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FITZGERALD'S NEW WOMEN: HARBINGERS OF CHANGE

BY

Sarah Beebe Fryer

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan.State'University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1988

5I7'7‘7C‘70

ABSTRACT
FITZGERALD'S NEW WOMEN: HARBINGERS OF CHANGE
BY
Sarah Beebe Fryer

F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories and novels offer a
vivid glimpse into the lives of upper middle class men and
women during the two decades between World War I and World War
II. Since he lived and wrote in an era of rapid social
change--particularly for women--his work affords unusual
insight into the frustrations and longings of American women
as they moved slowly towards a greater degree of freedom in
the first half of the twentieth century.

Fitzgerald's biographers and critics have commented
frequently on the autobiographical nature of his literary
works, often citing his wife Zelda as the prototype for his
flamboyant women characters, who are frequently dismissed
somewhat casually as shallow or selfish young women who in one
way or another destroy the men who court them. Although scant
effort has been made to analyze the motivation of women
characters in Fitzgerald's novels, these women struggle openly
with “the limitations their society imposes on them, even as

they engage in the raucous social life Fitzgerald made famous

among the "flapper" generation.

Close textual analysis of the principal women characters
in Fitzgerald's five novels reveals his intuitive grasp of the
confusion many women experienced in the midst of the American
society's transition from a strict patriarchy t0>a greater
degree of equality between the sexes. As Fitzgerald presents
romantic relationships, he demonstrates a seemingly perpetual
power struggle between men and women. He traces a trend
toward sexual experimentation, and yet he acknowledges--
through his women characters--that economic dependence on men
prevented.many women from being truly liberated, Perhaps
unwittingly, he also illustrates that women's "madness" can
result from male exploitation and emotional abuse.

The principal women characters in 1111: Sid: 91 W
(1919): 1113 W and DQ131125: (1922): In: 9.11:3; men
(1925) , Tender I: HIE 1119111 (1934) , and In: Less 119.921} (1940)

reflect the conflicts of women in Fitzgerald's transitional
era. Encouraged to aspire towards women's liberation, they
are simultaneously denied the tools--professional education,
work, economic resources, and respect--to declare genuine

independence.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The completion of a doctoral dissertation is never easy. A
number of friends, relatives, and associates contributed to my
achievement of this goal.

First and foremost, special thanks should go to my graduate
advisor, Linda Wagner-Martin, whose support and encouragement
never faltered. Her painstaking review of my early drafts
assisted me immeasurably during the process of revision.

Particular thanks are also due to the other members of my
graduate committee: to Barry Gross, whose early recognition
of my interest in Fitzgerald's women contributed to my
selection of this topic: to Cathy Davidson, whose prompt and
enthusiastic responses to my correspondence while she was in
Japan fueled my progress; and to Jay Ludwig, whose cheerful
confidence in my writing ability kept me motivated.

Thanks should also go to Joyce Ladenson and the late R. Glenn
Wright, who recognized and nurtured my interest in reassessing
women's images in American literature.

In addition, I value the generous feedback contributed by
Scott Donaldson and Jackson Bryer, as they responded to
portions of my work-in-progress. Their respect and
encouragement meant much to me.

Thanks should also go to friends whose personal or
professional support helped me complete this project: Phil
and Pam Gardner, Maria Bruno-Holley, Carla Soliz, Roderick
Cotton, and my many colleagues at Placement Services.

Above all, special appreciation is due to my children, Darcy
and Zachary, whose optimism and innate respect for learning
were a constant source of inspiration.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I Introduction

11 Romantic Love: The Luxury No Woman Could
Afford m 5.119 91; Paradise

111 A Beauty Damned: The Stubborn Integrity of
Gloria Gilbert Patch

IV Beneath the Mask: The Plight of Daisy Buchanan

V Nicole Warren Diver and Alabama Beggs Knight:
Women on the Threshold of Freedom

VI Aftermath of Betrayal: Incest, Madness, and
Transference in mm 15 the Eight

VII Uncertain Futures: Fitzgerald’s Vision of Women

in 111:. Last 119.9211
Notes

Works Cited

ii

33

53

78

103

130

172
196

207

CHAPTER I

Introduction

F. Scott Fitzgerald lived and wrote in an era of momentous
social change, particularly for upper middle-class American
women, and he was empathetically alert to the revolution
taking place all around him. Many critics have noted that
Fitzgerald.had an uncanny knack for recording social history
in his stories and.novels, which reflect the slowly shifting
status of women.during the two decades between‘World.War I and
World War II. Fitzgerald's chief subject, of course, was
romance-ébut in his painstaking depiction of the interplay
between men and women, he incidentally amassed and preserved
an impressive array of perceptions of gender-related concerns
characteristic of his era. ‘Viewed singly or as a group, his
five novels now afford a compelling‘vision of the social,
sexual, political, and economic'milestones.hurdled.by'American
women in their quest for emancipation from the control of
patriarchal traditions following the First World War.

Much.has been written about Fitzgerald's penchant for
basing his literary characters on people he knew, and it is
logical to assume that the issues and conflicts that dominate
the attention of his fictitious characters were in fact on the

1

2
minds of his contemporaries. Indeed, the timeliness of his
subject matter contributed in a major way to his immediate
popularity as a novelist with the publication of 11115 Side 9;
m in 1920. Throughout his career he was keenly aware
of the changing values, lifestyles, and aspirations of members
of his generation, and he chronicled his observations in his
fiction. Malcolm Cowley notes that:

Fitzgerald never lost a quality that very few writers
are able to acquire: a sense of living in history.
Manners and morals were changing all through his life and
he set himself the task of recording the changes. These
were revealed to him, not by statistics or news reports,

but in terms of living characters, and the characters were
revealed by gestures, each appropriate to a certain year.

(A second filming. 30)

Fitzgerald's interest in history was complemented by his
interest in women. It seems likely that his own tendency
toward womanizing may have contributed to his unusual aware-
ness of the status and behavior of women in the 19203 and
19308. As Scott Donaldson in £09]. £91: L91; characterizes
Fitzgerald's interactions with women:

In groups, Fitzgerald may have preferred men, but he
was very much a ladies' man himself. He talked their
language. He was sensitive to shades of meaning and half-
concealed feelings. He knew how to flatter. He paid
attention when women talked. He treated them with the
courtly manners of an earlier age. And of course they
responded. (59)

As women he encountered in daily living reciprocated his
interest, Fitzgerald was undoubtedly exposed more and more to
their points of view. Naturally, what he learned inadvertent-

ly from real women influenced his development of female

characters in his fiction. In fact, James Mellow attributes

3
the ”vitality" of Fitzgerald's "heroines" at least in.part to
his "sharp-eyed" observations regarding "their style, their
clothes, their conversation," and even "their techniques with
men" (IngeneeguLiyee, 11). Similarly, Brian Way points out
that "Fitzgerald recognized, sooner than anyone else, that the
nature of [women's] advance had changed radically with the
coming of the Jazz
Age" (10).

But Fitzgerald's perceptions regarding the confusing
status of women.may actually be rooted all the way back in his
childhood, well before the onset of the decade of the 19208.
His notes reflect a poignant memory of his mother, "always
‘waiting in waiting-rooms an hour early, pulled forward by an
irresistible urge of boredom and vitality” (The 9:323:92:
173). In much the same way, his female characters--Rosalind
inThisfldeefEamdise. Gloria inTheBeautimlananmned.
and Daisy in The great, gems-are often affected by ”irresis-
tible urges of boredom and vitality;" iMoreover, according to
Fitzgerald, changing attitudes during the Victorian era
resulted in ”dignity under suffering" becoming "a quality only
women were supposed to exhibit in life or fiction" (green;gp,
208). Both Nicole in Tender Ie the High; and Kathleen in {the
Lee; M, who are more mature--and more deeply troubled--
than.many of Fitzgerald's earlier heroines, often exhibit
‘their integrity and.dignity in the face of emotional hardship.

Indeed, whatever its origin, Fitzgerald's recognition of both

4
the "irresistible urge of boredom and vitality" and "dignity
under suffering" as important aspects of the lives of women in
his era surfaces again and again throughout his fiction.

In addition to being an astute observer of the events and
lives that surrounded him, Fitzgerald--like most writers--was
also an avid reader. His personal correspondence reveals not
only what he read but also the ways he responded to it. Among
his favorite authors were several who examined women's social
condition in some detail. For example, he read Theodore
Dreiser's Sister gaggle (1900) with considerable attention and
enthusiasm, for in a 1924 letter to Maxwell Perkins he ranked
Dreiser's character Hurstwood alongside his own Tom Buchanan
as one of the three best literary depictions of a male
character (Turnbull, Legere, 172). Similarly, he had
enormous respect for Sherwood Anderson, whom he once described
as ”one of the very best and finest writers in the English
language today" (M, 187): he particularly appreciated
Anderson's Winesburg stories, which he "waited for one by one
in the £11313 3911331" (Lestere, 194) , and which include the
vision of "Tandy," who might well be viewed as a prototype for
the New Woman of the postwar era.1 Fitzgerald also rated
Willa Cather as one of the outstanding writers of his era: her
narrative method in A Lee; Ledy (1923) many even have in-
fluenced his own in me mg; m (1925) . 2 And he admired
the works of Edith Wharton, whose aging debutante Lily Bart in
The Henge 91 m (1905) has much in common with his own

5

bright but insolvent women characters like Eleanor in Thie
age 91 W (1920) , who laments the fact that she is
"'tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony'" despite her
awareness that she has "'the brains to do everything'" (237).

It is interesting to note as well that Fitzgerald's 1931
essay entitled "Echoes of the Jazz Age" includes a brief,
satirical literary history of the 19205. In it, Fitzgerald
seeks to "trace some of the revelations" of the decade. These
”revelations" concern social and sexual situations which he
deems both harmless and "familiar" to his generation:

We begin with the suggestion that Don Juan leads an
interesting life (lumen, 1919): then we learn that
there's a lot of sex around if we only knew it (W,

the, 1920) , that adolescents lead very amorous lives
(This Sige 91 m. 1920) that there are a lot of
neglected Anglo-Saxon words (ulyeses, 1921) , that older
people don't always resist sudden temptations (mm,
1922) , that girls are sometimes seduced without being
ruined (filming Tenth, 1922) ,that glamorous English ladies
are often promiscuous (The green net, 1924), that in fact
they devote most of their time to it (The m, 1926) ,

that it's a damn good thing too (Leg! Wen: Men.
1928) , and finally that there are abnormal variations (The

Hell 2f Lenelinees. 1928 and Sodom and mm 1929) -

(In: W: 15-174
While Fitzgerald casually pokes fun at the progressively more
candid literary treatments of human sexuality, he simul-
taneously identifies one of the most pervasive and influential
factors that contributed to the sexual revolution of his era:
women's ever-increasing assumption of jurisdiction over their
own bodies before, during, and after marriage. Relative

sexual liberation was one of the most clear-cut victories of

the New Woman of Fitzgerald's generation. As his novels and

6
his own marriage reflect, other liberties sought by women
often proved far more elusive.

As Fitzgerald read about and interacted with young women
who aspired to a greater degree of personal autonomy than
their society yet allowed, he inevitably incorporated some of
their aspirations and arguments in his literary works. Women
in America gained the right to vote in 1920, the same year
that Thie age 91 W was published. They had been
dabbling with other liberties--smoking, drinking, experiment-
ing with sex--since the start of the twentieth century.
Despite suffrage and devil-may-care social attitudes, however,
women of Fitzgerald's generation remained economically
dependent on men. Particularly in his early novels, Fitz-
gerald draws young women who dream of a greater degree of
liberation and financial autonomy than is actually within
their grasp, given the constraints of their "female” educa-
tions and their opinionated social circles: they marry for
security, so they naturally predicate their selection of
prospective husbands in part upon a man's financial prospects.
In his later novels, Tenger Te ghe E19113; and The 1&5]; m,
Fitzgerald portrays working for a living as a genuine pos-
sibility for women of his milieu, but he couches the option in
distinctly unsavory terms: women who channel their energies
into intellectual or professional-~rather than social or
domestic--pursuits do so at the risk of losing their feminini-

ty, and suffer the consequences of loneliness and mental

7
illness as a direct result of their willingness to "'challenge
men to battle'" (Tender, 184).

Fitzgerald's principal women characters embody--or at
least show the potential to develop--the exact qualities
Sherwood Anderson's creative vision of "Tandy" outlines as
desirable in the coming New Woman. The very name "Tandy"
suggests the possibility of existing in tandem with another,
and women in Fitzgerald's novels begin to demonstrate the will
and capability to live in tandem with men--as separate, equal
selves rather than as subordinates. They assert their
independent wills and prove themselves "strong and courage-
ous," willing—-almost--to "venture anything." By daring to
try to develop selves in their own right, they begin to
cultivate options in their lives--chiefly the authority to
choose rather than merely settle for romantic and marital
partners. As they try to exercise the freedom to do what is
right for themselves, they demonstrate their potential for
being "strong to be loved, " rather than dependent and vul-
nerable. They resist surrendering their fates to the whims of
others, even though they are not consistently successful at
it: they take active, not passive, roles in everything that
concerns their spiritual, emotional, and economic welfare.

And yet these women who would be whole are often pathetic
in their apparent lack of the internalized self-esteem that
would be necessary for them to be able to realize the dreams

they are capable of dreaming. They are a curious blend of

8

confidence and uncertainty, for they live on the threshold of
a new era and still feel the influence of the old order, which
stubbornly insists on subordinating them tO'menn They crave
the unconditional acceptance that is every child's birthright,
but the society they live in judges themiharshly for daring to
view themselves as separate from and equal tO'men, Therefore,
they try very hard to accept themselves for'who they are and
to enjoy their lives to the fullest as they proudly--even
defiantly--struggle to»develop and.preserve their integrity.

Fitzgerald's era.was indeed a confusing time for'women in
America. On the one hand, they were beginning to perceive the
possibilities of autonomy, self-actualization, and egalitarian
relationships with.men: on the other hand, to strike out on
their own--without the tools or experience genuinely to fend
for themselves--still entailed tremendous risks of economic
disaster and social ostracism, Sometimes they recognized
their need for'work.and.money of their own.but.had no earthly
idea of how to obtain them. They feared alienating family and
friends. .And, in the words of psychologists Violet Franks and
Esther Rothblum, ". . . how many women are so strong that they
can oppose societal pressures and cope with emotional cost?"
(10).

The women of Fitzgerald's acquaintance--and, subsequently,
his novels-~were brought up, after all, in the‘Western
tradition--"trained," as Tillie Olson explains, "to place

others' needs first, to feel these needs as their own," and to

9
attempt‘to reap their "satisfaction" from "making it possible
for others to use their abilities" (17) . Unquestioning, self-
effacing support is what Fitzgerald desired from his wife: and
his heroes expected no less from theirs. Not surprisingly,
the typical social condition of Fitzgerald's heroines strongly
resembles the primary conflict of his wife Zelda's life, as
summarized by Phyllis Chesler in Wenen end Madneee:

The combination of nurturance deprivation and
restrictions upon their uniqueness or heroism is deadly.
They cannot survive as just "women, " and they are not
allowed to survive as human or creative beings. (30-31)

Young women in his fiction, like Gloria Gilbert Patch, who
longs to become an actress for want of any other professional
purpose or training in her life, and Nicole Warren Diver, who
lives unhappily in the shadow of her husband's career while
dreaming of work of her own, demonstrate the frustration of
women whose dreams and potential for being "everything" are
thwarted by the expectations of those around them.

Although the morals and manners exhibited by the charac-
ters in Fitzgerald's novels reflect a genuine shift in the
values. of American society following World War I, the expecta-
tions imposed on women during that era did not change as
rapidly as behaviors. Consequently, the Fitzgerald women
reflect the internal conflicts characteristic of a time when,
according to Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, author of W
920%:

Despite . . . basic social, economic, and demographic

changes . . . the family and gender-role socialization
remained relatively inflexible. It is quite possible that

10

many women experienced a significant level of anxiety when

forced to confront or adapt in one way or another to these

changes. (199-200)
Over and over again Fitzgerald's principal female characters
demonstrate that they are recipients of mixed messages about
their roles and rights in life. They behave selfishly,
impulsively, and inconsistently as a direct result of their
fundamental uncertainty about their purpose in life--or,
indeed, whether they have any real purpose at all.

Fitzgerald's novels are remarkable in that they capture
the confusion characteristic of many of the women of his
"lost," transitional generation--women who, like Zelda, were
"the American girl living the American dream" and very nearly
"became mad within it" (Milford, xii). Fitzgerald's women
characters are spirited, ambitious, and outspoken: they want
many things . . . and critics are all too prone to focus on
their material wants, which are easy to identify, rather than
their spiritual, intellectual, and emotional desires, which
demand closer analysis. Above all, Fitzgerald's women long
for respect, especially self-respect, which is contingent upon
developing a sense of self and a sense of purpose in life.
These are the things that they struggle the most to own, and
they are the things that most consistently elude their grasp.

