been
overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons
and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy,
gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of
the poor.'3i
And Daisy had fallen in love with Jay. But loneliness after his
departure for France combined with Gatsby's poverty and Tom Buchanan's
determined courtship made her choose Tom, Tom Buchanan had determined
her future with his attractive young manhood and a three hundred fifty
thousand dollar pearl necklace. In choosing Tom, Daisy chose his way
of life,
Gatsby's dream of a life with Daisy becomes not only an illusion
;
'
but an obsession. After five years, Gatsby locates Daisy and is willing to do whatever is necessary to win her away from Tom, Gatsby has
|
t
become rich by illegal means and has bought an enormous house:
a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation
of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side,
spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It
was Gatsby's mansion,'32
Fitzgerald makes use of the little bay which separates East Egg
glamor from West Egg ostentation as a symbol of the slight difference
,
41
in the mode of the "riches" illustrated; it also symbolizes the
difference in refinement and moral standards between the types of
riches. After Gatsby reveals his presence to Daisy, he tries by
very unsophisticated methods to impress Daisy with his riches. One
of the most pathetic scenes occurs whil Gatsby is showing his mansion
to Daisy for the first time, Daisy and Nick are with him in his
bedroom, and Gatsby struggles:
"I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends
over a selection of things at the beginning of each season,
spring and fall."
He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by
one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine
flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table
in many-colored disarray. VJhile we admired he brought more and
the soft rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and
scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and
faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a
strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to
cry stormily.
"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice
muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never
seen such—such beautiful shirts before."''33
In other aspects of dress as well Gatsby was often a gaudy display of
acquired wealth:
"white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored
tie,"''3^ In his description of Gatsby's accumulation of things,
Fitzgerald makes the choice of automobiles an outstanding example of
the difference of taste and custom associated with the two forms of
riches, Gatsby's automobile is described as follows:
It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen her and
there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and
supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of
wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind
many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservator-.^, v;^
started to town.''35
Tom drove an unpretentious blue coup^.
The snobbery of the established rich, on the other hand, is
shown by Fitzgerald in a brief incident, Tom, Mr. Sloane, and a
pretty young woman are horseback riding and stop by Gatsby's mansion
for something to drink. The young woman is the only one who has been
to the house previously.
It is the first time Tom and Gatsby have
engaged in conversation, and Tom is annoyed when he leams Gatsby is
acquainted with Daisy, Tae young woman, perhaps under the influence of
several highballs, invites Gatsby to a dinner party and he agrees to
come by following them in his car. When Gatsby excuses himself for
a moment, they ride quicldy away.
Fitzgerald offers a glimpse of Daisy's snobbishness at a party
at Gatsby's which she and Tom attend. \^en Gatsby identifies a particular man for her, saying that he is a small producer, she remarks,
"'Well, I liked him anyhow,'"^^^
But the rest offended her—and inarguably, because it
wasn't a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by V/est Egg,
this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a
Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigor that chafed
under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded
its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She
saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.'' 37
Fitzgerald's conviction that riches contaminate or corrupt all
except the strongest of moral characters is illustrated often in this
^3
novel,
Jordan Baker is compulsively dishonest. Daisy is aghast that
Gatsby could have earned his money illegally; yet she is willing that
he should take the blame for a hit-and-run accident for which she is
responsible. Tom tells George Wilson, the widowed man, that Gatsby
r
has killed his wife, but refrains from confessing that he, Tom, was
her secret lover. Later, Tom defends his action to Nick:
"What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He
threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy's, but he
was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you'd run over a dog
and never even stopped his car,"
There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable
fact that it wasn't true,''33
Even Gatsby's murder—the murder of the man whom Daisy loved with the
little capacity she had—did not produce a phone call or xiord of any
kind from Daisy or Tom Buchanan, Nick expresses Fitzgerald's feelings;
I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had
done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless
and confused. They v/ere careless people, Tom and Daisy—they
smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into
their money or their vast carelessness, or vriiatever it was that
kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they
had made,''39
rI The destruction of character by wealth is probably best demonstrated in Fitzgerald fiction by his third novel. Tender Is the Ili^ht.
As Fitzgerald uses the love of money as the corrupting element which
produces other "bankruptcies" in many of his works, it is plausible
that money is the strongest single force which reduces Dick Diver to
nothingness.''^
The first hint that the young psychiatrist, Dick Diver, will be
a servant of Mammon is his attitude toward his colleague Franz
Gregorvius, and Franz's home and acceptance of it.
For him the boundaries of asceticism were differently markedhe could see it as a means to an end, even as a carrying on \-n.th
a glory it would itself supply, but it was hard to think of
deliberately cutting life down to the scale of an inherited suit.
The domestic gestures of Franz and his wife as they turned in a
cramped space lacked grace and adventure. The post-war months
in France, and the lavish liquidations taking place under the
aegis of American splendor, had affected Dick's outlook,''^''
A patient whom Dick has helped to return to reality by corresponding
,
J
!
|
with her is the lovely and rich Nicole Warren, At lunch one day he
asks:
" . . . V/hy do you have so many different clothes?"
"Sister says we're very rich," she offered humbly, "Since
Grandmother is dead,"
"I forgive you,"^^2
Nicole's sister. Baby Warren, suggests that Mr, Warren could
obtain a position for Dick at the University of Chicago,
A burst of hilarity surged up in Dick, the Warrens were
going to buy Nicole a doctor—You got a nice doctor you can let
us use? There was no use :-jorrying about Ilicole when they ^-Tere in
the position of being able to buy her a nice young doctor, the
paint scarcely dry on him,''^3
Baby Warren decided against Dick as that doctor, for she did not
think he could be made into "an aristccraL,"
•
:
Fitzgerald believed an
aristocrat should have money. In a letter to Margaret Trumbull,
Fitzgerald asks:
has the aristocrat got money?—if "it" hasn't it had better be
b o m into the middle of the middle classes in a small town. If
you had money and were not Russian or Spanish it was certainly
j
45
an advantage to be an aristocrat up to now. One m.ight not be
invited out much or have a king give up his throne in one's
honor or be as T^jell known as Harlow and Low outside the county,
and certainly one had to kneel to the monied nobility, but it
had its compensations,''^
Thus, since Dick did not have money and V7as neither Russian nor
Spanish, Baby decides he will not "do." But Dick, for love or m.oney,
or a combination of the two, marries Nicole in disregard of Baby's
opinion.
The surrender seems slight concession at first.