Although vast quantities of literary criticism focusing on
Fitzgerald's novels have been produced over the approximately
seventy years since he began his career, relatively little of

it has dealt specifically with his portraits of women. In

11
general, his male protagonists evoke more commentary: his
female characters, as might be expected for peripheral,
subordinate beings, are usually mentioned only in passing.
Biographers like Le Vot, Turnbull, Bruccoli, and Mellow are
adept at pointing out parallels between what they perceive as
character flaws in the fictional women and what Fitzgerald
perceived as Zelda's shortcomings. Poor housekeeping skills,
vanity, material acquisitiveness, stubbornness, restlessness,
purposelessness, boredom, and attention-getting antics are
among the many traits and behaviors often cited in reference
to Zelda and the women in Fitzgerald's fiction.

To a great extent, the women tend to be viewed in terms of
the roles they play in men's lives. Brian Way, for example,
observes that, "Fitzgerald's young heroines assert their
independent wills and exploit their sexual attractiveness with
complete impunity" (11) . And James Tuttleton, who credits
"Fitzgerald and other young postwar writers" with creating
"versions of what might be called 'the young American bitch, "'
asserts that "Fitzgerald's memorable heroes all suffer at the
hands of rich, bored, sophisticated, insincere women" (279,
281).

Significantly, however, critical references to Fitz-
gerald's women characters are not always so negative. Pamela
Farley ventures simply that, "Fitzgerald never seemed to
comprehend the female as a fully human person" (226). And

Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin even goes so far as to say that

12
"most of Fitzgerald's women have a down-to-earth practicality
and a non-romantic view of life which make them far more
enduring than his heroes" (466) .

There is some evidence to suggest that Fitzgerald himself
was confused in his expectations for women, both in real life
and in his fiction. In a 1922 New York MID-119 E91151 inter-
view conducted by Marguerite Mooers Marshall, Fitzgerald
boldly proclaimed:

"Our American women are leeches. They're an utterly
useless fourth generation trading on the accomplishments
of their pioneer great-grandmothers. They simply dominate
the American man." (Bruccoli and Bryer, Mm, 256)

Even as he denounced American women openly for what he
perceived to be their idleness and domineering behavior, he
expressed a nostalgic yearning for a return to the romantic
traditions of an earlier day. In the same interview, he
declared that "'just being in love--doing it well, you know--
is work enough for a woman'" (258) . Apparently, Fitzgerald
held conflicting views of what it meant--or should have
meant--to be a woman in his era. While he considered it
appalling for women to be so "'utterly useless'" as to have no

"'accomplishments'" of their own, he simultaneously regarded a

woman's chief purpose in life as "'being in love'" with a man.

In his fiction, his confusion sometimes manifests itself
through a male character's apparent quest for perfect spiri-
tual/romantic bonding, which winds up being tainted somehow by

existence in a material world. As Scott Donaldson notes, in

l3
Fitzgerald's mind and fiction, "love and.money became almost
inextricably entangled" (£991.£9I5LQ!§. 75). Yet it would be
unwise to focus excessively on the role of money in the lives
of Fitzgerald's female characters. :Money is a concern for
them in direct proportion to how'much it was a concern for
Fitzgerald.himself} The New'Women.he portrays with noteworthy
ambivalence are often equally concerned about other factors
that affect their social condition.

While Leslie Fiedler refers to Fitzgerald's charac-
terizations of women when he discusses the "goddesses" and
"bitches" (314) who inhabit a great deal of modern.American
literature, Mary McCay pinpoints Fitzgerald's depiction of
women more precisely:

Towards his women, Fitzgerald.has.a highly critical

attitude that often leaves them stripped to a core that is

finally lacking in enduring values. He is harder on them
than he is on his men. He judges them more severely--as
if he secretly expected.more of them at the outset but put
them in a*world that allowed them no theater for growth.

They are stunted from.the start by Fitzgerald's expecta-

tions on the one hand and by the world they live in on the

other. (311)

.Although.MCCay amply supports her view that Fitzgerald
"judges" women "severely," she is slightly amiss when she
declares that he "put" these women "in a world that allowed
them no theater for growth." After all, Fitzgerald did not
really create the world his characters inhabit: he re-created
it out of his observations of the world around.himm Because

his novels are firmly rooted in social history, it is impor-

tant to assess his characters' attitudes not solely on the

14
basis of Fitzgerald's artistic control and expression but also
on the basis of their moment in history.

Frederick Lewis Allen's iny Xeeterdey, which is subtitled
"An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties" and was first
published in 1931, complements Fitzgerald's perspective on the
social changes that were taking place so rapidly in the
postwar decade. As Allen examines the impact of various
changes on the lives of American women, two main issues stand
out: women's new prospects for working outside the home, and
a general heightening of social activity, including sexual
experimentation. Allen also discusses the growing popular
awareness of and interest in modern psychoanalytic theory,
with particular reference to Freud. All of these concerns are
woven into the texts of Fitzgerald's novels.

Allen introduces the subject of women and work following a
general discussion of the "growing independence of the
American woman" (79) , with an emphasis on women's suffrage and
the increase in women's leisure time afforded by the mechani-
zation of many traditional domestic chores (washing, ironing,
cleaning) and the accessibility of mass-produced food items
like bread. Since women in the 19203 suddenly had fewer
taxing, routine demands on their time, they were--for the
first time--in a position seriously to contemplate pursuing
professional endeavors of their own. And clearly the prospect
of work outside the home--and the relative freedom an indepen-

dent livelihood could provide--appealed to many women. In

15
fact, Allen attributes much of the social and sexual revolu-
tion of the 1920s to women's newly discovered potential to
obtain paid employment:

With the job--or at least the sense that the job was
a possibility--came a feeling of comparative economic
independence. With the feeling of economic independence
came a slackening of husbandly and parental authority . .
. . Yet even the job did not provide the American woman
with the complete satisfaction which the management of a
mechanized home no longer furnished. She still had
energies and emotions to burn: she was ready for the
revolution. (81)

Other, more recent historians--particularly those with a
feminist perspective--develop the role of economics in women's

quest for equality more thoroughly. In a 1976 work entitled
Men, Meney, end Pear, Phyllis Chesler and Emily Jane

Goodman declare ,

For most women, the opportunities to survive through
the acquisition of money are derivative rather than
direct: that is, women do not inherit businesses, or
acquire high-paying jobs. They marry or in some other way
use their looks and their bodies. For most women, some
variation on this theme has been the only option--and
therefore not an option at all. And, interestingly, when
women in marriages or marriage-like situations perform the
work required in keeping themselves and their houses
looking beautiful, and sexual and other services, it is
assumed that they are doing what they want to do: when,
done for money, the same tasks become very declasse. (p.
20)

Paradoxically, therefore, being a flapper or vamp in Fitz-
gerald's day--with all the preoccupation with beauty, fun,
charm, and sexuality that such terms imply--can in actuality

be equated with work in the female tradition. Rosalind in
This Side 91 Penadjge makes this point exquisitely clear when

16
she refers to her beauty and social regimen as "Rosalind,
Unlimited."

Although, as Sandra Gilbert points out, World War I
"represented the first rupture with a socioeconomic history
that had heretofore denied most women chances at first-class
jobs and pay" (204) , the women's movement of Fitzgerald's era
lost considerable momentum shortly after suffrage was won.
Kate Millett, who demonstrates that "the feminist movement" of
the early twentieth century "collapsed in exhaustion,"
attributes its demise in part to "its failure to challenge
patriarchal ideology at a sufficiently deep and radical level
to break the conditioning processes of status, temperament and
role" (85) . In Millett's opinion, female "economic indepen—
dence was consciously as well as unconsciously perceived to be
a direct threat to male authority" (87) . Carroll Smith-
Rosenberg concurs, saying, "The New Women of the 19203 . . .
failed because they lacked the real economic and institutional
power with which to wrest hegemony from men and so enforce
their vision of a gender-free world" (296) .

In Fitzgerald's novels, which are accurate accounts of his
moment in history, "the job"--for most women, at least--
remains primarily in the realm of "possibility," not reality.
Yet several of his principal female characters hint at their
interest in the notion of economic independence. In Thie Side
2,: Paradise, Rosalind cynically describes her social life as a

business enterprise, with marriage as the ultimate deal she

17

expects to close: Clara intimates to Amory that she is
intensely relieved to have inherited enough money not to be
obliged to remarry following the death of her husband: and
Eleanor is outraged to the brink of self-destruction over the
misfortune of her being a "'girl'" and consequently destined
to spend her lifetime married to a man almost certain to
patronize her despite her superior intelligence. In The
W end Damned, Gloria aspires to act but sets aside her
interest in a career in order to placate her husband. In
Tender Te The 111m, Nicole, who is very wealthy, actively
seeks out constructive intellectual pursuits while she is a
patient in Dr. Dohmler's care--with the hope of working
someday as a translator: she later envies her husband his
career and expresses her confusion and concern when his
commitment to his work appears to be flagging. Also in Tender
Te the Night, Fitzgerald presents Rosemary, a young woman who,
her mother proclaims, was "'brought up to work--not especially
to marry'" (40). Even in his work on The Lee; Tyeeen,
Fitzgerald displays his awareness that economic and intellec-
tual independence--or the lack thereof--profoundly shapes
women's interactions with others: in his notes about the
appeal of Kathleen to Stahr, he summarizes, "This girl had a
life--it was very seldom he met anyone whose life did not
depend in some way on him or hope to depend on him" (152) .

While most of Fitzgerald's major women characters merely

daydream about the possibility of developing careers of their

18
own, they actively engage in social and sexual activities
undreamed of by their mothers. Judging by contemporary book
reviews, the shock value of Fitzgerald's revelations about the
flapper generation's morality may have contributed substan-
tially to the instant popularity of Th1: S_j.de e; medjee:
Fitzgerald had touched upon one of the most common and
controversial topics of concern, and he was immediately
heralded as a spokesman for his generation.

According to Allen, the sexual revolution of the 19208
stemmed from a rebellion "expressed not in obscureradical
publications or in soap—box speeches, but right across the
family breakfast table into the horrified ears of conservative
fathers and mothers" (73) . It is therefore no surprise that
the "petting parties" that Fitzgerald describes in Thie 51$:
91 flexedjae are taking place right in family living rooms, and
Mrs. Gilbert in The W end penned confides to Anthony
both that she once came across Gloria "'acting very engaged'"
with a young man in the family home and that Mr. Gilbert is
"'very worried'" about Gloria's dating practices.

In his popular account of the 19208, Allen describes the
old moral code as one in which "women were the guardians of
morality" and "young girls must look forward in innocence
(tempered perhaps with a modicum of physiological instruction)
to a romantic love match which would lead them to living-
happily-ever-after: and until the 'right man' came along . .

allow no male to kiss them." The same code "expected that

19
some men would succumb to the temptation of sex, but only with
a special class of outlawed women: girls of respectable
families were supposed to have no such temptations." In fact,
the post-war sexual liberation movement originated in an
environment in which "boys and girls were permitted large
freedom to work and play together, with decreasing and well-
nigh nominal chaperonage, but only because .... a sort of
honor system*wa8 supplanting supervision by their elders" (73-
74). The "honor system" Allen refers to--combined.with the
freedom.and privacy afforded by the use of the family car--
gave a great.many middle-class young people opportunities to
experiment with sex.

Fitzgerald's novels chart the progression of the social
and sexual revolution of the 19208. {Although.his sexual
references are often vague, his topics include premarital sex,
abortion, infidelity, incest, and cohabitation without
marriage.

While most of Fitzgerald's fictional women are ill-
equipped to declare economic independence from men, a sig-
nificant number of them eagerly seize some degree of sexual
freedom. In fact, by focusing pointedly on his female
characters' increasingly permissive attitudes towards sexuali-
ty--to the virtual exclusion of their yearning for profes-
sional and economic autonomy--Fitzgerald, like many male

spokesmen of his day, essentially misrepresents the central

20
issue of women's rights. In {negrdezly genddee, Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg asserts that in the 19208:

The New Man could portray the New Woman as the enemy
of liberated women because he had redefined the issue of
female autonomy in sexual terms. He divorced women's
rights from their political and economic context. The
daughter's quest for heterosexual pleasures, not the
mother's demand for political power, now personified
female freedom. Linking orgasms to chic fashion and
planned motherhood, male sex reformers, psychologists, and
physicians promised a future of emotional support and
sexual delights to women who accepted heterosexual
marriage--and male economic hegemony. Only the "un-
natural" woman continued to struggle with men for economic
independence and political power. (283)

At least in Fitzgerald's novels, the vast majority of
women opt for marriage instead of seeking economic indepen-
dence, yet the promise of "emotional support" and "sexual
delights" too often proves empty. Three of Fitzgerald's
novels--T.he hematite]. and Damned. The fires: Eaten. and Tender
Te the Nights-focus sharply (though not exclusively) on the
unhappy ramifications of the oppressive influence of women's
marriages on their lives: the other two novels--Th_1e side e:
Eeredjee and The Lee; ern--deal with the often unjust
courtship experiences of women in their romantic involvements
with a variety of men. Sex in Fitzgerald's novels is almost
invariably linked with a power struggle of some sort, and the
women--who, by virtue of their economic dependence, are less
free to assert their autonomous wishes-"predictably wind up
the losers, emotionally if not physically. Although Fitzger-
ald's Dick Diver is clearly patronizing his feminist patient

when he asks if she's "'quite sure [she's] been in a real

21
battle'" (Tender, 184) , the women in all of his novels
consistently have to do battle one way or another in order to
get the men in their lives to take them seriously. The many
battles take their toll--socially, intellectually, emotion-
ally, and psychologically.

What is most remarkable about the sexuality expressed by
Fitzgerald's women characters is their proclivity to assert
themselves unequivocally in matters related to sex, even while
they recognize the constraints their economic condition
imposes on their ultimate degree of personal freedom. Women
in Fitzgerald's last three novels deliberately participate in
or even actively initiate sexual liaisons with men other than
their husbands: Daisy allows Gatsby to "take" her one evening
long before her marriage to Tom Buchanan and then later
resumes the affair by discreetly visiting Gatsby "in the
afternoons" at his mansion: Myrtle becomes Tom's mistress
behind her husband's back: Nicole deliberately sets out to go
to bed with Tommy Barban while she is still married to Dick:
Rosemary propositions Dick despite her friendship with his
wife: and Kathleen, who reveals her extensive sexual ex-
perience through dialogue, urgently initiates intercourse with
Stahr on the floor of his unfinished house even though she is
planning to marry another man. In the earlier novels, Thie
Side 9.1: Paradise and The Beeunfsl and Damned. young women
willingly engage in premarital kissing and petting games even
though they know that such activities can damage their

22

reputations and, consequently, diminish their marital pros-
pects. These young women are acutely aware of the double
standard as it applied to the sexual experimentation charac-
teristic of the 19208. Isabelle in Thje Side er W
resents being haunted by her "desperate past" and reputed to
be a "Speed" whenever she arrives in a new town (62) . Gloria
in The W1 end Qenned has once been thrown over by a boy
who didn't respect girls who were accustomed to being kissed:
she subsequently has difficulty in imposing limits on her
degree of sexual intimacy with other young men she dates,
including Anthony. And, most poignantly of all, Anthony's
young lover at boot camp, Dot, finds herself snubbed by boys
she knew in high school when she encounters them out "walking
with 'nice girls'" (327): Dot, who has forfeited her "techni-
cal purity," recognizes that she is no longer deemed marriage
material (326) . By contrast, however, with the 1925 publica-
tion of The Green Getehx, Fitzgerald casually reveals that
even "nice girls" may now engage in premarital sex: Gatsby is
astonished to discover "how extraordinary a 'nice' girl [can]
be" when he "[takes]" Daisy "one still October night" (149).

Although Fitzgerald often reports his characters' sexual
activities in veiled and archaic terms, he undeniably addres-
ses the changing morals of his era. With each novel, he
brings out a new sexual subject, and each is potentially more
shocking for readers than the last. In Thje Side er Bendiee
(1920) , he alludes to the overtly sexual play of dating

23
couples'when Amory dubs "the hand-knit sleeveless jerseys . .
. 'petting shirts'" (60). In The Beautiful end Denned (1922) ,
he refers to Gloria's possible pregnancy in discreet terms--
"It had occurred to the estimable Gloria that she was probably
with child" (203)--and then furnishes the young couple's very
clear dialogue about abortion:
"Do you want me to have it?" she asked listlessly.
"I'm indifferent. That is, I'm neutral. If you have
it I'll probably be glad. If you don't--well, that's all
right too." (204)
Significantly, Fitzgerald's literary depiction of Gloria and
Anthony's open contemplation of an abortion was published
while birth control devices were still technically illegal in
the United States, though according to Allen in gnly Teeter;
day, contraception was "generally practiced or believed in by
married couples in all but the most ignorant classes" (97) .
The gree; 9.83.252! is noteworthy in its portrayal of two
married women's sexual infidelity as well as its revelation
that "nice" girls can sometimes be persuaded to have sex
before marriage--and then wind up marrying different men.
Tender Te the High; is one of the most sexually explicit of
Fitzgerald's novels, both in its reflection of Nicole's
conscious, premeditated decision'to commit adultery and in its
concrete references to Nicole's childhood experience of
incest, which is presented directly through Mr. Warren's
confession to Dr. Dohmler:
"People used to say what a wonderful father and

daughter we were-~they used to wipe their eyes. We were
just like lover8--and then all at once we were lovers—-and

24

ten minutes after it happened I could have shot myself--

except I guess I'm such a Goddamned degenerate I didn't

have the nerve to do it." (129)
Fitzgerald follows Tender Te the Night and its intense focus
on the dynamics of both human sexuality and mental illness
(Dick's as well as Nicole's) with the unfinished novel The
Lest Mn (1940) , which contains clear references to
impotence, cohabitation without marriage, and even Hollywood's
sophisticated call girls. In addition, for the first time in
any of his novels, Fitzgerald overtly portrays female sexual
urgency and initiative in The Leet Tyeeen:

She waited in his arms, moving her head a little from
side to side as she had before, only more slowly, and
never taking her eyes from his. Then she discovered that
he was trembling.

He discovered it at the same time, and his arms
relaxed. Immediately she spoke to him coarsely and
provocatively, and pulled his face down to hers. Then,
with her knees she struggled out of something, still
standing up and holding him with one arm, and kicked it
off beside the coat. He was not trembling now and he held
her again, as they knelt down together and slid to the
raincoat on the floor. (87)

As Kathleen orchestrates this sexual episode with Stahr, she
exhibits a matter-of-fact acceptance of her own sexuality that
sets her apart from women of the old order.

The cumulative effect of Fitzgerald's increasingly
forthright treatments of female sexuality is to remind the
reader that Fitzgerald, living in an era of social transition,
remained constantly alert to the social changes that were
taking place around him. For many women of his generation,
sexual freedoms may have been more readily accessible than

economic or intellectual autonomy: the often unhappy women in

 

3-9

0
0-,:

p.
5"

.’.‘.’

25
his novels certainly exhibit more initiative in sexual than in
professional matters. Moreover, Fitzgerald's emphasis as an
author on shifting sexual mores may have been influenced in
part by his interest in another popular subject in his day,
Freudian psychoanalytic theory.

While Fitzgerald's references to Freud in his novels are
not extensive, they too reflect his sensitivity to the
public's foremost topics of conversation in the 19208. In
iny Testerdey, Allen presents the roots of America's interest
in Freud's teachings, noting that even though Freud "published
his first book on psychoanalysis at the end of the nineteenth
century" and "lectured to American psychologists as early as
1909," it was only after World War I that the "Freudian gospel
.began to circulate to a marked extent among the American lay
public" (81).

Fitzgerald's first allusion to Freud in one of his novels
occurs in Thie aide er Rerediee. Significantly, the reference
is made by a young, intellectual woman, in conjunction with a
discussion of the role of sex in her life. One afternoon
Amory's current flame, Eleanor, remarks:

"Oh, just one person in fifty has any glimmer of what
sex is. I'm hipped on Freud and all that, but it's rotten
that every bit of reel love in the world is ninety-nine
per cent passion and one little soupcon of jealousy." (23)

Her fleeting reference to Freud is a casual acknowledgment of
his pronouncement that unmet sexual needs lie at the heart of

many human problems. Amory responds to her by preaching a

brief sermon popularized by the contemporaneous interest in

'(1

IO)

26
Freud: "'Intellect is no protection from sex any more than
convention is'" he begins. (238)

After Fitzgerald's introduction of Freud in Thie £193 91
Eerediee, he incorporates elliptical reminders of Freud and
psychoanalysis in general in The W1 end Qenned.

Gloria, like some of her forerunners in Fitzgerald's first
novel, objects to young men's propensity to "analyze" her
thoughts and behaviors rather than merely taking pleasure in
her company and enjoying her for what she is. More important-
ly, however, when she is first introduced as a topic of
conversation between Richard and Anthony, Anthony refers to
her mistakenly as "Dora" (37)--a misnomer that implies a
connection between Gloria and Dora, the young woman featured
in Freud's famous mgnent er en Anelyeie er e Qeee er
fixeterie, which was published in 1905. Indeed, Elaine
Showalter remarks on the similarity between Dora and the so-
called "New Women" of the 19208: "Dora's position was similar
to that of many New Women. Although she felt contempt for her
mother's monotonous domestic life, it was the life she too was
destined for as a woman" (159) . Gloria, like Dora, objects
to the prospect of marriage and domestic responsibilities.
The analogy between Dora and Fitzgerald's Gloria extends still
further, however. Both Dora and Gloria are "treated like a
pawn or a possession" and "denied . . . personal freedom"
(Showalter, 159) by men they have been close to (Dora's

father, Gloria's husband) : and both have been pursued romanti-

27
cally and/or sexually by a friend of their father's. Both
react to sexual and emotional pressures with.hysterical symp-
toms: Dora loses her voice, and Gloria suffers a severe
anxiety attack. In addition, both are very spirited in their
relentless insistence on their own rights, and.both ultimately
terminate power struggles with significant men in their lives
by'withdrawing from them emotionally: Dora walks out on
Freud, whose "tone with [her] is that of an antagonist"
(Showalter, 160): Gloria retreats to her bed in order to avoid
continuing confrontations with.Anthonya With so many paral-
lels between Freud's Dora and Fitzgerald's Gloria, it seems
highly probable that Anthony's apparent slip of the tongue is
a deliberate effort of Fitzgerald's to link.Gloria.with Dora,
the epitome of’a bold.but frustrated, intelligent, and
demanding New Woman .

Fitzgerald's most concerted and.best-known attempt to
weave modern.psychoanalytic theory into his novels lies in the
creation of Tender Ie the night (1934) . His correspondence
and notes amply illustrate his tapping of Zelda's illness to
inform his characterization of Nicole and his understanding of
the interactions between psychiatrists and.patients in
general. While he evidently failed to comprehend.the broad
implications of his character Dick Diver's failure to respect
Nicole's transference and maintain appropriate psychological
boundaries, he nonetheless offers his readers an intimate and

detailed exposure to certain aspects of psychiatric illness

28
and.treatment~ :More importantly, he pinpoints--perhaps
inadvertently--the relationship between the traditional
objectification of women by men and the dismal effect it can
have on women's mental health.

Freud's influence on Tender Te the Night manifests itself
through Fitzgerald's effort to depict.what he describes in his
notes as a young girl's "father complex." .Although Fitzgerald
earlier reveals a Freudian awareness of "the injury that a
father can do to a daughter" in his 1932 story, "Babylon
Revisited," his 1934 novel affords a far'more vivid.portrait
of the dangers inherent in girls' dependent relationships with
fathers and father-figures.

By presenting bonafide incest.within the context of a
fine, old American family--in.what appears to be a genuinely
loving father-daughter relationship--Fitzgerald exposes the
myth of women's protection and safety in a traditional
patriarchal culture. In Tender Ie the Night Nicole is
betrayed and driven mad by a man who in theory at least ought
to be her protector. Her ordeal at home is then compounded by
her psychiatrist's inept attempt to treat her "illness"--an
illness which he evidently neither comprehends nor respects.
Sexuality in this novel ultimately carries metaphorical
implications: sexual "liberation" can.pose certain risks for
women, not the least of which is emotional victimization even
within what the culture purports to regard as the most sacro-

sanct of relationships .

1y
th

N

29

Tender Te the night is Fitzgerald's last complete novel,
the product of nine years of literary toil. Composed primari-
ly after the onset of his wife Zelda's illness, it is in part
the product of Fitzgerald's own confusion, resentment, and
guilt over his relationship with her. It is simultaneously
his most convoluted and.his most honest portrayal of postwar
interactions between the sexes. Although it was underes-
timated.by many critics during Fitzgerald's lifetime, Tender
Te the flight stands out in some respects as the culmination of
Fitzgerald's literary career as a social historian. In it, he
captures, perhaps by accident, what James Miller calls the
"social complicity" that is capable of’bringing'women in
traditional patriarchal cultures to "the edge of madness"
("Creation," 245).

Throughout the novel, Nicole--like many of Fitzgerald's
heroines--gradually addresses her sense that something
important is missing in her life. Despite her tangible
assets--money, marriage, beauty, and children--she lacks the
meaningful activity and commitment that could give her life
substance and foster her self-esteem. She measures herself
somewhat.harshly, by what Robert Daniel calls "the value
system . . . of the earnest social feminist and career woman,
many of whom had forgone marriage and.motherhood as the price
of personal self-realization" (55). Surrounded by contradic-
tory messages about women's place in.a changing world, she

embodies Fitzgerald's own disappointment in romantic ideals.

3O
"Attractive as she was," James Tuttleton observes, "the New
Woman could hardly fulfill Fitzgerald's high expectations or
realize his dream . . . he could not help recognizing in the
New Woman what she so often recognized in herself--boredom,
insincerity, triviality, and hedonistic irresponsibility"
(280).

Nicole, like the other New Women in Fitzgerald's novels,
hovers--without adequate preparation--on the threshold of a
new era for women. It is natural for someone intelligent who
is without stimulating work to suffer "boredom": for someone
taught to exude charm and conceal feelings to present an image
of "insincerity": for someone without opportunity to cultivate
serious intellectual or professional pursuits to reflect.
apparent "triviality": and for someone denied any power over
her own life to appear to be acting out of "hedonistic
irresponsibility." But Fitzgerald's New Women do not perceive
their shortcomings as natural, for they exist in a time when
"other women"--women they encounter on a daily basis--are
beginning to seize heretofore unimaginable freedoms. Fitz-
gerald's heroines, however, perhaps like some of the women he
knew personally, almost invariably find their fantasy of
liberation overshadowed by the reality of their economic and
emotional dependence on men. The conflict between their
longing for autonomy and their economic condition, which
prescribes subservience, often triggers symptoms of "madness."

Yet their signs of what might sometimes be termed "mental

31
pathology" may in actuality be signs of health, escape valves
for what Showalter terms "suppressed rebellion" (147). In
their quest for autonomy, these New Women are out of syncopa-
tion with their civilization. The healthier they grow, the
sicker they may appear--to some observers.

In fact, the chief women characters in Fitzgerald's novels
often display nervous symptoms and disorders that readers in
the late twentieth century can easily discern as direct
results of the role conflict and confusion characteristic of
women's lives in the 19208 and 19308. Fitzgerald's women
suffer from low self-esteem, depression, suicidal tendencies,
anxiety attacks, hysteria, and even schizophrenia.

And it's no wonder. As recipients of mixed messages
regarding their rights and capabilities for developing
autonomous selves, Fitzgerald's female characters often have
difficulty identifying who and what they really are. They see
the intellectual and economic freedom a career would offer,
but they lack the education and encouragement to identify and
commit themselves to an appropriate field of work. They reach
for sexual liberation, and they discover to their dismay that
all too many men assume that their newfound ability to say
"yes" implies a forfeiture of the old right to say "no."

Again and again they find that a personal declaration of
right8--emotional, intellectual, social, or sexual-~may
require them to relinquish some security which they cannot yet

replace through provisions of their own. They face a world of

32

changing morals and manners with both courage and trepidation.

Fitzgerald captures the American woman in the midst of the
changing society of the period between World War I and World
War II in all her glory and confusion. The spirited women of
his novels inspire admiration for their integrity, wit, charm,
vitality, resilience, and creativity -- as well as their much
talked-about beauty. At the same time, however, they evoke
sympathy in their struggles to make sense out of a world that
no longer makes sense, a world in transition--the world of
relationships between the sexes. Like the stranger who comes
to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and dreams aloud of
"Tandy," the women in Fitzgerald's five novels perceive pos-
sibilities for the future that are not yet reality, and they
defiantly cling to their faith in those possibilities.

It is not easy for them. They suffer manipulation,
betrayal, abandonment. They endure the backlash of men who
are confused in their own right about lives that have been
altered irrevocably by world war. Yet Fitzgerald's women
characters--in all their confusion and imperfec-
tion-«are among his finest monuments to his era: they are

history in the making.

CHAPTER I I

Romantic Love: The Luxury No Woman Could Afford
we aide e: Paradise

When F. Scott Fitzgerald described Thje gide er Eeredig
as "a novel about flappers for philosophers,"1 he tacitly ac-
knowledged his first book's value as a historical document.
Reviewers in 1920 hailed the book, which became a bestseller,
as "one of the few American novels extant, " "a truly American
novel . . . a little slice carved out of real life," and "the
only adequate study . . . of the contemporary American in

adolescence and young manhood. "2 Yet what little attention

literary critics have devoted to Thje Side er Eerediee over

l
the years has generally focused on the stylistic development

of an immature writer rather than the historical significance
of his subject matter. 3

Fitzgerald is widely recognized as an autobiographical
novelist, and a "chronicler . . . of the world in which he
lived. " Throughout his novels he depicts men as "romantics"
and women as "pragmatists" . 4 Although his male characters can
afford to pursue romantic ideals, his female characters
cannot, for they must derive their own security--and their
children's--from their husbands' reputations and financial

33

34
welfare. In Thie Side er Eeredjee and in his subsequent
novels, Fitzgerald clearly reflects his intuitive awareness of
the economic, emotional, and intellectual sanctions the
American patriarchy imposed on many of the women of his
generation.

Amory Blaine, the protagonist of Fitzgerald's bildungsro-
man,5 is the only son of a very beautiful but "weary" and
"sad" woman, who forfeited a passionate romance with "a pagan,
Swinburnian young man" in order "to marry for background"

(4, 7) . Amory spends most of his early childhood receiving "a
highly specialized education from his mother" --listening to
her stories about her exciting past, serving as her sole
traveling companion, and calling her by her first name. He is
awed by her--from whom he inherited "every trait . . . that
made him worth while" --but she is a nervous, unhappy, al-
coholic woman who confides to her young son that she is "not
understood" (3,4,21) . Nevertheless, while Amory attends
boarding school, his first daydreams about love feature "ivory
women delved in romantic mysteries with diplomats and soldiers
of fortune" (32) --fantasy women as beautiful and worldly as
his mother was in her youth, but as yet unsullied by disil-
lusionment. As he grows up, however, he is to find that the
practical concerns that propelled his mother "to marry for
background" instead of for love remain very much a fact of

life for American women in the early twentieth century.

35

During his youthful quest for romantic fulfillment, Amory
becomes infatuated with an amazing array of women--Isabelle,
Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor--who have one significant common
denominator: none values love as highly as he does. As he
transfers his allegiance from one woman to another--largely on
the basis of each one's inability to live up to his inflated
romantic ideals--he often suspects them--unjustly--of toying
unfairly with his emotions. While he is repulsed by any overt
display of sexuality,6 he is simultaneously intrigued by the
relaxing moral standards that allow "any popular girl he
[meets] before eight" to kiss him "before twelve" (59) . But
his perception of their casual regard for romance ultimately
proves false. Theirs is a practical, not a romantic, approach
.to love and marriage: as women, they know that any marriage
they make must be a compromise, for their society does not yet
allow women to establish their own independent identities:
their fates are inextricably bound to the marital choices they
make. They simply cannot afford to take romance as seriously
as Amory does.

Amory' s first important romantic interlude occurs when he
is eighteen and Isabelle, a young woman with whom he played as
a child but who has "developed a past" (58) since he last saw
her, is sixteen and a half. By the time Amory discovers
Isabelle he has already noted the radical changes in courtship
behavior over the past few years. He has, for example, "come

into constant contact with that great current American

36
phenomenon, the 'petting party'" (58), and he has seen "girls
doing things that even in his memory would have been impos-
sible" (58-9). Amory's prudish fascination with the morals of
his young women friends centers around their physical displays
of affection directed toward individual men, for feminine
courtship is no longer'a matter of entertaining a host of
callers but instead involves casual sexual experimentation on
a one-to-one basis. The "popular daughter" ("P.D.") of the
flapper era spends her time between dances in some private
corner kissing, necking, or petting one of her dance part-
ner8--though her mother is unlikely to know how "casually" she
is "accustomed to being kissed" (58). Times have changed, and
changed very rapidly:

The "belle" had.become the "flirt," the "flirt" had
become the "baby vamp." The "belle" had five or six
callers every afternoon. If the P.D., by some strange
accident, has two, it is made pretty uncom- fortable for
the one who hasn't a date with.heru The "belle" was

. surrounded by a dozen men in the intermissions between
dances. Try to find the P.D. between dances, just try to

find her. (59)

In this atmosphere of loosening moral standards and
promiscuous kissing, Amory meets and immediately becomes
infatuated with Isabelle, who has a reputation for being a
"Speed" as well as a beauty. Isabelle is an unquestionably
sexual young woman: she possesses an "intense physical
magnetism" (63), and as she descends the stairway to the room
where Amory and others wait, she is aware of being in "high

color" (63)--a physical reflection of a female animal's

37

readiness for mating. Her silent speculations about Amory
center around his dancing ability and his physical appearance,
which suggest more sexual than intellectual or emotional
curiosity. Yet she is aware of her reputation for loose
morals and resentful enough towards her critics to be deter-
mined not to let young men take her kisses for granted:

She was accustomed to be thus followed by her desperate

past, and it never failed to rouse in her the same feeling

of resentment: yet--in a strange town it was an ad-

vantageous reputation. She was a "Speed," was she?