That seem.s unreasonable, Dick—ire have every reason for taking
the bigger apartment, "V/hy should we penalize ourselves just
because there's more Warren money than Diver money?''^5
But later:
We must spend my money and h^ve a house—I'm tired of apartments and waiting for you,''^°
At a Paris bank:
"there was Muchause, who always asked him whether he
wanted to draw upon his wife's money or his own."''^7 To the suggestion from Franz that Dick take two hundred twenty thousand dollars
from the Warrens to buy a clinic for which Dick would be the
"brilliant consultant," Baby had said:
"We must think it over care-
fully—" and the unsaid lines back of that:
"We own you, and you'll
admit it sooner or later. It is absurd to keep up the pretense of
independence."''^
But Dick leams to purchase others T^th money:
"He had long ago purchased the doorman."^^9
owner of a hotel, Dick muses:
Thinking of the manager-
"It was good that he had made the extra
effort which had firmly entrenched him with Mr. McBeth." 5
Even the law, Dick finds, can be bought:
"Now we are prepared to give—" Dick calculated -.r.'-i-. "c- •
thousand francs to each of the girls—and an aaoUiorai'* D ^, .- .t
to the father of the 'serious' one. Also t w thousa-.a ir7 a-^-j-*.
tion, for you to distribute as you think best " he cr.r'r-cj -.v-j
shoulders, "—among the men who made the arrest, t/io loir^'-^-"*
house keeper, and so forth, I shall hand you the five *>-::..v '
and expect you to do the negotiating immediately. Then thcv t.ir.
be released on bail on some charge like disturbing the ror.c'.-, .v":
whatever fine there is will be paid before the ma-i5tra^c'tor'.or-jv
— b y messenger,"^51
The Dick Divers use their money and their cleverness to attract
others—a group which they can please, entertain, and make glow •-:.'
basking in the Diver artificial sunshine,
had not intended to be.
a facade.
Dick becomes sonethir.r: he
His acquired sophistication grad-aally coco~.os
He gives himself so completely to Nicole and others until
he, as Fitzgerald i^uld say, is an "emotional bankrupt,"
wants to possess good manners.
sees.
\\c no lor.,':cr
He falls in love with every girl he
As his pride diminishes, he becomes more rude.
Gradually Dick's
drinking habits and frequent rudeness isolate the Divers from many
people and places where they had formerly been vrelcome, Vfrien !Iicole
finds she is x>rell enough to exist without him, Dick is free, but he
is the captive of his own moral and spiritual decadence.
Other characters of the novel exemplify Fitzgerald's concepts of
the misuse of riches
the pseudo-culture assumed by Violet and Albert
McKisco, the yo\Tev viielded by Baby V/arren, the recklessness of Lady
Caroline, and the conviviality of Collis Clay.
^7
Fitzgerald describes the cosmopolitan rich to his daughter,
Scottie:
I have seen the whole racket, and if there is any more disastrous
road than that from Park Avenue to the Rue de la Paix and back
again, I don't know it.
They are homeless people, ashamed of being American, unable
to master the culture of another country; ashamed, usually, of
their husbands, idves, grandparents, and unable to bring up
descendants of whom they could be proud, even if they had the
nerve to bear them, ashamed of each other yet leaning on each
other's weakness, a menace to the social order in which they live
— o h , xjhy should I go on? You knovr how I feel about such things.
If I come up and find you gone Park Avenue, you \n.ll have to
explain me away as a Georgia cracker or a Chicago killer, God
help Park Avenue,^52
CHAPTER IV
THE FLAPPER
Fitzgerald knew the flapper, the embodiment of the girls who
visited Princeton, of the girls he met in New York, St. Paul, :bntgomery, and New Orleans, and of Zelda. The flapper was the "young
lady" of Fitzgerald's generation who had decided to be a reckless
dare-devil.
The Fitzgerald portrayal of the flapper follows the
historical view of the xjom.en of the time.
Fitzgerald fiction vzas shocking to most readers but was of particular concern to parents. The subjects discussed by Fitzgerald
characters were scandalous in themselves. One of his well-bred
heroines confesses:
dozens more."''53
"I've kissed dozens of men, I suppose I'll kiss
Another heroine dares to speak of sex, and to a
young manI
Oh,
I'm
bit
and
just one person in fifty has any glLmmer of v:hat sex is,
hipped on Freud and all that, but it's rotten that every
of real love in the vjorld is ninety-nien percent passion
one little soupcon of jealousy? 5
Allen says that many parents felt that such writing "must be an
exaggerated account of the misconduct of some especially depraved
group."''55 Soon, however, other books were published which seemed to
prove that the subjects of petting and sex \-7ere considered common
topics of conversation among young people.
Parents and other worried citizens may have been reading the
US
books "i^itten about the situation, but Fitzgerald, called the "bannerman of slickers and flappers," was claiming the flappers themselves as
his readers. In discussing a title for his second volume of short
stories, Fitzgerald \-rrote to Max Perkins wanting to use Tales of the
Jazz Age:
"It will be bought by my ovm personal nublic—that is, by
the countless flappers and college kids who think I am a sort of
oracle,"''5^
And perhaps he vras an oracle to the extent that he x^as in
close communication with the times and merely displayed his great
knowledge of it in his works. His knowledge was actually derived
largely from his oi-m experiences with flappers, and he often was only
relating incidents from his own life.
An especially intense portrait of the flapper is painted by
Fitzgerald in the person of Muriel Kane:
She was short rather than small, and hovered audaciously between
plumpness and Td.dth, Her hair was black and elaborately arranged.
This, in conjunction x-ath her handsome, rather bovine eyes, and
her over-red lips, combined to make her resemble Theda Bara, the
prominent motion picture actress.
She wanted to be considered x^ild, indiscreet, and dangerous.
People told her constantly that she was a "vampire," and she
believed them. She suspected hopefully that they x^^ere afraid of
her, and she did her utmost under all circumstances to give the
iiapression of danger. An imaginative man could see the red flag
that she constantly carried, x^avin^^it xd.ldly, beseechingly—and
alas, to little spectacular avail.^-'
A flapper was required to keep up xdth all the latest developments of
the fad.
She was also tremendously timely; she knew the l a t e s t songs, a l l
t h e l a t e s t songs—when one of them x-ras played on the phonograph
YfiXAiS tECHNbLOClCAU COLL—tLUBBOCK, TEXAS
UDRARY
''^?^tr^'*
•.WLSt"""'i'WiWI." !..«i-' "!«" " v
50
=nri !n^''v,li^^ *° '''''" ^^!* ^^
pany herself by humming.
""='' ^^'^ shouldorn bac;-. ind forth
Her conversation must also fit the pattern and Muriel's tall: seemed to
fill the requirements.
"I don't care," she xrould say, "I should xjorry and lose -v
figure"—and again: "I can't make my feet behave wien I hear
that tune. Oh, babylV
From the viex^point of one who had not yet succumbed to the madness of
the age, Muriel was extreme in dress and manner.
Her fingernails were too long and ornate, polished to a
pink and unnatural fever. Her clothes xrere too tight, too
stylish, too vivid, her eyes too roguish, her smile too coy.
She was almost pitifully over-emphasized from head to foot,'5'3
Muriel Kane is as "bad" as most early Fitzgerald feminine characters become.