Well--let them find out. (62)
Needless to say, her resentment about people's moral condemna-
tion of her behavior is a resentment towards the traditional
double standard that dictates expressions of sexual interest
are the norm for men, but an aberration for women.

Despite her resolution not to be taken too lightly,
Isabelle is instantly attracted to Amory, as he is to her.
She is "capable of very strong, if very transient emotions"
(62) , and he is "thrilled" to imagine at dinner that her foot
brushes his under the table. They follow the courting ritual
of the day, keeping things on a very superficial level,
"playing" the "game that would presumably be her principal
study for years to come." Though Amory is aware of Isabelle's
affectation--he waits "for the mask to drop off" --he does

"not question her right to . . . it" (66) . By the time
they've dined and danced together, each is silently looking

38
forward to some kissing, "the inevitable looming charmingly
close" (69) as they sit together in the upstairs den.

While Isabelle seems quite taken with Amory, it is
important to note that her pleasure stems more from.the
thrills of courtship and the exchange of physical expressions
of affection "in .... warm limousines" and "cosey roadsters"
than from any particular partner. Indeed, Isabelle knows that
"the boy might change," but she is nevertheless open and
physically responsive to Amory: "her breath [comes] faster"
(69-70) as they prepare to kissn Of course, they've just met:
there is no pretense of emotional or intellectual involvement,
but as adolescents they are understandably intrigued.by their
own sexual possibilities. The society they live in, however,
approves more of young men's physical drives than of young
women's. ‘While Isabelle worries about being hurt.by gossip
about her tentative sexual experimentation (kissing), Amory
soon begins to worry about the potential damage to his own
social standing if he is unable to score with (kiss) a
"Speed."

Though their first intent to kiss each other is thwarted
by the arrival of other party guests in the little den,
Amory's sexual insecurity propels him to push Isabelle to kiss
him‘when they meet and court again a few'months later: ". . .
if he didn't kiss her, it would worry him. . . . It would
interfere vaguely with his idea of himself as a conqueror"

(92). Because she is beautiful and responsive, Isabelle has

Ca
CI:

to

 

39
been the object of men's sexual and romantic fantasies since
early adolescence. But she resents being treated merely as a
sex object, and as Amory carelessly bruises her with his shirt
stud, tries to coerce her into kissing him when she doesn't
feel like it, and criticizes everything she says, she lashes
out at him, insisting "I'll be anything I want" when he
berates her for being "feminine." The more he pushes her for
the kiss he thinks she owes him - "It isn't as if you were
refusing on moral grounds," he urges - the more she senses his
objectification and dehumanization of her. She asserts
herself by pulling back. When he adopts a condescending
attitude towards her intelligence-turning around her criticism
of his insensitivity to a compliment ("I make you think, do I?
Amory repeated with a touch of vanity"--she responds "emphati-
cally": "You're a nervous strain . . . and when you analyze
every little emotion and instinct I just don't have 'em" (90-
93).

Not surprisingly, Amory emerges with a badly bruised ego
from this first serious attempt at courtship with a young
woman: he has been unable to make Isabelle meet his demands
for even so slight a bit of physical gratification as a kiss.
His selfish attitude towards Isabelle as a sex object has
effectively prevented the development of any genuine, mutual
caring. Isabelle, however, has displayed a strength of
character new to women in the flapper era: by freely planning

to indulge in a physical display of affection when her heart

40
was in it and by refusing to be coerced into such behavior at
the whim of a sexist man, she has calmly asserted her right to
her own feelings, to a sense of identity independent of her
male companion's.

Two years pass between Amory's efforts to conquer Isabelle
and his initial meeting with his young, widowed third cousin,
Clara Page. During the interim between Isabelle's departure
from his life and Clara's arrival in it, Amory has been so
frightened by an unexpected and unconsummated sexual oppor-
tunity that he believes he's literally seen a ghost. For him,
sexual temptation is proof that evil exists in the world:
moreover, it is irrevocably linked to women's beauty and
receptivity.

When Amory receives Monsignor Darcy's letter that contains
a postscript suggesting that he pay a visit to his "remark-
able" but "very poor" cousin (137) , he decides to make the
call "as a favor" (137) . But as soon as he meets her he is
completely entranced: "She was immemorial. . . . Amory wasn't
good enough for Clara, Clara of ripply golden hair, but then
no man was. Her goodness was above the prosy morals of the
husband-seeker, apart from the dull literature of female
virtue" (138) . Amory is still angry and confused about his
failure with Isabelle, judging by his hostile assessment of
"the prosy morals of the husband-seeker," but Clara, though
close to his age, is a widow with two small children. Having

been married in the past, she is above reproach in Amory's

41
eyes: not for her the ideal kissing games of a young virgin
looking for a husband to create her future, her adult iden-
tity. It is interesting to note, however, that Amory's early
fascination with "Clara of ripply golden hair" calls to mind
his boyhood fantasies of "ivory women" with distinguished
suitors.

Unlike Isabelle, whose most compelling qualities are
physical and sexual, Clara has a very cerebral--and indeed
spiritual--aura. Freed by virtue of Clara's status as a widow
from the compulsion to try to conquer her and net her kisses,
Amory enjoys Clara's charm and sophistication as well as her
beauty. Despite her poverty and responsibilities to her
children, Clara can tend her household and entertain guests
graciously, as if "she has not a care in the world."

Moreover, she can "make fascinating and almost brilliant
conversation out of the thinnest air that ever floated through
a drawing room" ( 138) .

Amory finds Clara's companionship delightful, partly
because her golden radiance" (139)--her ephemeral quality--
poses no sexual threat to him, and partly because she easily
adopts a subordinate posture of female inexperience in
relation to his patriarchal fantasies of male supremacy: when
he asks her what she thinks of him, for example, she cautious-
ly avoids criticizing him for his immaturity:

"You're implying that I haven't used myself well?"
Clara hesitated.

42
"Well, I can't judge. A man, of course, has to go

through a lot more, and I've been sheltered." (142)

As an impoverished widow with small children, of course, Clara
has indisputably already had "to go through a lot more" than
Amory has, but her casual dismissal of her own maturity and
achievement appeals to Amory's vanity.

In fact, being with Clara feeds Amory's ego in a variety
of ways. When he goes out with her, he particularly enjoys
the attention she receives, for "in every store where she had
ever traded she was whispered about as the beautiful Mrs.
Page" (143). Naturally, Amory overhears people speculating
about how quickly she'll remarry, and he can't resist trying
to capture her for himself:

"I think," he said and his voice trembled, "that if I
lost faith in you I'd lose faith in God."

She looked at him with such a startled face that he
asked her the matter.

"Nothing," she said slowly, "only this: five men have
said that to me, and it frightens me." (144)

Clara is dismayed by Amory's trite expression of devotion to
her at least in part because it is so predictable and so
empty: it reflects a lack of genuine appreciation for the
qualities that make her unique. When Amory pushes her to
reveal her own understanding of love, she turns and responds
"like a flash: 'I have never been in love. '" (145) Through
this revelation, of course, she acknowledges that even her
marriage--like Amory's mother's--was founded on something

other than romantic love.

43

As a result of--or in spite of--the news that Clara has
never been in love, Amory begins to push her to marry him,
much as he pushed Isabelle to kiss him two years earlier.
Amory's infatuation once more is entirely selfish: quite
simply, he longs to acquire her now as a wife even though she
is not in love with him. And his society approves of such
matches: marriage is, after all, the traditional path to
economic security for women within a patriarchal culture.
Thus, Amory proposes to Clara "quite mechanically" even as he
idolizes her and equates her serene spirituality with that of
an untouchable virgin: "He longed only to touch her dress
with almost the realization that Joseph must have had of
Mary's eternal significance." Clara, however, is not deceived
by Amory's idle proclamations of love, since she's heard
exactly the same words so many times before. Moreover, she
has determined for herself that she does not want to remarry:
"'No, ' she said: 'I'd never marry again. I've got my two
children and I want myself for them'" (145).

By choosing not to remarry, Clara also chooses to continue
to live in relative poverty. Significantly, however, she does
so to protect herself, to guard her own personal identity by
limiting the demands that are imposed on her by others. Were
it not for her beauty, she explains, she would have been "a
quiet nun in the convent" (146)--free to pursue a cerebral,
spiritual existence, never to marry or bear children. The

early death of her husband has given her a second chance for

44
independence and self-actualization: thus, her determination
to remain single rather than compromise herself by remarriage
reflects her strength of character. Amory, of course, is not
pleased to be thwarted in his second earnest attempt to
possess a beautiful woman, but the approach of the First World
War provides him a welcome distraction.

Shortly after the war ends, Amory becomes involved in the
deepest and most devastating love affair of his young life,
his romance with Rosalind Connage. While he is waiting to
attend a party where he is to meet Rosalind formally, he
accidentally stumbles into a dressing room, where he awkwardly
expresses surprise at discovering that she is not a "sexless"
young woman fond of devoting her time and energy to swimming
and golf. Rosalind teases in response--saying she does those
things but not during "business hours," thus subtly alluding
to her beauty rituals and social engagements as her life's
work-~which indeed they are, since she is a member of an
American social class that still fosters women's economic
dependency on men. Indeed, her reference to courtship as a
form of "business" suggests a clear correlation between
women's social activities and prostitution. Although her
conversation is upbeat and humorous, her description of her
"business" is nonetheless tainted by cynicism: "Oh, it's not
a corporation--it's just 'Rosalind, Unlimited. ' Fifty-one
shares, name, good-will, and everything goes at $25,000 a

year." Significantly, her joke about her business reflects

45
her sense that she is prostituting herself as she seeks a
husband with sufficient resources: she will sell out, deliver
"everything"--including her name and identity--for the right
price. Like other women of her era, she is resigned to this
fate simply because she has never been taught or expected to
do anything else. Yet her sardonic remarks reflect her sense
of the injustice of the status quo.

Rosalind appeals to all men, except those who find her
exceptional "cleverness" or "beauty" intimidating. For Amory,
she is the first real woman to combine the apparent physical
accessibility of Isabelle with the intellectual sparkle of
Clara. Again he finds himself instantly and thoroughly
smitten. When he notes that she has "the same point of view
. on men that [he has] on women"--that they are fundamentally
boring--she declares that she's "not really feminine . . . in
[her] mind" (174) . Interestingly, Rosalind's comment suggests
that she believes that there is a clear distinction between
male and female thought processes-wand that women's minds are
somehow innately inferior to men's. Yet her own quick mind
and scintillating conversation intrigue Amory, and he begins
at once to test her willingness to kiss him. Like Isabelle,
Rosalind holds back when he tries to talk her into giving him
a kiss, but, unlike Isabelle, she is able to reach an under-
standing with him: she responds enthusiastically to his
suggestion as soon as they agree that they both simply "want"

to exchange a kiss (175) .

46

Despite Mrs. Connage's reminders to Rosalind that she
needs to make a good marriage--to someone wealthy like Dawson
Rider-~in order to assure her family's financial security,
Rosalind's romance with Amory escalates rapidly. Rosalind
wants "real sentiment" and enjoys Amory in part because he
appears able to "gratify [her] artistic taste" (185) . They
declare love for each other on the very night they meet, but
Rosalind is aware even then that Amory's financial status
bodes ill for their romance. As he leaves, she says "in an
odd burst of prophecy," "'Poor Amory! '" (185) Her comment is
a pathetic little double entendre: Amory is "poor" in an
economic sense as well as an emotional one.

Amory's immediate reaction to being in love again suggests
the sincerity of his emotions. He takes a job in an advertis-
ing agency, "where he alternate[s] between astonishing bursts
of rather exceptional work and wild dreams of becoming
suddenly rich and touring Italy with Rosalind." For several
weeks the young lovers are "together constantly, for lunch,
for dinner, and nearly every evening" (186) , and Rosalind
professes her passionate attachment to Amory by declaring her
willingness to be possessed by him: "I want to belong to
you. I want your people to be my people. I want to have your
babies" (188). She sees love from a woman's point of view,
recognizing that marriage will mean a loss of her independent

identity: she longs for the tangible evidence of their love

that children would represent: and her outspoken enthusiasm

47
for bearing Amory's children is no doubt also the most overt
expression of sexual interest and intent that a respectable
young woman of her era could.get away'withn She underscores
the depth of her love for Amory again as she reveals: "For
the first time I regret all the other kisses: now I know how
much a kiss can mean" (189).

Although Rosalind genuinely reciprocates Amory's romantic
devotion, she becomes increasingly aware of the personal
sacrifices marriage to‘him‘would.demand.of'heru Over'a period
of five weeks that Fitzgerald fails to account for, Rosalind
changes "perceptibly-she is a trifle thinner for one thing:
the light in her eyes is not so bright: she looks easily a
year older." Her distress stems from Dawson Rider's efforts
to lure her away from Amory, for she is uncomfortably aware
that Dawson can offer her--and her future children--the kind
of lifestyle she is accustomed to, and which Amory cannot and
never will be able to provide. 'Her mother reminds her from a
practical point of view that if she marries Amory, the
"theoretical genius," she will "be absolutely dependent on a
dreamer." As a woman in the days before women were free to
pursue careers of their own, Rosalind is indeed destined to
remain economically dependent on the men in her life--and she
knows, as her'mother points out, that.her father is "an old
man" (190) who won't.be able to help her financially after she

marries.

48

A8 Rosalind begins to waver in her resolve to marry Amory
solely for love, Dawson Rider openly addresses her hesitation
to marry for money: he tells her, for instance, that she'll
"learn to love him" (195) . She does, after all, like Dawson
well enough--and she recognizes that he'd be a good father to
their children and protect her from "worry." In fact, as she
breaks her engagement with Amory on the basis of these
practical, economic concerns, she sums up Dawson's advantage
by saying he'd be "a background", echoing the longing for
security that motivated Amory's mother's marriage years
earlier. Nevertheless, Rosalind is in so much emotional
turmoil over her marital choices that she tells Amory, "I want
to die!" Obviously, she too resents the innate injustice of
the social system which dictates that her selection of a
husband will determine the degree of security she will enjoy
over years to come.

Amory, of course, is an egotistical romantic, and he takes
rejection by women very poorly-~even though their rejections
of him invariably stem from their own instincts for self-pres-
ervation in a society that affords young women of his social
class little opportunity to take responsibility for them-
selves. When Amory hears Rosalind's decision to back out of
marrying him to avoid condemning herself to being his "squaw--
in some horrible place," he tries to coerce her into submis-
sion. First he tells her that their love won't be "a beauti-

ful memory" to him because he'll only remember "the long

49
bitterness" (192-4) . Then he goads her by accusing her of
lacking nerve: "you don't dare be my wife." Rosalind
steadfastly insists that she is acting out of common sense and
"taking the hardest course" because she "wouldn't be the
Rosalind" Amory "love[s]" (195) in the face of real economic
hardship. Interestingly, Rosalind is aware of being simul-
taneously "old in some ways" and "just a little girl" (196) .
She does her best to make a mature compromise in light of
almost unbearable conflicts, and Amory's reluctant departure
leaves her genuinely suffering from an "aching sadness that
will pass in time" (197) . Like Clara and Isabelle, she acts
out of responsibility towards herself, but Amory judges her
harshly for it.

Eleanor, Amory's last serious romantic attachment in Thie
Side 91 Perediee, is a startling forerunner of the women of
his later novels--Gloria, Daisy, Nicole--whose brains and
passionate natures are doomed to dissipate in nervous energy
simply because women of that era were not encouraged or
allowed to pursue meaningful work of their own. Amory
stumbles across Eleanor as she's reciting poetry to herself
one afternoon while he's out strolling in the country. They

discover quite quickly that they have an uncanny intellectual
rapport:

As long as they knew each other Eleanor and Amory
could be "on a subject" and stop talking with the definite
thought of it in their heads, yet ten minutes later speak
aloud and find that their minds had followed the same
channels and led them each to a parallel idea: an idea

50

that others would have found absolutely unconnected with

the first. (226)

In addition, they feel a kinship because each has had a kind
of gypsy childhood--traveling from.town to town, country to
country at the whim of a particularly "restless mother" (232).

Even at eighteen, however, Eleanor is cynical about love
and sex: she declares she's "never met a man [she'd] marry"
(228), and she ventures "that every bit of reel love in the
world is ninety-nine per cent.passion and one little soupcon
of jealousy." Amory, undoubtedly recalling Rosalind, hastily
agrees that sexual love is "a rather unpleasant overpowering
force" (238), and then--as is his wont--rapidly moves in to
kiss Eleanor, even.though she is not inclined to kiss him, .As
_ she backs away, he begins his customary coercion tactics:
"Intellect is no protection from sex," he begins (238), but
her anger thwarts his overtures.

During one of her frequent intellectual conversations with
Amory, Eleanor articulates her profound.dissatisfaction with
her era's narrow view of women's appropriate roles and
ambitions. In so doing, she calls attention to the plight of
many intelligent women of her generation and social class who
long for freedom from oppressive patriarchal traditions.
Though Fitzgerald's women characters in Thie Side 9.1 Peredjee
and.his later novels reflect varying degrees of awareness of
the roots of their angst, Eleanor's vivid expression of her

frustration reflects Fitzgerald's intuitive recognition of the

51
obstacles that young women faced when they contemplated
self-actualization in a society that still accorded them only
second-class citizenship. Eleanor's impassioned complaint
reflects Fitzgerald's knack for serving unwittingly as a
social historian: as Eleanor speaks, Fitzgerald sums up the
frustrations of many of the young women of his acquaintance,

including Zelda:

"Rotten, rotten old world," broke out Eleanor
suddenly, "and the wretchedest thing of all is me--oh, yhy
am I a girl? Why am I not a stupid--? Look at you:
you're stupider than I am, not much, but some, and you can
lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else, and
you can play around with girls without being involved in
meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be
justified--and here am I with the brains to do everything,
yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony. If I
were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but now
what's in store for me--I have to marry, that goes without
saying. Who? I'm too bright for most men, and yet I have
to descend to their level and let them patronize my
intellect in order to get their attention. Every year
that I don't marry I've got less chance for a first-class
man. At the best I can have my choice from one or two
cities and, of course, I have to marry into a dinner-
coat." (237-38)

Eleanor, like her predecessors in Amory's affection,
recognizes that the current social order is hostile towards
women who yearn for sexual equality but who find themselves
irrevocably "tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony" as
their only means of establishing their adult identity and
providing for their economic needs. Eleanor is acutely aware

that marriage is unlikely to afford her any intellectual or

emotional gratification.

52

Shortly after her tirade about these injustices, in fact,
Eleanor nearly commits suicide in direct response to Amory's
continued patronizing attitude towards her. When he criti-
cizes her for what he considers blasphemy, she spurs her horse
wildly towards the cliff, jumping off only at the last
possible second, when it's too late to stop or turn her horse
around. Her overwhelming impulse towards self-destruction
results from her fear that she is doomed to waste her life in
the company of men like Amory, who perpetually patronize her
despite her superior intelligence. Her suicidal action
suggests that she embodies the integrity to rebel against the
profound injustice of her social condition.

Though she survives her suicide attempt, the extent--and
intensity-~of her unhappiness is indisputable. Eleanor's
state of mind is the all too logical culmination of the
concern with controlling her own destiny that each of Amory's
romantic objects expresses in Thie Side 91 fierediee. In this
first novel, as in his later ones, Fitzgerald inadvertently
recorded the ambitions and frustrations of young women who
were stranded between the oppressive traditions of the
American patriarchy and haunting glimpses into a future that
might afford greater equality of the sexes, and with it,

greater freedom and happiness.

CHAPTER III

A Beauty Damned:
The Stubborn Integrity of Gloria Gilbert Patch

Gloria Gilbert Patch was not destined for happiness
either, in Fitzgerald's kaleidoscope of contemporary relation-
ships. Less than two years after F. Scott Fitzgerald dazzled
and.dismayed the American public through his portrayal of the
flapper generation in Thie Side er 2_a_rediee, Metrepeiiten
'magazine began to feature the serialized version of his second
novel, The Mini end penned. It was l922--only two years
after Congress passed the Nineteenth.Amendment, granting women
the right to vote, the same year, in fact, that the constitu-
tionality of the Nineteenth.Amendment was challenged and
upheld in the Supreme Court.‘

Apparently the American political and social climate in
theearly 19208 only grudgingly accorded women even the most
rudimentary means of attempting to assume some personal
jurisdiction over their destinies. .Although some women of
Fitzgerald's social class were beginning to exercise the
recently acquired right to vote, their degree of genuine
personal freedom remained sorely restricted by their economic

condition. Young women of Fitzgerald's acquaintance--like

53

54
Gloria Gilbert in The Seentirni end henned--were products of
"female" educations (168) and a socialization process that
dictated that their ability to please men was their ultimate
security. Fitzgerald astutely--albeit unconsciously--pre-
served the injustices inherent in this situation as he created
the characters and chaos of his first novel about marriage.

Like Fitzgerald's other novels, The kentifdi end penned
is a loosely autobiographical tale about the plight of young
Americans in love and, indeed, the state of early twentieth-
century America in general. Unlike his other novels, however,
as one critic observes, "The Beedtifni end penned is unique . i
. . in that it has a heroine as well as a hero" (Podis, 144) .
Gloria Gilbert distinguishes herself from other Fitzgerald
women by her impressive degree of self-knowledge, dignity, and
fortitude.1 Her romance with Anthony Patch is swift and pas-
sionate, yet it is fraught with conflict: their ill-advised
marriage deteriorates as rapidly and dramatically as their
financial resources, yet Gloria herself manages at all times
to maintain her fundamental personal integrity.

Atits simplest level, The Seedtirni end Demed, the
least-known of Fitzgerald' s novels, is the unhappy tale of a
spirited young woman, who--by virtue of her beauty, charm, and
social milieu--expects to be taken care of by a man, but
isn't. The beauty and vitality that fuel Anthony' 8 passionate
attraction to Gloria ironically make her destruction in-

evitable. She naively opts to marry Anthony for passion,

55

though another suitor, Joseph Bloeckman, might well be a more
suitable match.2 Much to her dismay, she gradually discovers
the emotional, psychological, and even physical abuse of which
Anthony--her "temporarily passionate lover" (147) --is capable
in his obsessive drive to possess and control her. Once she
marries him, her fate is inextricably bound to his.

The marriage is destined for disaster because Anthony
lacks the maturity and commitment to provide for Gloria in the
tradition of their social class, and Gloria lacks both the
means and the opportunity to declare true emotional and
economic independence. As Anthony grows increasingly ir-
responsible--dipping into his investment capital to finance
extravagant parties, avoiding regular employment, indulging
. his tastes for alcohol and other women--Gloria earnestly
attempts to mitigate her own suffering by urging him to find a
job, seeking work herself, and assuming ever-increasing
responsibility for running the household. For her efforts she
is rewarded not with respect or appreciation but with rising
resentment and hostility. She finds herself trapped in a
destructive relationship, without any hope of surviving
economically or socially on her own. Having deliberately
avoided the responsibility of parenthood, she finds herself by
book' 8 end the primary caretaker for the pathetic, deranged
shell of the promising young man she married only a few years
earlier. It is interesting to note that in her self-destruc-

tive relationship with Anthony, Gloria manifests many of the

56

symptoms of "women who love too much, " as defined by modern
psychologist Robin Norwood. Like Norwood's research group,
Gloria gets involved with a man who "jeopardizes [her]
emotional well-being and perhaps even [her] physical health
and safety" (xiii), without being able "to assess the situa-
tion realistically and take care of herself by pulling out
when the lack of reciprocity [becomes] apparent" (9) .
Moreover, Gloria is "terrified of abandonment," prone to "epi-
sodes of depression," "addicted to men and to emotional pain,"
"predisposed to becoming addicted to . . . certain foods,
particularly sugary ones" (gum drops, in Gloria's case), and
"not attracted to men who are kind, stable, reliable, and
interested" (like Bloeckman) .3

Like many of Fitzgerald' s principal female characters,
Gloria grapples with a severe but somewhat understated
internal conflict: she has an independent streak and craves
development and fulfillment of her self : yet she is also
intensely aware of the prescribed roles her social stature
imposes--or at least attempts to impose--on her. As she seeks
to satisfy her society' 8 expectations by marrying and accept-
ing financial and emotional dependency on her husband, she
finds it increasingly difficult to maintain any strong sense
of self. Though Anthony expects Gloria to bow to his every
whim without question--even when doing so violates her own
personal dignity or sense of propriety--he fails to provide

the security conventionally associated with marriage for women

57
of her class in Western civilization. Shifting attitudes
toward women and cross-gender relationships leave Gloria in a
precarious position: on the one hand, she perceives the
possibility for self-actualization through making personal
choices in her life: on the other hand, she discovers that her
ability to exercise genuine control over her fate is still
very limited. Her life, therefore, is filled with confusion,
with the inevitable result that her words and behavior often
strike others--including her husband--as irrational.
Gloria's confusion, of course, is compounded by her

remarkable beauty. Her cousin Richard describes her to
Anthony shortly before they meet as "'good-looking--in fact,
damned attractive' " and, although Anthony remarks that he
doesn't "'care for young girls as a rule, '" he nevertheless
is affected by the mystique of her beauty:

While it seemed to him that the average debutante

spent every hour of her day thinking and talking

about what the great world had mapped out for her to

do during the next hour, any girl who made a living

digectly on her prettiness interested him enormously.
To Anthony, at least, Gloria's beauty constitutes her liveli-
hood. Significantly, her beauty is enhanced by her innate
vitality.

When Richard takes Anthony to meet Gloria, Mrs. Gilbert

strengthens Gloria's mystique by alluding to her relentless

social activity, a direct outgrowth of her beauty and charm:

58
"Gloria's out," she said, with an air of laying
down an axiom from which she would proceed to derive
results. "She's dancing somewhere. 'Gloria goes,
goes, goes. I tell her’I don't see how she stands
it. She dances all afternoon and all night, until I
think she's going to wear herself to a shadow. Her
father is very worried about her." (39)
As Anthony begins to date Gloria, he discovers just how'busy
she is: he finds it difficult even to arrange appropriate
engagements with her, for her social calendar is filled.with a
wide range of activities. Indeed, Gloria is so busy, Anthony
finds himself sandwiched between her other commitments:
She attended the semi-public charity dances at the
big hotels: he saw her several times at dinner
parties in Sherry's: and once as he waited for her to
dress, Mrs. Gilbert, apropos of her daughter's habit
of "going" rattled off an amazing holiday programme
that included half a dozen dances to which Anthony
had received cards. (67)
Not surprisingly, Anthony finds it difficult to entertain
Gloria when he does see her: when he proposes visiting a
cabaret, for instance, she responds without enthusiasm, saying
that she's already "'seen every one in town'" (68). The
bright, inquisitive debutante is already showing signs of
being bored.with life as she knows it--a life devoid of
meaningful activity, intellectual stimulation, or professional
purpose.
Gloria's frantic social activity during her youth certain-
ly reflects both.her'popularity and energy: she is.a highly

sought-after companion, who is "'tremendously alive'" and "'a

quite authentic and original character,'" according to

59
Anthony's friend Maury (48-9) . Yet at the same time Gloria's
frenetic involvement in social engagements suggests a rest-
lessness and dissatisfaction with her life. She herself feels
she has a "'man's mind'" (134) , and thelack of serious
intellectual pursuits in her life leaves her subject to
boredom and depression : her habit of "'going"'--—as her mother
terms it--may well be an effort to mask her depression and
compensate for her feelings of emptiness. Maury, a writer who
senses Gloria's unprobed emotional depth and keen intellect,
suggests to Anthony that there's more to her than meets the
eye as he fondly reminisces: "'there was something about that.
little girl with her absurd tan that was eternally old--like
me'" (51).

Further evidence of Gloria's intellect, depth, and low-
grade depression surfaces as she and Anthony see more of each
other. During one of their dates, Gloria compares herself to
the lower-class patrons they observe at a bar, and she longs
openly to be accepted at face value rather than "analyzed" by
the men who admire her. Above all, she insists that she knows
herself better than Anthony does, as he casually discredits
her analogy between herself and other transient, festive
images:

"I'm like they are--like Japanese lanterns and
crepe paper, and the music of that orchestra."
"You're a young idiot!" he insisted wildly.
She shook her blond head.
"No, I'm not. I en like them. . . . You ought

to see. . . . You don't know me." She hesitated and
her eyes can back to him, as though surprised at the

60
last to see him there. "I've got a streak of what
you'd call cheapness. I don't know where I get it
but it's--oh, things like this and bright colors and
gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These
people could appreciate me and take me for granted,
and these men would fall in love with me and admire
me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze
me and tell me I'm this because of this or that
because of that." (72-3)
Clearly, Gloria's astute comparison between herself and other
beautiful objects reflects her dissatisfaction with her
current social interactions and her yearning to be accepted
for herself rather than as a temporary projection of men's
intellectualized visions and fantasies of her. It is sig-
nificant that Anthony himself demonstrates that he's out of
touch with her as he contradicts her open, sincere assessment
of herself--an assessment which reveals low self-esteem, in
'that she claims "cheapness" as one of her qualities, as well
as an unusual degree of introspection and honesty. Her
sincerity about her self-assessment is evidenced both by her
simple head-shaking in response to Anthony's objections to her
remarks and by her willingness to meet his eyes as she
attempts to explain her analogy.

Shortly after this incident, Gloria's disenchantment with
her social life grows even more obvious, when "out of a clear
sky one day she informs her mother that undergraduates weary
her" (81) . In fact, Gloria suddenly "retires" from her
"dazzling career," leaving men "who fell in love with her

. . . dismissed utterly, almost angrily" (81) . Interesting-

ly, Gloria's "retirement" from her frantic social whirl

61
coincides with attentions she receives from.two men: .Joseph
Bloeckman and Anthony Patch, who compete for her'hand in
marriage. iGloria is burned-out and indecisive, favoring first
one man and then the other. Her decision to marry Anthony is
made amid tremendous internal conflict, similar to the
emotional turmoil that propels Rosalind to reject Amory Blaine
in favor of Dawson.Ryder and Daisy to marry Tom Buchanan in
the absence of Jay Gatsby. In fact, Gloria's retirement prior
to her engagement to Anthony is a forerunner to Daisy's
withdrawal following Gatsby's departure for Europe: in both
cases, the young women's sudden cessation of their normal
activities reflects profound, immobilizing depression.
Whether or not.Gloria realizes it, her depression is

intertwined with her dim awareness that she is destined to
live as a reflection of some man's desire for her rather than
as a self of her own creation. She is an aging debutante,
fatigued.by social pressures and.eager to be.done with.them.
Yet to Anthony she appears to be:

. . . a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and

storing it--then after an eternity pouring it forth

in aiglance, the fragment of a sentence, to that.part

o$3him.that cherished all beauty and all illusion.
Anthony's objective in pursuing Gloria is apparently not
reciprocity but.possession, and.Gloria's brief'but courageous
rejection of him following his initial effort to subjugate her

to his will only reinforces his desire to "own" her (116).

62
Her decision to marry Anthony is an acceptance of the in-
evitable: women of her day and class simply had no viable
means of support apart from marriage. Their engagement is
marred by conflict, however, for "between kisses Anthony and
this golden girl quar[rel] incessantly" (133) .

Gloria knows, of course, that she does not really want the
responsibility of marriage and a family. In fact, she tells
Anthony outright that she "'hates'" the prospect of "'getting
old'" and "'getting married'" "'more than anything in the
world'" (64) , for she abhors the idea of having "'respon-
sibility and a lot of children'" (64) . But she does not
really see any alternative. Moreover, she is already accus-
tomed to assessing herself as the object of others' wishes and
perceptions instead of the subject of her own. At twenty-two,
Gloria is--in some respects--really a child, for she has not
yet learned to view herself apart from her ability to please
others--especially men. She' looks outward toward others to
define who she is, and what her value in the world may be.
Thus, she is sufficiently preoccupied when her father is
displeased with her to mention it to Anthony during one of
their dates: "'My daddy's mad at me, '" she says (65) . Her
childish diction underscores how limited her view of the world
is. More importantly, in the following passage, Gloria
eagerly encourages Anthony to tell her what he's heard about
her before their meeting, as if gossip might provide some clue

to her of her own identity:

63

"I must confess," said Anthony gravely, "that
even I 've heard one thing about you. "

Alert at once, she sat up straight. Those eyes,
with the grayness and eternity of a cliff of soft
granite, caught his.

"Tell me. I'll believe it. I always believe
anything any one tells me about myself--don't you? "
(50)
Gloria's urgent desire to hear--and believe--what others say
about her suggests her fundamental insecurity. She herself
does not know who or what she is--and she's desperately
searching for clues to solve this mystery.