Many of his heroines are "nice" girls xdio have com-
bined impetuosity with a spirit of adventure to overthrow the traditions of their elders.
Ginevra King, Fitzgerald's first love,
became—
the ideal girl of his generation, the wise, even hard-boiled,
virgin who for all her daring and unconventionality was essentially far more elusive than her mother—and, in her o\m \^dLY,
far more romantic. He could see the naivete and irjiocence of
this girl temporarily in search of pleasure but ser-^ously desiring some not very clearly defined romantic future,^^-^
Fitzgerald uses Ginevra as the pattern for Judy Jones, Josephine
Perry, Daisy Buchanan, and others of his flappers x:ho have the poise
of vrealth and social affluence.
The basic discemible difference in
Fitzgerald Muriels and Judys is the self-assurance derived from social
position.
The flapper characteristics are present in Fitzgerald's
5\
d e l i n e a t i o n of both types of feminine c h a r a c t e r s .
The Fitz?:erald flappers are capricious younr l a i i - . .
t o determine the course of action for them,
Whim see^.
Judy JO:.CL has a male
admirer who has confessed t h a t she i s h i s i d e a l ,
vr-e- -c <
-^ •
her house, she runs to her motorboat on the lake to ta!:<j a r.oor.ll ••-.
r i d e and swim alone.
She asks a young man whom she docs -ot :-::.ow tc
maneuver the boat, so she can ride on a surf-board behir.-i i t . ^ ' ' ^
It
i s " h a l f - p a s t one" x^hen Edith, in "May Day", t e l l s her da-.cir.'- partner
t h a t she needs to r e p a i r her hairdo.
She s l i p s doxvn the side s t a i r s
to the s t r e e t and to a building—where she has never been beTortsee her b r o t h e r .
to
The idea had "reached out and gripped at h-jr i-aj-i-
n a t i o n — a f t e r an i n s t a n t ' s h e s i t a t i o n she had decided,"'''-''
lorrr.ce of
"Bemice Bobs Her Hair" gets her h a i r bobbed on a dare from her
cousin ' ! a r j o r i e ; then while her cousin i s asleep, Bemice a-^putatos
M a r j o r i e ' s long braids for revenge,
Marcia Meadow accepts a dare
and v i s i t s the apartment of the " i n t e l l e c t u a l " of the campus, in
"Head and Shoulders."''^3
Gloria Gilbert of The Beautiful gr.d Dar:-c.^
"had gone i n the Yale swimmdng-pool one night i n a chiffon evening
dress."^^^
Recklessness was a necessary element 01 the f l a p p e r ' s personality,
G l o r i a ' s cousin Dick informs her mother:
" G l o r i a ' s a xd.ld one. Aunt Catherine. She's uncontrollable.
How s h e ' s done i t I don't know, but l a t e l y s h e ' s picked up a l o t
of the funniest f r i e n d s . She doesn't seem to c a r e . And the men
she used to go xdth around New York vjere—"^^5
52
Ailie Calhoun "was as attractive in her role of reckless cloxm as she
had ever been in her life,"''^^ Judy Jones is reckless as she rides on
the surf-board and calls to her unknoxm driver:
as it'll go,'"''^7
"'Go faster , , . fast
In "The Rich Boy", a friend describes Dolly:
Like so many girls of that day Dolly x-ras slackly and indiscreetly
XrJild. , , , She was x-jhat is known as "a pretty little thing," but
there was a certain reciaessness x-;hich rather fascinated ne. Her
dedication to the goddess of x:aste x-rould have been less obvious
had she been less spirited—she would most certainly throw herself
ax-;ay,'°^
At a Princeton prom, Josephine goes into a "nook" x-dth a boy and finds
it is a male student's bedroom as x-:ell. The door is locked behind
them by a pranl^ster but they escape by jxLmping from a high xd.ndow into
the snox-j.
To Josephine , "it i-ias merely exciting,"
°
Some flappers
held doubtful distinction for such achievements as "having turned five
cart-x^heels in succession during the last pump-and-slipper dance at
New Haven,"''70
The flapper xd.shed to appear calm and collected under all circumstances.
Ardita Farnam was praised for this prepossession in "Tne
Offshore Pirate":
a flapper,'"
"' . . . you do seem to possess a lot of nerve for
Her kidnappers had offered to let her go ashore, but
Ardita refused to leave the yacht.
"She had Implicit confidence in her
ability to tal<e care of herself under any and all circumstances."
Ardita assumes an attitude of composure:
Ardita took a carved jade case from her pocket, extracted a
cigarette and lit it xd.th a conscious coolness, though she knew
her hand was trembling a little; then she crossed over x^ath her
53
T^V/'^''^^''^
y^^'' ^ ^ sitting down in the other settee blew
a noutnful of smoke at the ax-ming.
"You can't get me off this yacht." she said steadily, "and
it^.l'fr''
^ ° ^ ""^"^ "^""^^ ^^"^^ i^ y°^ ^ h i ^ you'll get far with
Bemice. although she did not x^ant her hair bobbed, pretended not to
care.
"«A11 right.' she said sxdftly. 'I don't care if I do.'"l72
The principal aim of the flapper was to defy tradition. This aim
motivated Fitzgerald's flappers on many occasions.
It was exactly the sort of thing Edith revelled in doing—an
unconventional, jaunty thing.173
When Ardita defied convention—and of late it had been her chief
amusement—it x^as from an intense desire to be herself . . .''7^
Ardita confessed to her captor:
The only thing I enjoyed x-ras shocking people; x-jearing something
quite impossible and quite charming to a fancy-dress party, going
around xd.th the fastest men in New York, and getting into some
of the most hellish scrapes imaginable.'75
Josephine observes that—
A girl eamed her popularity by being beautiful and charming. The
more beautiful and charming she^x^as, the more she could afford
to disregard popular opinion,'''^•^'
Even bobbing one's hair was considered a shocking action.
"Do you believe in bobbed hair?" asked G. Reece in the same
undertone.
"I think it's urjnoral," affirmed Bemice gravely. "But, of
course, you've either got to amuse people or feed 'em or shock
'em." Marjorie had culled this from Oscar V/ilde."'''
Wearing apparel or the lack of it could aid in the startling
impact desired.
The appearance presented by a flapper x-:as often the
greatest deviation from tradition a girl could make, Muriel makes
5^
herself noticed in a hotel dining room:
A moment later Muriel appeared in a state of elaborate
undress and crent tox-rard them. She was in her element: her
ebony hair xjas slicked straight back on her head; her eyes were
artificially darkened; she reeked of insistent perfume. She x-zas
got up to the best of her ability as a siren, more popularly a
"vamp"—a picker up and throx>rer ax^ay of nen, an unscrupulous and
fundamentally unmoved toyer vjith affections.