Although Gloria seeks others' perceptions of her to
develop a sense of her identity, she is absolutely honest with
herself about the nature of her social and economic condition.
The most startling evidence of her proclivity for introspec-
tion is the diary she keeps before her marriage. The diary,
though not "intimate" (144) , nevertheless reflects Gloria's
deep-seated frustration over living the supposedly carefree
life of a debutante.4 One telling passage has an unmistakable

tone of cynicism:

April 3rd. --After two hours of Schroeder who, they
inform me, has millions, I 've decided that this
matter of sticking to things wears one out, par-
ticularly when the things concerned are men. There ' 8
nothing so often overdone and from today I swear to
be amused. We talked about "love"--how banal! With
how many men have I talked about love? (145)

Even though Gloria obviously resents the predictability
and superficiality of her society's courtship rituals, three

weeks later she writes that she wants to marry Anthony, and

64
that she expects her marriage to be a "live, lovely, glamour-
ous performance" with "the world" for "scenery." Sadly,
Gloria sees "What grubworms women are to crawl on their
bellies through colorless marriages!" ( 147) , but she fails to
perceive any alternative to a dull marriage except the
deliberate production of a "performance." Weary of her role
as a debutante, she consciously decides to adopt the new role
of wife--a role she plans to shape through personal inter-
pretation. She marks the transition she expects marriage to
entail by closing her diary with the inscription "finis."
Unfortunately, she is ill-prepared for the harsh realities of
becoming Anthony's wife.

Up to the time of her marriage, Gloria, like other young
(women of her generation and social class, has seized and
enjoyed certain freedoms that her mother's generation did not
share. These "freedoms," however, have been social and
sexual--not intellectual, economic, or professional--and
consequently somewhat illusory. Although Gloria and her
counterparts in other Fitzgerald novels can get away with
dating without chaperones, participating in petting parties,
and kissing dozens of men--Gloria relates an anecdote in which
she has been insensitively compared to a "'public drinking
glass'" (182)--they are nevertheless affected by their
society's expectations that they will remain subservient to
men. In the era and class of Fitzgerald's focus, bright women

like Gloria, whose "brain tired less quickly" than Anthony's

65
(168) generally lacked the education and opportunity to fend
for themselves economically.

By marrying, Gloria merely transfers her dependency from
her father to her husband, in the custom of the day. .Although
she has a modest income of her own--enough to buy her clothes,
Anthony tells his grandfather--she expects marriage to be the
key to genuine financial security; Her beauty and social
graces are significant to her not merely in their own right
but also because they are negotiable currency: 'they have a
direct bearing on the quality of the match she can make. On
the surface, Anthony appears to be:a good catch, for he stands
to inherit vast wealth: and.Gloria anticipates that he will
have "the wisdom" t0<give up the "passionate" nature of their
romance in.due time. In reality, however, the relationship
proves to be a poor bargain for Gloria, who aspires to greater
autonomy than Anthony will allow.

Signs of severe incompatibility surface during the court-
ship. One afternoon as Anthony is kissing Gloria in her
living room, she shocks him.by trying to impose limits on his
behavior:

. . . Anthony pulled.her quickly to her feet and held
her helpless, without breath, in.a kiss that was
neither'a game nor’a tribute.

Her arms fell to her sides. In an instant she
was free.

"Don't!" she said quietly. "I don't want that."

She sat down on the far side of the lounge and
gazed straight before her; .A frown had gathered
between.her eyes. .Anthony sank down beside her and

closed.his hand over hers. It was lifeless and
unresponsive.

66

"Why, Gloria!" He made a motion as if to put his
arm about her but she drew away.

"I don't.want that," she repeated.

"I'm very sorry," he said, a little impatiently.
"I--I didn't know you.made such fine distinctions."
(113-4)

By no means a prude, Gloria has willingly shared Anthony's
kisses up to this point, but as he opts to take greater
liberties--and to hold her "helpless"--she reacts with clear
verbal and nonverbal signals of displeasure. Far from
respecting her right to choose the nature and degree of
intimacy she desires, however, Anthony responds to her
"impatiently," with resentment toward.what he perceives as
"'fine distinctions.'" 'The incident ends in Anthony's hasty
retreat "without dignity" from.Gloria's presence, yet she
remains angry even after his departure:

For over a moment Gloria made no sound, Her
lips were still curled: her glance was straight,
proud, remote. ‘Then.her eyes blurred a little, and
she murmured three words half-aloud.to the death-
bound fire:

"Good-by, you ass!" she said. (115)

Her disillusionment.with.him is so intense, in fact, that they
avoid each other for several weeks.

Since Gloria's rejection of Anthony's advances demon-
strates her fundamental dignity and vitality--her "triumphant
soul"--it poses an irresistible challenge to him: he grows
increasingly infatuated with her, obsessed with the desire to
"own that strength that could send him away" (116). His

interest is in taking possession of--consuming--Gloria's

67
strength of will: hers is in maintaining personal jurisdiction
over’her life. lThe stage is thus set for an explosive power
struggle between them.

During the six week period when Anthony waits and.hopes
for Gloria to forget his brutish effort to force "a kiss that
was neither a game nor a tribute" on her, Bloeckman becomes a
serious rival for Gloria's affection. .Anthony is distressed
to think of Bloeckman's potential appeal toiGloria, for he
offers her a security and stability with.which Anthony can't
compete:

. . . a new idea had seared.his sky--what of Bloeck-
man! What would happen now? There was a wealthy
man, middle-aged enough.toibe tolerant with a
beautiful wife, to baby her whims and indulge her
unreason, to wear her as she perhaps wished to be
worn--a bright flower in his buttonhole, safe and
secure from.the things she feared. (118)
Significantly, Anthony thinks of Gloria's actions still in
terms of "whims" and "unreasdn"--though, in fact, the extent
of her "unreason" has only been to try to maintain control
over her own experience, to choose freely what she will or
will not do. Yet Fitzgerald's depiction of Anthony's assess-
ment of Gloria.has been treated by some critics as if.An-
thony's judgment were entirely accurate and reliable. ‘Thus,
Stern refers to Gloria as Anthony's "babywife," when in fact
Anthony's behavior throughout the novel is more immature than

Gloria's.5

68

Following the kiss incident and the subsequent estrange-
ment between Anthony and Gloria, the couple eventually drifts
back together--and on into marriage. But the match is a far
from satisfactory one from Gloria's point of view. Although
she expects the marriage to be a "performance" in which she
can star, she also needs more security--and respect--than
Anthony is capable of providing. She is not secure in his
affection, for he is exceedingly jealous--even of her past boy
friends, one of whom she pushed "'off a sixteen-foot embank-
ment'" (181) for attempting to take excessive sexual liberties
with her. Although Gloria herself is "proudly incapable of I
jealousy" ( 133) , Anthony cruelly tells her stories of his own
past romances in a deliberate effort to provoke her. After
they marry, Anthony displays his jealousy by rudely dictating
what ways he will or will not allow Gloria to interact with
others. Gloria's responses to Anthony's efforts to control
her reflect her internal conflict over the roles and rights of
women: sometimes she challenges Anthony' 8 authority: other
times she blindly obeys his will.

At their height, Anthony's efforts to control Gloria
amount to emotional coercion and, eventually, physical abuse.
When she is bored with their lifestyle and concerned about
their dwindling financial resources, she is eager to take
Bloeckman up on his offer to schedule a screen test for her,
so that she might get a role in a movie. Anthony, however,

undermines her budding ambition--even though she offers to

69
"'only play unsophisticated roles"'--on the unreasonable
grounds that he "'hates actors'" and assumes that her desire
to go into the movies merely reflects her "'craving for
excitement'" (213-15) . He threatens to leave for Europe if
she goes into the movies, and though she proclaims that she's
not interested in trying to stop him, she does not go for the
screen test.

Gloria yields to Anthony's manipulations without serious
argument on several occasions, largely because her upbringing
has led her to depend--financially, emotionally--on keeping
her husband happy. He is, after all, her livelihood.
Although she has long entertained the idea that being an
actress might be personally gratifying - she tells Anthony
{before their marriage that she would like "'to go on stage
some time'" (137) when a bona fide opportunity for her to test
her skills arises, her automatic impulse is to turn to her
husband to seek his permission: "'Would you let me, An-
thony?'" she asks (213) . His denial of permission in irra-
tional, but--fearful of provoking his displeasure--she submits
to his will. By doing so, of course, she is setting aside her
own vision of self-realization in an effort to maintain
domestic peace, which at that time at least is more important
to her.

Anthony's obsession with controlling Gloria also manifests
itself through physical abuse. 0n the few occasions when he

subjects her to physical contact that is abhorrent or violent,

70
she wages earnest but brief battles with him. She tries to
assert her independent will during their courtship, when she
finds his manner of kissing distasteful, and during their
marriage, when she tries to exercise some control over their
social interactions. When her efforts to live by her own
standards are thwarted, she loses confidence in her ability to
maintain her integrity: depression is the inevitable result,
which lowers her self-esteem and increases her dependency on
Anthony.

As Anthony's drinking grows more and more problematic,
Gloria understandably contrives to lead him away from settings
where he drinks too much. In the Western tradition in
general, of course, it is the wife's responsibility to manage
a couple's social life. So one afternoon when Anthony has
drunk himself virtually into a stupor at the Merriams' house,
Gloria declares that it's time to go. She will not give in to
the Merriams' polite insistence that they are welcome to stay,
and Anthony is offended by what he sees as her decision to
curtail his "innocent and harmless enjoyment." In the taxi on
the way to the train station, Anthony silently, drunkenly
determines that he must "assert his will against this cool and
impervious girl, to obtain with one magnificent effort a
mastery that seems infinitely desirable." At the station
they argue over buying train tickets, and Anthony stubbornly
and childishly insists that he "'won't go in the train, '"
preoccupied all the while with the notion that Sierie is being

71

"selfish" and that he must prove himself her "master." True
to herself, Gloria maintains her dignity and calmly vows to go
home alone, whereupon Anthony "seizes her arm" to restrain
her. The physical contact rapidly escalates into abuse, for
he "tightens his grasp" as she struggles to "pull away from
him. " Bystanders watch as the scuffle between husband and wife
continues, but no one makes any effort to intervene. Gloria
tries to "jerk herself away": Anthony grasps the other arm."
She calls him a "'brute'" and continues to try to free herself
by "tugging and straining." Unable to break away from
Anthony's brute physical strength in his drunken rage, Gloria
eventually releases her anger and frustration by biting
Anthony's thumb after the train departs without them.
Profoundly disturbed by his capability for physical violence,
she tersely proclaims that he has "'killed any love [she] ever
had for [him], and any respect. '" "'Oh, '" she exclaims, "'if
I 'd thought you'd ever lay your hands one me--. ' " Neverthe-
less, she follows him unhappily--"with a subdued cry of
infinite pain and despair" --into a waiting car: later, "wide-
eyed and sleepless," she crawls into bed next to him, thus
demonstrating her sense of helplessness and her lack of
confidence in her ability to reject genuine physical abuse
(197-201).

As the novel progresses, Gloria's vulnerability and
internal conflicts grow increasingly vivid. When she fears

she is pregnant long before they thought they might want to

72
have children, she seeks Anthony's opinion about getting an
abortion. He offers no real help, saying quite simply that
she must make up her own mind, even though she expresses her
fear of having the baby in terms of wanting to preserve her
physical beauty because it gives him pleasure:

"All I think of ever is that I love you," she
wailed. I value my body because you think it's
beautiful. And this body of mine--of yours--to have
it grow ugly and shapeless? It's simply intolerable.
Oh, Anthony, I'm not afraid of the pain." (203)

By this time, Gloria is treating herself as an extension--or
possession--of Anthony's. Significantly, she indicates that
she is accustomed to effacing herself, focusing solely on her
love of Anthony, which is "'all she thinks of ever. '" She is
so dependent on him (despite her longings for control over her
own life) that she finds it difficult to make her own deci-
sions, even about her own body. She wrestles helplessly with
her confusion, eventually justifying her decision to pursue
what proves to be an unnecessary abortion on the grounds that
to do so would be "'being true'" to herself (205) . Though she
obviously has little substantial sense of self, she neverthe-
less stubbornly aspires to some semblance of autonomy.

The more Gloria grapples hopelessly with the negative
aspects of her alliance with Anthony, the more her vision of
self-determination suffers under his influence. Though
Anthony smothers her with his jealousy and obsessive mastery,

she is not even reaping the benefit of security traditionally

73
afforded to women by marriage. Life with Anthony proves to be
a series of upsets, arguments, and abusive episodes, culminat-
ing one night in Gloria's experience of a full-blown anxiety
attack.

Her acute psychological trauma grows out of a typical
evening's activities at the young Patches' home in the
country. Anthony and his friends drink heavily, play music,
dance, and then pick Gloria up and pass her around the room--
with riotous disregard for her repeated demands to be put
down. Gloria defends herself by striking one of the men, and
then eagerly retreats to the solitude of her room. Lying
awake, she feels "a weight pressing down upon her breast" and
longs silently for her mother, who she knows is "dead, beyond
sight and touch forever." Suffering under the tremendous
psychological pain that is "pressing on her, pressing on her,"
she startles back to full consciousness to see one of the
drunken revelers "swaying in the doorway" of her bedroom.
Suddenly, "She knows what she must do--now, now, before it
[is] too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out,
away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and
the fresh moisture on her forehead" (242-43) . Gloria rises
then, sneaks down the stairs, and rushes out into the night,
aware that "even Anthony [is] part of this weight." Sig-
nificantly, her focus is on the movement away from the source
of her distress (Anthony, who provides no nurture, and the

whole self-involved household) rather than toward any compel-

74
ling destination. When the household discovers her absence,
several men set out to overtake her, but she continues to
flee, with "this thing . . . driving her forward." She is
acutely aware of a nameless oppression that threatens her
terribly, and even when Anthony catches up with her she is too
distressed to consent to return home. The men sit and talk
with her until early morning, when she insists on boarding a
train alone to return to the city (243-44) .

The severity of Gloria's anxiety attack reflects her
growing subconscious alarm over the course of her life with
Anthony. He does not offer her the respect, appreciation, and
security she craves, yet she does not know any way to change
her situation. Every effort she makes to assert herself--to
seek work and professional fulfillment, to curb Anthony's
outrageous drinking and spending habits, to set limits on the
treatment of her own body--is thwarted. She is remarkable in
that she continues to try to maintain some jurisdiction over
her own life, even in the face of nearly insurmountable obsta-
cles: Anthony's jealousy and brute physical strength and her
utter economic dependency. Though she is in touch with the
reality of her vulnerability as a woman, she is not willing to
relinquish her persistent struggle for personal dignity
without an earnest battle.

Anthony is a fundamentally weak and impulsive man--it
takes an insecure man to insist so selfishly on "owning" a

woman--and Gloria finds his lack of commitment to their mutual

75
financial welfare enormously frustrating. As their resources
dwindle, Gloria nags Anthony frequently about the importance
of his getting some work and improving relations with his
wealthy grandfather. Gloria sees the danger of using up their
capital more clearly than Anthony, who is childishly inclined
to give in to any impulses that strike his fancy. In fact, at
one point Anthony confesses to Gloria that he once even
succumbed to his "'instinct to kick a cat'" which had ap-
parently been hoping someone would "'be kind to him, '" and
Gloria identifies so intensely with the young cat's vul-
nerability that she cries and prohibits Anthony from coming
near her (289-90) . Like the cat that sought Anthony's
affection, Gloria too has trusted Anthony unwisely with her
welfare. In this episode Gloria again vaguely perceives the
threat Anthony poses to her yearning for a modicum of kind-
ness. Similarly, when Gloria later develops an interest in
obtaining a squirrel coat the couple can ill afford because of
Anthony's spending habits, her subconscious motivation may
once more be her lingering hope and desire to be taken care of
in the tradition of her gender and social class.

Near the end of the novel, after Adam Patch dies and while
his will is being contested, Gloria begins to come to terms
with the fact that her marriage to Anthony offers her no real
security. As she matures, she assumes increasing respon-
sibility for herself and for the household. She learns to

cook her own meals, even though her upbringing had taken it

76
for granted that others would always cook for her. She
contacts Joseph Bloeckman and goes for a belated screen test,6
learning to her dismay that her once splendid beauty has faded
too much for her to obtain starring roles: rather than accept
a bit part that she feels is beneath her dignity, she rejects
the opportunity to act altogether. She tries diligently to
prevent Anthony from squandering their last few dollars on
drink. In fact, it is even Gloria who maintains communica-
tions with the lawyers contesting Adam Patch' 8 will while
Anthony goes south for military training and becomes involved
with Dot.

No doubt Anthony' 8 absence is a tremendous relief for
Gloria, for their marriage has been filled with strife for a
long time. She takes advantage of his absence to develop some
of her own interests and to examine her life. She socializes
a bit but makes it clear that she does not choose to make
herself available to other men sexually. She spends a great
deal of time in simple, solitary pursuits like reading and
walking--which illustrate her return to an introspective mode
characteristic of a woman who wrote a diary regularly up to
her marriage .

Anthony' 8 unexpected return from the south mars her new-
found, tenuous equilibrium, and she takes to her bed just as
the legal case--which will determine their economic future--is
at last approaching trial . Anthony imagines that Gloria is
coddling herself, that she's not really ill: the doctor,

77
however, recognizes the validity of her emotionally-induced
illness and cautions Anthony not to disturb Gloria. Indeed,
by this time Gloria cannot even stand for Anthony to sit on
her'bed, for he is repulsive to her, especially when his
breath smells "'like whiskey'" (442).

True to their pattern, when something has to be done it is
Gloria--not Anthony--who sees to it. So it is Gloria who
leaves her bed to represent the couple in the courtroom when
the verdict is delivered--and Gloria who returns to an
alcoholic, hysterical, and.deranged spouse to report the news
that the couple will indeed inherit Patch's millions.
Ironically, at the close of Fitzgerald's first novel about
marriage, the wife--who has long struggled with the cultural-
ly-induced.belief that she needs to be taken care of by a man-
-winds up as a kind of nursemaid to her very seriously
unbalanced husband. Despite Gloria Gilbert Patch's relentless
efforts to preserve her fundamental dignity, in the end she is
damned.both.by her society's expectations and.her'personal
economic dependency. In this respect she is not unlike The
91333; Setehx's Daisy, whose unhappy marriage to Tom is
dictated.more by economic and social necessity than by

reciprocal love and commitment.

CHAPTER IV
Beneath the Mask: The Plight of Daisy Buchanan

With two noteworthy exceptions,l Setehy critics have
generally been content to dismiss Daisy Buchanan as the "shal-
low, " "foolish, " "unworthy" woman who happens to embody Jay
Gatsby's dream. Like the women Fitzgerald portrayed in Erie
Side 91 Eerediee and like Gloria Gilbert Patch, however, Daisy
embodies conflicting values and expectations: the longing for
the only security her social stature offers-- marriage to a
wealthy man who can provide "background"--and the impulse
toward independent efforts to achieve self-fulfilment.

Guided only by Nick' 8 very limited view of her, readers
often judge Daisy solely on the basis of her superficial
qualities, with no apparent awareness that her silly manner
conceals a woman of feeling or that her final "irresponsi-
bility" towards Gatsby stems from an acute sense of respon-
sibility towards herself. Certainly it is easy to join Nick
in lumping Daisy and Tom together at the end of the novel and
condemning them both for being "careless. " But such a narrow
estimation of Daisy's character is far too simplistic, for,
although Nick conscientiously relates what Daisy does, he
clearly does not understand what motivates her. In fact,

78

79
Daisy baffles Nick from the opening chapter, when he observes
her unhappy situation with Tom and wonders why she doesn't
leave him:

I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It

seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush

out of the house, child in arms--but apparently there were

no such intentions in her head. (20-2)

Just as Nick fails to comprehend Daisy's reluctance to
leave Tom at the beginning of the novel, he continues to be
confused by her in the last chapter. In his final reference
to Daisy, Nick once more acknowledges his uncertainty about
what keeps Tom and Daisy together:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up

things and creatures and then retreated back into their

money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that

kept them together. . . . (180-81)

Nick's prolonged confusion about Daisy's continued
association with Tom naturally hinders his ability to present
her character. Since Nick is the narrator of the story, his
failure to perceive what makes Daisy behave as she does makes
it easy for readers to jump to the conclusion that she is
"shallow"--that she acts as she does for no good reason at
all, either because she is incapable of genuine feeling or
because she just doesn't care. But the very fact that Nick is
perplexed about Daisy suggests that she ought not to be
dismissed as the "beautiful little fool" she says she wants

her daughter to be. Despite his inability to understand

80

Daisy, Nick's keen observations of her behavior demonstrate
not that she is unable to feel and express strong emotions,
but that she deliberately avoids them, perhaps as a defense
mechanism, because she recognizes the pain they can entail.
Daisy clings-- unsuccessfully--to a gay, superficial, "care-
less" world in an effort to protect herself from what are for
her the terrifying dangers inherent in caring.

Without a doubt, Nick's confusion about what motivates
Daisy is rooted in Fitzgerald's own uncertainty about his
development of her character. Even before The greet Setehy's
1925 publication, Fitzgerald revealed his dissatisfaction with
Daisy in a letter to Maxwell Perkins:

Chapter 7 (the hotel scene) will never quite be up to the

mark--I've worried about it too long and I can't quite

place Daisy's reaction. . . . I'm sorry Myrtle is better
than Daisy. . . . It's Chapter VII that's the trouble with

Daisy and it may hurt the book's popularity that it's e

nenje heels, (Turnbull, Lettere, 172-73).

Evidently, Fitzgerald--like Nick--did not quite know what to
make of Daisy. Shortly after the book came out, he referred
again to the problem of Daisy in letters to both Edmund Wilson
and H.L. Mencken. A harsh critic of his own work, he wrote to

Edmund Wilson :

The worst fault in it, I think is a BIG FAULT: I gave no
account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the
emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy from the time
of their reunion to the catastrophe. (Turnbull, Lettere,
341)

81

In his letter to H.L. Mencken, he pinpointed the problem more
precisely:

There is a tremendous fault in the book--the lack of an

emotional presentment of Daisy's attitude toward Gatsby

after their reunion (and the subsequent lack of logic or

igggartance in her throwing him over). (Turnbull, Lettere,

Fitzgerald was a remarkably perceptive judge of his own
work, and it is worth noting that his acute, valid sense of
Daisy's inadequate development concerned only the second half
of the novel. Apparently he was satisfied with Daisy's
coexistence with Tom, his "best character," up to and includ-
ing the scene of her reunion with Gatsby. And with good
reason--for Nick's painstaking portrayals of Daisy when he
visits her and Tom at their home in chapter 1 and again when
she comes to his home for the surprise reunion with Gatsby in
chapter 5 clearly reveal much more about her character than
his depiction of her subsequent sudden, unexplained renuncia-
tion of Gatsby does. In fact, even through Fitzgerald himself
may not have consciously been able to "place Daisy's reac-
tion," his description of her up to the hotel scene indicates
that he was at least intuitively aware of some "logic or
importance" in her behavior during the confrontation between
Tom and Gatsby.

Most studies of The Sreet Setehy eventually focus at least
briefly on Nick Carraway, and this one is no exception. We
see Daisy, as we see Gatsby, only through Nick's eyes. But,

although Nick thoroughly assesses and obviously admires

82
Gatsby's character and behavior, his perception of Daisy is
far more limited. Perhaps this is what Fitzgerald was
thinking of when he called Setebx "a man's book," for, despite'
Daisy's important role in the story, the male narrator focuses
almost exclusively on two men: Gatsby and Tom. Except for
his account of one brief, private conversation with Daisy in
the opening chapter, Nick's revelations about Daisy are
restricted to her observable behavior among people and to
other people's remarks about her. Nick describes Daisy in
terms of gaiety, restlessness, fear, artificiality--but while
he recognizes that she is affected, he fails to comprehend
what lies beneath her affectation. And since he is the
narrator of The greet Setehy, his ignorance of--and apparent
lack of curiosity about--what Daisy's affectation conceals can
easily influence the reader's opinion of her.

But Nick's impressions of Jordan Baker, who grew up with
Daisy in Louisville and who also reflects Fitzgerald's view of
Southern womanhood, can shed some light on Daisy's character.
Nick establishes his "tender curiosity" toward Jordan, then
reveals an insight:

The bored haughty face that she turned to the world con-

cealed something--most affectations conceal something

eventually, even though they don't in the beginning--(58) .
In Jordan's case, Nick develops his casual observation about
affectations by saying that she is "incurably dishonest" and

therefore feels safest "on a plane where any divergence from a

83
code would be thought impossible. " Later he engages in a
playful spat with her about her careless driving, and she
reveals her assumption that other people are cautious: she
evidently expects to be protected from her own vulnerability
by the precautions other people take.

Like Jordan, Daisy is affected. Nick demonstrates his
awareness of her affectation throughout the novel by comment-
ing on her insincerity, as he does in chapter 1, following her
private disclosures to him about her unhappy marriage.

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she
went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so--the
most advanced people. And I knew. I've been everywhere
and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes
flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's,
and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated--
God, I'm sophisticated!"

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my
attention, by belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what
she had said. (18)

Daisy may indeed have "been everywhere and seen everything
and done everything," but her pretensions of "sophistica-
tion"--her insistence that "everything's terrible"--aren't
convincing to Nick, perhaps because they aren't convincing to
her. She's playing a part, saying what she considers ap-
propriate, but not what she really feels. Nick gives us a
clue to her deception when he describes her manner of delive-
ry. It is significant that she "went on in a convinced way"
instead of actually being convinced. Earlier in the same

scene, when Daisy complains about her bruised finger, Nick

observes that she wears an "awed expression," suggesting that

84
she is not in fact "awed." Later in the novel Nick pointedly
reaffirms his sense of Daisy's affectation when she is
reunited with Gatsby and Nick overhears her initiating a
conversation--apparently with difficulty--"on a clear artifi-
cial note." (87)

Jordan and Daisy are not the first Southern women Fitz-
gerald portrays in terms of affectations. Sally Carrol
Happer, the young protagonist in "The Ice Palace" (1920) , is
similarly wealthy, popular, and affected. Caught between her
fear of stultification in the dying South and her craving for
the security of marriage, she agrees to go north to marry
Harry Bellamy. She explains to a Southern friend, Clark
Darrow:

"tied down here I'd get restless. I'd feel I was--wastin'

myself. There's two sides of me, you see. There's the

sleepy old side you love: an' there's a sort of energy-the
feelin' that makes me do wild things."2

Though her Southern friends warn her against marrying a
Yankee, Sally Carrol goes North to visit Harry and his family.
There she begins to miss the security of an established code
of behavior, much as Jordan and Daisy later do in The greet
getehy. Confused, she fervently seeks Harry' 8 advice about
Northern etiquette, and he responds with a demand that she
tell him how glad she is to be there.

"Glad--just awful glad!" she whispered, insinuating
herself into his arms in her own peculiar way. "Where you

are is home for me, Harry. "
And as she said this she had the feeling for almost

85

the first time in her life that she was acting a part.

(11)

Sally Carrol chooses to act a part in an effort to resolve
her conflicting needs for adventure (flight to the north) and
security (suitable marriage). But soon after she recognizes
that she is "acting a part," she argues with Harry over his
unkind remarks about Southerners. "A Southerner wouldn't talk
the way you're talking now" (18), she insists, demonstrating
still further that she misses the comfort of an established
code of behavior. It is no surprise, then, that, after
getting lost for a brief but horrifying time in the ice palace
at the winter carnival, she chooses to go back home.

Sally Carrol Happer is an important forerunner of Daisy
Buchanan, for they suffer the same kinds of conflicts and
attempt similar solutions. But Fitzgerald got the idea for
"The Ice Palace" from Zelda, and her sympathetic view of the
conflicting needs and desires of Southern women enabled him to
portray Sally Carrol with generosity. He seems to admire the
character, as he admired Zelda, for "her courage, her sin-
cerity, and her flaming self-respect.“ He describes Sally
Carrol ' s affectation as something she recognizes and finds in-
tolerable in herself. Moreover, he leaves the reader with a
strong sense of her integrity, which she exhibits both as she
openly tells Roger Patton her reasons for marrying and as she
courageously leaves the cold North to go back home, where she

feels she belongs .

86

Five years elapsed between the publication of "The Ice
Palace" and The greet getehy, and during that time the erosion
of Fitzgerald's marriage to Zelda may have decreased his
sympathy for feminine conflicts. Furthermore, Daisy Buchanan,
unlike Sally Carrol in "The Ice Palace," is not the protagon-
ist 'of the novel: Fitzgerald is less thorough in his charac-
terization of her. Although Nick is intuitively aware of
Daisy's affectation, he utterly fails to explore its origins.
Nevertheless, we can begin to understand Daisy better by
closely examining Nick's observations of her behavior. In
three key scenes--Nick's first visit to the Buchanans,
Gatsby' s reunion with Daisy, and the hot afternoon at the
Plaza-Nick's simple descriptions of Daisy reveal her genuine
love for Gatsby, her intense fear of emotions in general, and
her craving for stability. The juxtaposition of these forces
suggests the severity of Daisy's conflict: her longing for
personal freedom is brought out by her deep-rooted affection
for Gatsby, but her fear of emotions and her need for stabil-
ity make her cling to her unsatisfactory marriage to Tom.

Nick's first description of Daisy's face when he visits
the Buchanans for dinner at their home suggests that she is
burdened with a serious internal conflict: "Her face was sad
and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright
passionate mouth. . . . " (9) Though her overall countenance
is of sorrow, her face is somehow fragmented--turned into a

set of beautiful objects, much as Tom and Gatsby turn her into

87
an object to suit their needs. And in her face, as in her
life, vitality coexists with suffering. Nick's seemingly
contradictory description of Daisy is strikingly effective.
It is, in Bryer's words, an "arresting linkage," which evokes
in the reader "a mixture of surprise and a realization of
appropriateness" ("Style," 125).

In the opening chapter, Fitzgerald clearly indicates that
Daisy embodies a war between hope and despair. At dinner,
Daisy eagerly asks: "Do you always watch for the longest day
of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest
day in the year and then miss it" (12) . Bored, Jordan
suggests that they ought to "plan something." "All right,"
said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned . . . helplessly:
"What do people plan?" (12) . Daisy's childlike anticipation
of the longest day of the year and her gay eagerness to "plan
something" demonstrate the optimistic aspect of her character.
But her hopeful nature is thwarted by experience and her
attitude grows cynical. First she recognizes that looking
forward to something doesn't always pay off, and then she
realizes that she doesn't know how to exert any control over
the situation: she knows she'll miss the day she looks
forward to, and she realizes that she doesn't know what to
plan anyway. As Barry Gross observes, "the future for Daisy
is not that orgastic consummation devoutly to be wished"

("Back West," 7). Yet Daisy can't help looking forward to

88
the future, despite her acute sense of futility: that is the
nature and intensity of her inner conflict.

From the opening of the novel, Fitzgerald demonstrates
that Daisy, like Gatsby, is at least inpart a romantic.‘
The first clue that Daisy remembers Gatsby with more than just
a passing interest appears during Nick' 8 first visit to the
Buchanans' home. Jordan tells Nick that she knows a man named
Gatsby in West Egg, and Daisy, alert to an old lover's name
despite five years of separation, her marriage to another man,
and the birth of a daughter, suddenly interrupts: '" 'Gatsby? '
demanded Daisy. 'What Gatsby? ' " (11) . Because dinner is an-
nounced, Daisy doesn 't get an immediate answer, and her
question may seem insignificant to a casual reader. But later
in the novel , as Jordan tells Nick of Daisy and Gatsby' 8 early
romance, we learn that Daisy cared enough about hearing
Gatsby' 8 name that evening to wake Jordan up--after she had
retired early to rest before a tournament--to get news of
Gatsby. This incident in and of itself does not prove that
Daisy's love for Gatsby approaches his for her, but, coupled
with the events that follow, it certainly suggests that she,
like Gatsby, cultivates fond memories of a dream lover.

Severe tension pervades the Buchanan home as Nick dines
with Jordan, Tom, and Daisy. Even before Nick learns that
"Tom' 8 got some woman in New York" (15) , his observations of
the interplay between Daisy and Tom reflect the animosity

between them. Their exchanges seem playful at first. Daisy

89

accuses Tom.of'hurting her finger, then childishly calls him
"hulking" repeatedly, since she knows it upsets him. But
gradually their feud escalates” The telephone's reminders of
Tom's sexual fidelity contribute to Daisy's flirtatious
behavior towards Nick.at the dinner table. ‘When Tom is first
called away to the telephone, Daisy affects indifference by
"enthusiastically" recounting a funny story to Nick; And when
the phone calls Tom.away again only a few moments later, Nick
observes: "As if his absence quickened something within her,
Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing"
(15).

Certainly Nick perceives that Daisy is reacting emotional-
ly to an emotional situation, but her response is not im-
.mediately directed towards the source of her tension. Daisy
responds to tension with energy, but, instead of openly
confronting Tom with her anger, she enthusiastically engages
herself with Nick.and needles Tom through ironic remarks.
Characteristically, she subjugates her desire to assert
herself to her need for security; But the simple fact that
she is anxious in the face of evidence of Tom's infidelity
suggests that she has an emotional investment in her relation-
ship with him. A woman who felt less would react less.