Her efforts x^ere not completely successful:
Something in the exhaustiveness of her attempt fascinated Maury
at first sight—a X'joman x-dth xdde hips affecting a panther-like
lithenessl As they x^aited , , , he was unable to tal-:e his eyes
from her. She would turn her head ax-ray, lowering her eyelashes
and biting her nether lip in an amazing exhibition of coyness.
She vrould rest her hands on her hips and sx-iay from side to side
in tune to the music, saying:
"Did you ever hear such perfect ragtime? I just can't make
my shoulders behave when I hear that,"173
Ardita claLms of a svdmsuit:
"I've got a one-piece affair that's
shocked the natives all along the Atlantic coast from Biddeford Pool
to St. Augustine.""179
Dexter Green notices Judy's bathing-suit,
"x-rhich consisted apparently of pink rompers,"'SO
Part of the distinct equip^ient of the flapper x^^as her speech.
Sometimes this speech consisted of rudeness tox^rard her elders such as
Ardita displays toX":ard her uncle.
"Ardital" he repeated, "Arditat"
Ardita raised the lem.on languidly, alloxdng three x:ords to
slip out before it reached her tong^ae,
"Oh, shut up."
"ArditaI"
"What? .
'.'Will you listen to m e — o r will I have to get a servant to
hold you x-rhile I talk to you?"
. . . " P a t . i t in vjriting."
• . • VNo," said Ardita s h o r t l y , "I vron't.
I came along on
55
this d a m cruise xdth the one idea of going to Palm Beach, and
you knew it, and I absolutely refuse to meet any dam old colonel
or any d a m youns Tobey or any dam old young people or to set
foot in any other darn old toxm in this crazy state. So you
either take me to Palm Beach or else shut up and go ax^ay,""'^''
Although this speech may not seem shocking to those living in the
"sassy sixties," it x-:as disgraceful speech prior to the emancipation
of the twenties. Occasionally the flapper's exaggerated speech did
not yield the desired results, Bemice, taking lessons in how to be
a flapper, chose the wrong speech for Draycott Deyo, who was studying
for the ministry.
. . . he thought she was a quiet, reserved girl. Had she knox-m
these things she x-rould not have treated hLm to the line x^fhich
began "Hello, Shell Shockt" and continued xdth the bath-tub
story—"It takes a frightful lot of energy to fix my hair in the
summer—there' s so much of it—so I always fix it first and
powder my face and put on my hat; then I get into the bathtub,
and dress afterxrard. Don't you think that's the best plan?"
Though Draycott Deyo x-:as in the throes of difficulties
concerning baptism by immersion and might possibly have seen a
connection, it must be admitted that he did not. He considered
feminine bathing an immoral subject, and gave her some of his
ideas on the depravity of modern society,^^2
The flapper did not want to be considered a "nice" girl, Anthony
Patch does not get Gloria Gilbert's attention until he says: "I
don't care particularly for 'nice girls'," Mrs. Harvey asks her
daughter Marjorie:
""^.^Jhat's a little cheap popularity?' . , ,'It's
everything x^hen you're eighteen,' said Marjorie emphatically,"''^^
The nonchalant attitudes of Judy Jones, Gloria Gilbert, Daisy
Buchanan, Ailie Calhoun, and the real live Zelda toward their many
admirers and lovers are all in the flapper tradition. In the South,
5e
the attention continued even if the girl was engaged.
Sally Carrol
Happer finds that the practice is not common in the :iorth.
After coffee she x-7as introduced to numerous good-looking young
m.en x-rho danced xdth conscious precision and seemed to take it
for granted that she xTanted to talk about nothing except Harry.
• • . In the South an engaged girl, even a young married ^..pman,
expected the same amount of half-affectionate badinage and
flattery that x^-ould be accorded a debutante, but here all that
seemed banned. One young man, after getting x-.-ell started on the
subject of Sally Carrol's eyes, and how they had allured him
ever since she entered the room, ::ent into a violent confusion
xxhen he found she Tjas -/isiting the Bellamj^s—:ras Harry's
fiancee. He seemed to feel as though he had made som.e risque
and inexcusable blunder, became immediately formal, and left
her at the first opportunity, "'85
The flapper movem.ent x-ias feminine expression of rebellion
against the restrictions of an older society, and, even if t.-or.en did
not perform ijmnoral acts, young ladies x-ranted to give the impression
of maintaining exciting, mysterious ezdistences. Feminine freedom
woxild take other forms in future fads, but the Lmage of the flapper
lingered on even after her heyday, for she was the glorified symbol
of emancipation.
About six years after the flapper movement began,
Fitzgerald x^irote to Perkins:
"The splash of the flapper movem.ent
was too big to have quite died doxm—the outer rings are still moving."''8°
The outer rings did move
to the most isolated shores of American life,
and Fitzgerald felt a certain responsibility for the riovem.ent. In
his notebook, Fitzgerald records a particular regret:
• * * * j_s still a flapper. Fashions, names, manners, customs
and m.orals change, but^for * * * * it is still 1920, Triis
concerns mc, for there is no doubt that she orir-inally patterned
herself upon certain immature and unfortunate x-ndtings of mine,
so I have a special indulgence for * * * * as for one xiho has
lost an arm or leg in one's service.
CHAPTER V
THE SEl^SE OF TRAGEDY
F. Scott Fitzgerald's own biography is the story of a young nan
who shifts his general point of view on life from despondency to wild
hilarity, from stark realism to romantic idealism. And his contributions to literature reflect the same instability of outlook. Once
Fitzgerald counselled his daughter:
• • • not one person in ten thousand finds the time to . • .
form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the
wise and tragic sense of life.
In Fitzgerald's opinion, a tragic sense of life represented a necessary element for success in life:
the thing that lies behind all great careers, from Shakespeare's
to Abraham Lincoln's, and as far back as there are books to read
— t h e sense that life is essentially a cheat and its conditions
are those of defeat, and that the redeeming things are not
"happiness and pleasure" but the deeper satisfactions that come
out of struggle.''83
Fitzgerald's characters fail or succeed just to the extent that they
exhibit a tragic sense of life. But his characters fail to reveal a
philosophy of a brave struggle against fate, but rather an almost
universal fear of life, a fear ultimately induced and nurtured by the
age in xjhich he lived.
For the typical Fitzgeraldian character, the loss of youth x^ras
tragic, for the Jazz Age generation worshipped at the shrine of the
goddess of youth. Youth x^as something one could not afford to lose;
^7
5Q
if one did not have it, the pretense of having drunk from the fountain
of youth x^as considered x-rorth the efforii.
Witness the women's fashions, x-rhich made mature females look like
, snort-skirted, long-x^aisted, flat-breasted, short-haired little
girls trying to look worldly vdse.''89
The activities of youth were cultivated by all living generations.
Irresponsibility, a usual attribute of youth, was the mode of the day.
One of the very few things to worry about x-ras the loss of one's youth.
To his Cousin Ceci, Mrs. Richard Taylor, Fitzgerald xjrote:
it looks as if the youth of me and my generation ends sometime
during the present year.
The year was I917 and Fitzgerald \ias
in the a m y . If x-ie ever get back . . . x-:e'll be rather aged—
in the xrorst way. After all, life hasn't much to offer except
youth and I suppose for older people the love of youth in
others.''90
The attitude erq^ressed by Fitzgerald in the preceding quotation is a
natural one for a young man x^hose country is at war and x-rfio feels
that his future may be cut off by that x^rar. Hox^ever. his attitude
was not to represent only a temporary opinion but a confirmed element
in his philosophy as exemplified in his x-rritings. At the ripe old
age of twenty-one, Fitzgerald bemoans the loss of his youth in a
letter to Edmund Wilson:
"God!
HOXT
I miss my youth . . , I don't
thinlc you ever realized at Princeton the childlike simplicity that
lay behind all my petty sophistication."'^
Describing Hew York on
his return from Europe in 1926, Fitzgerald xrrote:
out early
"Young people xrore
they vrere hard and languid at txienty-one."''92
Scott cele-
brated his thirty-second birthday in September of 1928 and was as
1
59
"sore as hell about it" as recorded in his Ledger.
Certain personal attributes. Fitzgerald x:as convinced, are possible only xThen one is young. One attribute is concern, for others:
"she realized that she x^as the only one x-rho had the time and youth for
the luxury of caring."''93
Another is recklessness: "She had the same
recklessness. It's a question of age and the times to a great ex;tent."''9^ A third attribute is beauty:
"He had not realized that
flashing fairness could last so far into the tx7enties."''95
Finally,
one must mention vitality:
She did not plan; she merely let herself go, and the overvihelming life in her did the rest. It is only x-;hen youth is gone
and experience has given us a sort of cheap courage that m-ost
of us realize how sLm.ple such things are.'°°
Fitzgerald also noted definitive signs of age according to national
background:
JexiTS lose clarity. They get to look like old m.elted candles, as
if their bodies x^ere preparing to waddle. Ir^sh get slovenly
and dirty. Anglo-Saxons get frayed and x^om.''97
In a piece called "Thousand-and-First Ship." identified by
Fitzgerald himself as a jingle or song, emphasis is placed on an
eternal youth:
But more than all this
Was the promise she made
That nothing, nothing
Ever x-rould f a d e Nothing would fade
Winter or fall.
Nothing X'JDuld fade
.^
Practically nothing at all. ^°
I
1
to
Several of Fitzgerald's short stories are concerned xdth the
loss of youth. Dexter Green loses the last of his "Winter Dreams"
idien he hears that Judy Jones is twenty-seven and that she is rx)
longer beautiful.
"Lots of \iomen fade just like that," Devlin snapped his fin-crs.
You must have seen it happen . . . " Even the grief ho covild "/.r.vc
borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth. . . •
where his xdnter dreams had flourished.''99
Anson Jones. ^^Tn.e Rich Boy." is m.ade to realize x-jhat he is missing by
a visit to Paula's home and becomes utterly despondent. He acts xdth
"the fussy pessimism of a man of forty."
Persuaded to talce a trip
abroad, Jones is not a pleasant ship-board companion.
His chief preoccupation was xdth the fact that he x^as thirty
years old—he x-:ould turn the conversation to the point xTTiere he
could remdnd you of it and then fall silent, as if he asGumed the
statement x-rould start a chain of thought sufficient to itself. 00
"The Last of the Belles" reveals Andy, at the age of twenty-four.
longing for the times xihich had been:
"I stumbled here and there in
the knee-deep underbrush, looking for my youth in a clapboard or a
strip of roofing or a rusty tomato can."^^''
This Side of Paradise is the story of youth; Th2 Beautiful and
Damned is the story of the dream-xsjorld of youth, Perosa denotes the
novel as a moral parable:
the parable is precisely that of the youthful dreams and illusion:
that gradually become a lethargy and then a nightmare and are
involved in an inevitable ruin.
Perosa reiterates his concept of the moral parable:
61
it is a parable on the deceptiveness of dreams, on the impossibility of evading reality through illusions, and on the painful
destructiveness of time.203
The novel suggests three different attitudes toward life. The attitude of Anthony Patch is that of a young man umdlling and unable to
accept responsibility, who justifies his lack of industry by claiming
to believe that life is meaningless. One of Anthony's friends, Maury
Noble, also believes life to be meaningless but feels that it might
be \n.se to xrork for a while just to become "immensely rich as quickly
as possible."^^^ Another friend, Dick Caramel, believes he is making
a distinctive contribution to the betterment of life by the use of
his literary talent. To complicate matters, Anthony marries a
flapper vdio is also unwilling to grow up. Neither Anthony nor Gloria
develops into a meaningful character, and the reader finds them reverting to their childhood and youth when security was provided for
them by others. They exist in a dream x^rorld, x-riich becomes a continual
nightmare that is lived under morbid circumstances of filth endurable
only by continual intoxication.
Tom and Daisy Buchanan display their high regard for youth in
The Great Gatsby. At the age of thirty. Tom is still proud of his
physical prowess, but he is beginning to have doubts that the power he
had as a college football player xdll last forever. There x^as. x-ndtes
Fitzgerald:
"Something . . . making him nibble at the edge of stale
ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his
62
peremptory heart. "205 Daisy had seen her youth slipping away and had
married Tom rather than wait for Jay Gatsby. At the tine of the story,
Baisy is the mother of a little girl three years old, but the reader
readily recognizes childishness in the behavior of Daisy herself. The
silly Mjrrtle, Tom Buchanan's mistress, acts like a child over the
purchase of a puppy and sulks like a petulant child.
Reading Tender Is the Might, one is remanded again of the importance of youth to "successful" living in the Ti-renties. Nicole, in an
analysis of her physical attractiveness at the age of tx^enty-nine,
decides that she will "do" as well as anyone she knox^.
The only physical disparity betx-reen Nicole at present and the
Nicole of five years before X7as simply that she was no longer a
young girl. But she was enough ridden by the current youth
worship, the moving pictures xdth their myriad faces of girlchildren, blandly represented as carrying on the work and wisdom
of the world, to feel a jealousy of youth.^06
K-ck makes a spectacle of himself trying a lifting trick on an aquaplane as an attem.pt to impress Rosemary vdth his youthful vitality.
It is a trick he performed xdth ease txro years prior, and he insists
on trying again until everyone else is disgusted and he himself is
angry at his disability. Nicole has already noted the disparity of
age:
"The Divers were older than the others in the boat—the young
people were polite, deferential, but Nicole felt an undercurrent of
'1^0 are these Numbers anyhow? • "^^"^ Idcole also talces a long look at
Rosemary:
"Rosemary was beautiful—her youth xias a shock to Nicole,
who rejoiced, however, that the young girl x-jas less slender by a
63
hairline than herself."^08
^^^
^^ concemed xdth xghat Rosemary xdll
think about his age when he unexpectedly meets her in Rome.
He tried to collect all that might attract her—it was less
than it had been four years ago. Eighteen might look at thirtyfour through a rising mist of adolescence: but tx^renty-txJo ^jould
see thirty-eight xdth disceming clarity.209
But Rosemary tries to belittle the difference in age betvreen her and
Dick. From their first meeting, she does not x-xant to be treated as a
child, xrjhich he often calls her. Even x^hen she is acting like a woman,
however, Rosemary often suddenly reverts back to childishness, and
brings her mother into the picture. Dick is irritated by these occasions.
She also teases him by calling him such names as "Youngster."
Rosemary claims that she is no longer a child but a woman: in proof
whereof she wants to be taken and is: "and xihat had begun xdth a
childish infatuation on a beach was accomplished at last. "2'0
P
Fear of failure was another common fear during the Twenties, for
life was moving at such a fast pace and everyone x-jas succeeding so
remarkably that the lack of self-confidence X7as almost a sin. There
were those, however, xiho, seeing life fly by. xjere afraid that they
did not have the necessary xdngs for that kind of success.J Gatsby had
a fear that tias almost an obsession in his fear of failure to regain
the love of Daisy. He wanted to t u m the clock back five years and
begin again, and he did not seem able to make Daisy understand. He
believed that you could repeat the past:
"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he
said, nodding determinedly. "She'll see." . . . His life had
6k
been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once
return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly.211
Abe North, xriio is a brilliant and precocious musician, seeks
comfort in drink and continues to postpone more serious com.position
after his first success. Nicole reprimands him:
"I can't see x-^hy you've given up about everything." and Abe considers the problem: "I suppose I got bored; and then it was such
a long x-iay to go back in order to get anyx-:here,"212
Later this fear of failure becomes too great for him:
They stood in an uncomfortable little group xieighted dox^n by
Abe's gigantic presence: he lay athwart them like the x^eck of a
galleon, dominating xdth his presence his oxTn X'jeakness and selfindulgence, his narroxmess and bitterness. All of them x-rere
conscious of the solemn digrdty that flox^ed from him. of his
achievement, fra^entar^'-. suggestive, and surpassed. But they
were frightened at his survivant xdll, once a xdll to live,
now become a xdll to die.2''3
Abe's failure is total, even in the event of his death, for he is
beaten to death in a speak-easy, and his family is so humiliated that
they do not vxant the murderer apprehended.
In The Great Gatsby, also, Albert McKisco is forced into a duel
with Tommy Barban by the incessant and insistent talking of his xdfe.
McKisco is so afraid of failure that he has never accomplished anything. He is always planning to xjrite a novel. The dud. is the first
thing he has done in his life, and though he actually goes into it
sick with fear and bolstered by drink, he does manage to meet Barban
and fire the pistol. Later, x>re see McKisco awakened to his oxrm capacities and hximbled and improved by his success in the literary world.
The success x^Ihich he enjoys is a result of the self-respect created by
65
his participation in the duel,
I'anny Schwartz of Th£ Last T:^coon is afraid of failure and commits
suicide.
Jordan Baker, the professional golfer in ^^e Great Gatsby. is
afraid of failure and resorts to cheating. The hero of Th£ Great Gatsby
demonstrates his fear of failure in xdnning Daisy back by his nervousness and extreme behavior rather than the usual calm and poise displayed by him.
In the "Ice Palace," fear of change dominates Sally Carroll
Harper's decisions as she compares the cold ways of the Noriih with
her oxm warm, lazy South. Many of Fitzgerald's flappers fear they xdll
lose the love proffered them and the deference paid to their beauty.
A sense of tragedy is prevalent in most of Fitzgerald's works
as a prophetic cloud of disaster overshadoxdng the gay climate of
their settings. He describes his subject matter:
All the stories that came into my head had a touch of disaster
in them—the lovely young creatures in my novels went to ruin.
the diamond mountains of my short stories blew up. my mdllionaires
were as beautifxil and damned as Thomas Hardy's peasants. In
life these things hadn't happened yet. but I xias pretty sure
living wasn't the reckless, careless business these people
thought.^''^
Fitzgerald observes that his contemporaries are disappearing into the
"dark maw of violence."
A classmate killed his vdfe and himself on Long Island, another
tumbled "accidently" from a skyscraper in Fniladelphia, arx)ther
purposely from a slcyscraper in I.'ew York. One was killed in a
speak-easy in New York and crawled home to the Princeton Club
to die; still another had his skull crushed by a maniac's
in an insane asylum Xv'here he was confined.2''5
These catastrophes did not happen, as one might suppose, during the
great depression but, as Fitzgerald insists, during the boom and to
his friends rather than his acquaintances, fkt times. Fitzgerald
gloried in the era in x^hich he lived; but xrtien in a mood of despair,
it was to him a "hell-hole of life & time, the xrorld,"2l6
The touch of tragedy incorjDorated in Fitzgerald's works is
perhaps not comparable in stature to that in the irork of other
writers of the time. Hemingway, Lexds. and Faulkner xrere x-ndting of
failure and frustration; theirs were stories of useless struggle
against an all-powerful fate which coxild only bring doom.
To Fitz-
gerald, it was the dream that was the important element of life and,
although fxilfiUment of a dream might be thwarted or delayed, the
basic idealism supporting it is always just belovr the surface. Fitzgerald's self-ax^areness aided in his development of tragicomedy of
manners.
He knex-r himself, and he considered his problems and actions
typical of his time. He was able to xndte, therefore, of the tra^
gedies of life while nurturing a dream of better things tomorrow;
this was his personal experience.
CONCLUSION
Cumulative evidence substantiates the claim that Fitzgerald,
although knoxrm as the Golden Boy of the Jazz Age, depicted the decade
as it truly xias. As he describes it: "It x^as an age of miracles, it
xras an age of art. it xms an age of excess, and it was an age of
satire.2"'7 Fitzgerald's post-mortem description of the Txrenties in
"Echoes of the Jazz Age" dated November, 1931, could easily be an
historian's account of the time. The-^rticler however, is merely a
.reviewof the lives of the characters of his oxm short stories and
novels.
The historical perspective that his fiction presents is that
it reflects the American ideals of morality and conduct for an important decade. He describes the ascension of m.aterialism to the national
throne.
Fitzgerald's vivid and accurate accounts of A^ierican life in the
small tox-m, on the college campus, in New York, in the South, and
even abroad are thus so typical that historians quote Fitzgerald's
fiction in support of the facts which they present. Tae frenzied timies
gave Fitzgerald the basic themes for his vrriting. and, in developing
them, Fitzgerald is, in effect, recordin2 the details of the times
for posterity, accurately and realistically.
Fitzgerald portrays
Josephine, the perfect flapper; Dick Divers, the American x.-hose soul
is for sale; Gatsby. the American XTho believes money xdll buy everything; Tom Buchanan, the American who trusts explicitly in the power
67
6Q
of his wealth; Ifyrtle Wilson, the American woman whose taste for
the things money can buy results in infidelity; Jordan Baker, xrho
has attained fashionable apathy to the extent of being amoral; Daisy
Buchanan and Nicole Warren, examples of mercenary American women x:ho
have reached the extent of being fatally irresponsible,
Fitzgerald has said that he could not disassociate a man from
his work; neither can Fitzgerald be disassociated from his literary
efforts. Autobiographical or not. Fitzgerald's xwdtings have proved
to be the most lucid representation of the life and times of America
during the Tx-renties. The scope of his subject matter covers a
cross-section of American life—one too broad to be a false illusion
created by a lone writer, regardless of his literary ability or
popularity. Indeed, Fitzgerald portrays the facets of the Ti^enties
which which he v^as most familiar, and he has^ chosen to depict the
more colorful and spectacular phases of the times. He has remained
true xdth a Jamesian fidelity to reality, and cannot be taken to task
for any short-comings or limitations as an historian. His picture of
the period is a true image as he saw it and lived it.
NOTES
Marvin Barrett, The Years Between (Boston. I962), Foreword,
^Ibid,. p. 21.
.r. ON ^'^^ American Twenties, ed, John K, Hutchens (Philadelphia.
1952;, p, 15.
^Barrett, Introduction.
5The American T\jenties. p. 14.
^Barrett, p, 23.
7Frederick Lexds Allen, The Big Chanpie (New York, 1952), p. 131,
^Frederick Lexds Allen, Only Yesterday (New York, 195?), p. 9^9lbid., p. 90.
''O'The American Txjenties. p, I 7 ,
''''William E. Leuchtenburg, The P e r i l s of Prosperity (Chicago,
1958). p. 3.
"•^JameF Truslow Adams, The March of Democracy;
the U, S , . Vol. IV (New York, 1933), p. 272,
''^The American Tx-renties. p, 1 4 ,
I^Allen. The Big Change, p. 133.
. ''5Allen. Only Yesterday, p. 90.
I^The Amerdcan Tv-renties, p. 18.
''7Barrett, p , 4 3 ,
^^Ibid., p. 43.
^^Allen, Only Yesterday, p. 103.
^^Allen, Tae Big Change, p. 173.
^"^Allen, Only Yesterday, p, 110,
^^Leuchtenburg, p, I67.
69
A His tor:.;- of
70
23
Allen, Only Yesterday, p . 117.
^ . L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (New York, 1922). p , 194,
B a r r e t t , p , 29.
^ ^ b i d . , p . 30.
^7ibid, , p. 23.
^ ^ b i d . , p . 23.
^ 9 i b i d , . p . 25,
30lbid, , p ,
^,
31' The_ Anerican Tvfenties. p , I 6 ,
-^^Leuchtenburg, p , 9.
^^Adams, p , 231,
- ' l e u c h t e n b u r g , p , 150,
^^encken. p. I75,
36Adams, p . 305.
37Barrett. p , 57.
•^^The American Tvrenties. p . 33*
3^The Making of American History/, Vol, I I . Donald Sheehan ed,
(New York. 195^;. p . 790.
40I b i d , , p . 791.
41I b i d . , p . 766.
^ ^ I b i d . , p , 767.
^^Allen. Only_Yesterday, p. 97.
^Glenway Wescott, "The Moral of Scott Fitzgerald" in Tae
Crack Up by F*, Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Edmund Wilson (New York, 1956)
p. 33^* (This essay appeared in The jlex^ Renublic of February 17,
19^1. just after Fitzgerald's death,T~
71
-^Paul Rosenfeld, " F . S c o t t F i t z g e r a l d , " i n Tne Crack-Un by
F . S c o t t F i t z g e r a l d , ed. Ed-und Wilson (New York, 1956), p . 313.
( T h i s e s s a y appeared i n Paul R o s e n f e l d ' s Men Seen: Twent--?o^jr
Modern A u t h o r s , t h e p r e f a c e t o which i s dated Febraar:,^ 14, 1925.)
46 m.
Typical of critical acclaim following Fitzgerald's
death are the folloxdng statements:
John Dos Passes: It's the quality of detaching itself from
its period vjhile embodying its period that marks a piece of xrork
as good, I xsTiuld have no quarrel with any critic who examined
Scott Fitzgerald's work and declared that in his opinion it did
not detach itself from its period. l^fy answer would be that my '
opinion was different, (Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, p, 333.)
John K. Hutchens: The first of the Tvrenties' vrriters of enduring importance fully to 'arrive' after the decade began, he
seemed forever conscious of the speed xdth which time flox^ed past
him. And now, sooner or later, any consideration of the Twenties
must come back to him and linger there. Their pace and despairs,
their successes and self-induced tragedies filled in almost too
perfect measure the life of one x-xhose first novel was a new generation's declaration of independence, (The American Tv/enties, p, 27,)
Marxdn Barrett: Of all the people x^jho knew both Paris and
Hollywood in the Years Between, none bridged the gap betx:een the
tvro cities so significantly as Fitzgerald, seeing the beauty of
one, the fascination of the other, seeking out their weaknesses,
recording them, taking advantage of them, underlining them with
his own, (The Years Between, p. 55»)
^7Arthur Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise (Boston, 1951). p. 10.
^Ibid.. p, 86,
^The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed, Andrew Turnbull
(New York. I963), p, 139, (Hereinafter referred to as Letters.)
50lbid., p, 376.
51Ibid,, p, 376,
^^Mizener. p, 90,
53lbid.. p, 82.
5^bid.. p, 52.
55lbid,. p. 213,
72
56Letters. p. 423,
57Mizener, p, 49.
^ F , Scott Fitzgerald, Three Novels of F, Scott Fitzgerald
(New York, 1953). Introduction to Tae Great Gatsby, llalcolm Covdey,
p. ix. (Hereinafter referred to as Three Novels,)
^^Charles E. Shain, F, Scott Fitzgerald (Minneapolis, I96I), p. 31.
^OMatthew J, Bmiccoli, The Com-oosition of Tender Is the Ili'^ht
(Pittsburgh. 1963), p. 125,
^
^^Mizener, p, 292,
62
Allen, Only Yesterday, p, 90.
^3sergio Perosa, The Art of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Ann Arbor, I965).
p. 42.
^ ^ , Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (Mew York, 1920),
p. 15.
^5ibid., p. 20,
^^bid,. p. 65.
^^Ibid,. p. 99.
^8perosa, p. I6.
^^Alfred Kazin. On Native Grounds (New York, 19^2), p, 36,
70Letters. p. 377.
'^"'itatL.. p. ^ 9 .
'^^The Crack Up, p , 15*
7 3 L e t t e r s . p , 145.
7 ^ . S c o t t F i t z g e r a l d , B^bvlon Re-/isited and Other S t o r i e s (New
York, i 9 6 0 ) , p , 167. ( H e r e i n a f t e r r e i e r r e a to as £ a c - i o n . )
7 5 F , S c o t t F i t z g e r a l d , Flanners and Philosophers (New York. 1920).
p. 76.
7^Fitzgerald. Babylon, p. 214.
73
77,,.
Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosonhers. p. I73.
^ ^ e t t e r s . p , 530.
'^Perosa. p. 32,
Fitzgerald. Babylon, p, 30.
81
Letters, p, 55,
82
Fitzgerald, Babylon, p. 36,
^^itzgerald. Three Novels: The Great Gatsby. p. 30.
^^bid., p. 32.
^^Ibid.. p. 39.
86
Ibid,, p. 45,
87James E. Miller, Jr., F_^ Scott Fitzgerald. His Art and His
Technique (New York. 1964). p, 146.
88perosa. p, 124.
^^Fitzgerald. Three_._Novels: Tender Is the Night, p. 201
9Qibid.. p. 231.
9^Ibid., p. 332.
92ibid.. p. 33^93ibid.. p. 312.
9^bid.. p. 322.
95ibid,. p. 176.
9^Shain, p. 25,
^^Ta^e Crack UP. p, 320,
98Letters. p, 590,
^^Shain, p. 6.
^°^b)id.. p. 7.
7^
01L e t t e r s , p . 312,
02E r n e s t Hemingx>ray, The Short S t o r i e s of Ernest Heminr-wa-.'
(New York. 1938), p , 7 2 .
03S h a i n . p , 7 ,
°\
e t t e r s , p . 311,
^ ^ F i t z g e r a l d , Three_Kovels;
Tae Great Gatsby. p . i x ,
Q^bid.
^^Mizener, p. 127,
^^itzgerald. Three Novels: The Great Gatsby, p, xi,
^^Mizener. p. 73.
10
Ibid., p, 78,
11Ibid,, p, 9^.
^^Ibid.. p, 123.
'-^Letters, p, 333.
% b i d . . p, 329.
"'^Fitzgerald, Tnree Novels; The Great Gatsby, p, xii.
1 ^Letters, p. '+57.
^7ibid,. p, 529.
""Fitzgerald, Three Novels: The Last Tycoon, p. 141,
''^Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosoi^hers, p, I66,
^^Ibid.. p. 164.
^ ' ' F i t z g e r a l d , Babylori, p . 113.
^ ^ I b i d . . p , 129.
2 3 i b i d . , p . 77.
75
^ % b i d . . p . 105,
^25ibid
p. 109.
^2^bid
p. 187.
^27mz ^^316, Three Novels:
123.Ibid
p . 15.
''!lbid
p. 91.
^30_Ibid
p . 113.
^31^Ibid
p. 11^.
132_ibid
p . 6.
^33ibid
p . 70.
^ 3 ^
p . 64.
135ibid
p.
136ibid
p . 80,
137ibid
p. 81.
^38ibid
p . 136.
The Greax Gatsby. p . 6.
^.
^39ibid
140
See Malcolm Cowley's Introduction to Tender.Is the Night in
F i t z g e r a l d ' s Three Novels, p, x i i .
''^''Fitzgerald, Three Novels:
Tender Is the Night, p . 22.
142
I b i d . , p . 28,
143I b i d . , p, 45.
^ ^ ^ \ e t t e r s . p, 442.
''^5Fitzgerald, Three Novels: Tender Is the Night, p, 54,
^ ^ b i d . , p, 56.
76
^^Tlbid-
p. 151.
^^ibid.
p. 193.
^^Ibid.
p, 152.
150
Ibid.
p. 173.
151 Ibid.
p. 324,
1 ^
Letters, p, 102,
^3F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (New York, 1920), p. 45.
^^^bid.. p, 76,
''55Allen, Only Yesterday, p, 9I,
^ ^ ^ t t e r s , p. 158.
1 '57
-^/F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and the Da-^.ned (New York,
1922). p, 83. (Hereinafter referred to as Tae ::^e£utiful.)
^%Iizener. p, 49,
''^Fitzgerald, Babylon, p. 121,
^^^Ibid.. p. 55*
Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, p. 139.
^^3ibid.. p. 73.
^^Fitzgerald. The Beautiful, p, 81,
^ ^^Ibid,, p, ^^.
"'^F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Stories of F. Scott Fit2-:ergld (New
York, 1953), p. 251, (Hereinafter referred to as Tae Stories,)
^^'^Fitzgerald. Babylon, p, 122.
^^^Ibid., p. 166.
77
169
Fitzgerald. Tae Stories, p. 372.
Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, p, II7.
^'^''ibid.. p, 26,
^72ibid,, p. 135.
''73Fitzgerald. Babylon, p. S^.
•^^itzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, p, 26.
'''^^Ibid., p. 35.
"• 7Fitzgerald. The Stories, p. 368,
^7Fj_tzgerald. Flappers and Philosophers, p. 129,
''^Spitzgerald, The Beautiful, p. 95.
'^Fitzgerald. Flappers and Philosophers, p. 35.
''^^Fitzgerald, Babylon, p. 121,
181
Fitzgerald. Flappers and Philosophers, p, 18.
^Q^Ibid.. p. 132.
''^3ti'itzgerald. The Beautiful, p , 64.
''84pitzgerald. Flappers and Philosophers, p . 121,
^ ^ ^ b i d . , p . 58.
^ Q ^ e t t e r s . p. I58.
^Q7The Crack UP, p . 1^2,
' ' ^ ^ L e t t e r s , p , 96.
"•^^Allen, The Big Change, p, 136,
''^^Letters, p, 414.
^^^Ibid.. p. 32^.
"•^^Andrew Turnbull. Scott Fitzgerald (New York. 1962). p. 133.
^^3The Crack UP. p . I30.
^ ^ \ b i d . , p . 141,
^95ibid.
p . 132.
196'Ibid.
p . 149,
197I b i d .
p . 151.
I98ibid.
p . 169.
''99Fitzgerald. Babylon, p . I35,
200' i b i d . , p . 186.
201
202
F i t z g e r a l d , Tae S t o r i e s , p . 253.
Perosa, p . 37.
203I b i d . , p . 4 1 ,
^ ^ ^ i t z g e r a l d , The
Beautiful, p . 43.
^05Fitzgerald. Three I b v e l s :
Tn-^ Great Gn.tsby. 7. 1'
206- [bid.. Tender I s the Night, p, 309.
^Q^ibid.. p . 301.
203g b i d . . p . 300.
209' i b i d . , p . 225,
210' i b i d . , p . 2 3 1 .
2''''ibid.. The Great Gatsby, p. S4,
^''^Ibid.. Tender Is the Night, p, 143,
^''3ibid., p. 1 ^ ,
^''Vne Crack Up, p, 87.
^''^Ibid., p. 20,
^''^Letters, p. 328.
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