Daisy displays her intelligence, sensitivity, and suffer-
ing as she gets even with Tom throughout the evening. When
Tom criticizes.Jordan's family for letting her "run around the

country," Daisy says, "She's going to spend lots of week-ends

90
out here this summer. I think.the home influence will be very
good for her" (19). Tom.shows his recognition of her implica-
tions as he stares at her in silence. .And Daisy continues to
annoy him by making his concern about racial purity the butt
of a nasty joke.

"Did.you.give Nick.a little heart-to-heart talk.on
the veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly.

"Did I? . . . I can't seem to remember, but I think
we talked about the Nordic race. ‘Yes, I'm sure we did.

It sort of crept up on us and the first thing you know--"

(20)

Tom interrupts Daisy and addresses Nick, thus demonstrating
his recognition of--and.disregard for--Daisy's covert hos-
tility.

By this point, of course, Daisy has had a little "heart-
to-heart talk" with Nick, and in it she‘has disclosed that she
is vulnerable to emotions, and.that she has been.deeply--
perhaps irreparably--hurtn When Nick, having recognized "that
turbulent emotions possessed her," asks Daisy about her
daughter, Daisy cautiously exposes her feelings to him through
her account of the child's birth:

"Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God
knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly
abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it
was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I
turned.my head away and wept. "All right,‘ I said, 'I'm
glad it's.a girl. .And.IIhope she'll be a fool--that is

the best thing'a girl can.be in this world, a beautiful
little fool.'" (17)

91

Daisy's story about the child's birth reveals a lot about
her own unhappiness. She would choose to be a fool--to be
incapable of and invulnerable to ideas and emotions--i_r she
could: but the foundation of her desire to be unfeeling is
experience: she does feel, she has suffered, and her desire
for her daughter to be a "fool" is actually a desire to
shelter her from experiencing the pain that Daisy herself has
known. Daisy's remarks about the child's birth are pitiful,
but they are rooted in the authority of bitter experience, and
they are not shallow.

Daisy's capacity for feeling is further demonstrated by
Jordan's story about her romance with Gatsby in Louisville.
Jordan indicates that Daisy was very wealthy and very popular:
moreover, she was apparently already cultivating a certain
mystique. She customarily "dressed all in white" and drove "a
little white roadster." Jordan also remembers one morning
when Daisy and a young officer, Gatsby, "were so engrossed in
each other that [Daisy] didn't see [her]" (76) . Judging by
Jordan's wording, the affection that flowed between Daisy and
Gatsby at that time was unquestionably reciprocal. And Jordan
strengthens her suggestion that Daisy was in love with Gatsby
by her seemingly casual references to Daisy's behavior after

Gatsby went to war:

" . . . I didn't see Daisy very often. She went with a
slightly older crowd--when she went with anyone at all.
Wild rumors were circulating about her--how her mother had
found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New
York and say good-by to a soldier who was going overseas.

92

Sheiwas effectually prevented, but she wasn't on speaking

terms with her family for several weeks. After that she

didn't play around with the soldiers any more, but only
with a few flat-footed, short-sighted young men in town,

who couldn't get into the army at all." (76)

Jordan's history of Daisy shows that Daisy was strongly
attached to Gatsby--so fond of him, in fact, that she was
willing to risk the wrath of her parents by running off to see
him without permission. But she wasn't free: she was a young
Southern belle, dependent on her "good" family and consequent-
ly protected and resticted by its established code of be-
havior. She was angry when they interfered with her plans,
but her anger was ineffectual: she lacked the courage and
cgnviction to break away from them in pursuit of her own
happiness. But the unhappy end of her affair with Gatsby did
have a profound impact on her: for a year sheiwithdrewmfrgm
her customary social engagements and rejected dates with
attractive, eligible young men. The girl who had been so
sought after began to associate only with men who could not
possibly compete with Gatsby, whom she had loved very deeply.
Daisy had, in effect, retreated from the risks of falling in '
love again.

As Jordan continues her monologue about Daisy, she remarks
that Daisy returned to her previous gay social circle a little
over a year later. She was still affected--but now her
affectation concealed her fear of love:

By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever.
She had a debut after the Armistice, and in February she

93

was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June

she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago . . . (76-77)

Daisy's new gaiety was a false gaiety. Her flirtations, even
with the man she eventually married, were not as deep as her
affection for Gatsby had been. After a year of avoiding any
involvement with potentially serious suitors, Daisy's sudden
engagements first to one man and then to another reflect her
sense of urgency to get on with her life. Gatsby's account of
Daisy's increasingly desperate letters underscores this point:

. . . there was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's

letters. She didn't see why he couldn't come. She was

feeling the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted
to see him and feel his presence beside her and be
reassured that she was doing the right thing after all

(151).

Daisy had sustained her love for Gatsby through their
correspondence over more than a year. But she was a victim of
her need for stability, and, despite their mutual love, Gatsby
was unable to meet that need:

She wanted her life shaped now, immediately--and the

decision must be made by some force--of love, of money, of

unquestionable practicality- that was close at hand. (151)
Daisy couldn't wait forever. Her need for stability was im-
mediate, and she attempted to satisfy that need through
something tangible, something close at hand. It is sig-
nificant that she planned to marry one man and wound up

marrying another, for her need was not for any particular

person (unless it was for Gatsby, who didn't come to her), but

94
simply for an attainable partner who could provide-through
marriage--the sense of identity and stability she so desper-
ately craved.

Judging by the accounts of Jordan and Gatsby, Daisy was so
in love with Gatsby--and so hurt by his failure to come to her
when she needed him--that she virtually married Tom on the
rebound. The vivid scene of Daisy's drunkenness when she
"changes her mind" after receiving a letter from Gatsby is a
clear indication of her devotion to Gatsby. Significantly,
she asks that someone return the wedding pearls to "whoever
they belong to": her future husband has no particular
identity to her. She clings pathetically to Gatsby's letter,
symbol of the man she really loves, because he himself is not
available to her.

Nevertheless, Jordan tells Nick that Daisy married Tom
"without so much as a shiver" (78) . And, having made a formal
commitment to her choice of Tom Buchanan for a husband, Daisy
apparently allowed herself to fall in love with him. Jordan
describes Daisy's devotion to Tom shortly after they returned
from their honeymoon:

" . . . I thought I'd never seen a girl so mad about her

husband. If he left the room for a minute she'd look

around uneasily, and say: "Where's Tom gone?" and wear the
most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the
door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her
lap by the hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and
looking at him with unfathomable delight. It was touching

to see them together--it made you laugh in a hushed,
fascinated way. (78)

95

Such devotion--even.between honeymooners--seems excessive.
But Daisy, profoundly disappointed by her first lover,
struggled valiantly to grasp and.maintain.her new'husband's
love. If, aleordan suggests, Daisy was genuinely in love
with Tom following their wedding, that love was short-lived.
Daisy's affection for Tom--like her earlier love for Gatsby--
was soon shattered by his breech of her trusts When Tom's
illicit liaison with a chambermaid in their Santa Barbara
hotel became public knowledge, Daisy retreated once more from
the risks of love. .Although she remained married to him--she
was already pregnant with their daughter--their relationship
clearly deteriorated considerably. Perhaps Tom.never even
suspects how'much.he's forfeited through his philandering
until he discovers that Daisy loves Gatsby; .At the Plaza Nick
suddenly sees her "as someone he knew a long time ago" (119).

The history of Daisy's severe disappointments in love is
important preparation for the reunion scene with Gatsby, which
Fitzgerald once called his "favorite" of the novel (Turnbull,
Lettere, 170). Through.Tom as‘well as through Gatsby Daisy
has discovered that romantic love leads to emotional anguish.
Thus, it is not surprising that Daisy's overwhelming emotion
when she first sees Gatsby at Nick's house is fear; She is
deeply shaken by seeing him again, and it takes her con-
siderable effort just to remain calm. Nick describes the
couple's appearance as he enters the room immediately after

they've seen each other:

96

Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining
against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of
perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so
far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantel-
piece clock, and from this position his distraught eyes
stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but
graceful, on the edge of a stiff chair. (87)

Here Nick's description of the characters captures the
tension in the air, just as his earlier description of the
Buchanans' dinner does. Matters are so tense, in fact, that
serving the tea provides them all with a "welcome confusion."

Daisy is stunned by the reappearance of Gatsby in her
life. Her usual carefree manner is swept aside by the renewal
of contact with the first man she ever loved in a romantic
sense. She is drawn to him, but she is afraid of him, for,
after all, she had trusted him--needed him--in the past, and
he had failed her. She's been hurt, and her intense anxiety
at the sight of Gatsby reflects that she's suffering from
conflicting impulses. She still needs his love, yet she also
needs the stability that Tom provided for her when Gatsby
couldn't.

Nick doesn't assess Daisy's reaction to Gatsby much during
the tea, but when he returns from his brief stay under the
tree in the rain, he observes: "Her throat, full of aching,
grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy" (90). He
also reveals that Daisy has been crying in front of Gatsby--

letting down her defenses--but that she dabs her tears away

97

and goes to wash her face when Nick comes in. Evidently,
Daisy is a different person when she is alone with Gatsby.

Throughout their late afternoon visit to Gatsby's mansion,
Daisy exhibits her need for tangible connections with Gatsby.
As they visit his room, she touches his brush "with delight"
and later buries her head in his shirts, sobbing. These
things are important to her not because they are beautiful in
and of themselves, but because they are Gatsby's. She is
reestablishing contact with him through gradual, gentle
contact with his belongings. That she expresses her affection
through touching his things instead of through direct expres-
sions of affection towards him reflects the severity of her
fear of human relationships. Eventually, though, she dares to
put her arm through his, and Nick recognizes the importance of
their reunion--to both of them--as he leaves:
They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held
out her hand: Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked
once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely,
possessed by intense life. (97)
Daisy's renewed connection with Gatsby has brought her back
from the cynical world of the emotionally dead: as she
accepts and reciprocates Gatsby's love, she is "possessed by
intense life."

Shortly after Daisy's reunion with Gatsby, she and Tom
attend one of the lavish parties at Gatsby's mansion. There

Daisy once more responds to an emotional situation with

98
anxiety. .As soon as they arrive, she begins nervously
flirting with Nick:

"These things excite me 59," she whispered. "If you
want to kiss me any'timeiduring'the evening, Nick, just
let me know and I'll be glad to arrange it for yous Just
mention my name. Or present a green card. I'm giving out
green--" (105).

Of course, Nick is not the genuine object of her affection,
but only a convenient.distractionm IHer real anxiety stems
from.the emotional ordeal of attending Gatsby's party with
Tom, Soon Tom's undisguised interest in another woman stirs
up old injuries, and Daisy reacts with her customary irony, "
. . . if you.want to take.down any addresses here's my little
gold pencil" (107).

Daisy is uncomfortable with the party and the feelings it
arouses in her. But before she leaves she appears fascinated
by the image an actress, "a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of
a woman" (106), presents. .After Daisy expresses her approval
of the actress by calling her "lovely," Nick reports that the
rest of the party "offended.her--and inarguably, because it
wasn't a gesture but an emotion" (108). But the actress
appeals to Daisy, not because Daisy is too shallow to ap-
preciate emotion.but.because she has learned to fear emotion.
Daisy admires the actress because she appears to have achieved
the emotional invulnerability that Daisy herself has come to

yearn for.

99

As Fitzgerald lamented in his personal correspondence, he
fails to develop the emotional attachment between Daisy and
Gatsby between the reunion and the catastrophe. He merely
hints at an affair by Gatsby's remark to Nick that "Daisy
comes over quite often--in the afternoons" (114) . But when
Nick sees them together again, he recognizes--as even Tom
Buchanan is forced to recognize--that Daisy loves Gatsby. She
reveals herself inadvertently through the way she looks at
Gatsby, the way she admires him verbally, and especially the
way she can't keep her hands off him. She needs his love, but
she needs it to be tangible, and stable.

During the critical scene at the Plaza, Daisy's conflict-
ing needs for love and for safety from emotions take on new
dimensions. As is her custom, her impulse is to run away as
soon as she senses a messy emotional situation on the horizon.
Before they even leave for the city, she tells Tom, "Oh, let's
have fun. . . . it's too hot to fuss" (120). And then at the
hotel, she warns him, " . . . If you're going to make personal
remarks I won't stay here a minute" (127) . But her pleading
is to no avail: Tom precipitates a confrontation with Gatsby,
and Daisy's fear mounts.

"Please don't!" she interrupted helplessly. "Please

let's all go home. Why don't we all go home?" (131)

But Daisy cannot stop the building tension--so Tom, the
embodiment of her need for stability, and Gatsby, the embodi-

ment of her need for love, battle over her. "'I won't stand

100

this!' she cries, 'Oh.please let's get out'" (134). Still,
her desperation.goes unappeased, and she cannot avoid.the
anguish of being asked to choose between the two men. Backed
up against the wall, she ultimately rejects both, since
neither can meet her needs by himself; She perceives that Tom
cannot satisfy her expectations of romantic devotion, and
Gatsby, who made his fortune illegally, cannot.meet.her need
for stability.

When.Gatsby wants Daisy to tell Tom.she never loved.him,
she refuses:

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried.toiGatsby. "I

love you now--isn't that enough? I can't help what's past."
She began to sob helplessly; "I did love him.once--but I
loved you too" (133).
Daisy's insistence that she loved them both is honest--she
loved.Gatsby in a romantic way, and she loved.Tom in a more
practical way; They each.met some of her needs, and so she
loved them both. Her simple statement that she loved both
marks a brief emergence from her concealment behind any of the
different versions of her affectations. But, as Nick has
observed frequently throughout the novel, Daisy is "helpless":
Gatsby cannot tolerate her honest expression.of her feelings.
He wants to see her alone, perhaps to see if she'll change her
story. But Daisy refuses, displaying her fundamental but, so
far, well-hidden integrity: "'Even alone I can't say I never
loved.Tom', she admitted in.a pitiful voice. 'It.wouldn't be

true'" (133).

101

Daisy's sudden, simple respect for the truth is startling
to the reader, because Nick's perceptions of her throughout
the, novel are so very limited to her superficial manner. But
her stubborn honesty under duress is a logical outgrowth of
her inner struggle to resolve conflicting needs. It is a
brief, futile attempt to declare emotional independence. But
Daisy still needs the security of an established code of
behavior, and she finds it easier to leave her lover than her
husband.

Just as Fitzgerald fails fully to explore the nature of
Daisy's affair with Gatsby, he fails clearly to account for
her behavior following the scene at the Plaza. After the
accident that kills Myrtle, Nick observes Daisy and Tom for
the last time through their kitchen window:

They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched
the chicken or the ale--and yet they weren't unhappy
either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy
about the picture, and anybody would have said that they
were conspiring together. (146)

Perhaps Daisy has believed Tom's simple statement that
afternoon that his extramarital affairs are over. Perhaps she
simply needs him so badly after learning the truth about
Gatsby that she doesn't care about his familiar shortcomings
anymore. In any case, Nick clearly perceives a renewal of '
communication between Daisy and her husband. Sadly, but
predictably, Daisy rapidly retreats into her unhappy life with

Tom--abandoning her dream of a romantic lover to cling desper-

102
ately to the unsatisfactory stability her husband represents.
She is a victim of a complex network of needs and desires:
she deserves more pity than blame.

Daisy's confusion over her relationships with the two
principal men in her life reflects the gender confusion that
was rampant during Fitzgerald's era. Although she is disap-
pointed in her marriage, she does not see any viable alterna-
tive to it. Her frustration over her apparent inability to
protest effectively over her social condition is somewhat
understated. In Tender Ie the Night and Zelda's companion
work, Seg he the fleitr, however, unhappy wives prove more

outspoken about their unhappiness.

CHAPTER V

Nicole Warren Diver and Alabama Beggs Knight:
Women on the Threshold of Freedom

Despite Scott Fitzgerald's heated allegations that his
wife Zelda had stolen his material for Tender Ie the Night
when she wrote and published Sere he the delta, her 1932
autobiographical novel, Fitzgerald scholars have generally
failed to examine the similarities and differences between the
two books. Although the situations and characters of Seye he
the heir; and Tender Te the Night are, in some ways, quite
similar, the story each conveys is distinct. Critical
examination of the two novels is most enlightening when they
are viewed as a pair of perspectives on American womanhood in
a decade of momentous change.

Zelda Fitzgerald wrote the entire manuscript of Seye he
the fleitr, her only novel, during six weeks while she was a
patient in a mental hospital in 1932: her husband had already
been working for seven years on the novel that was eventually
to become Tender Ie the Night":L When he learned that she had
submitted her manuscript to Scribner' 8 without first showing
it to him, he was furious. Although he managed to impose

numerous revisions on Zelda ' 8 book before its publication, 2

103

104
his rage over what he perceived as her infringement on his
rights to the literary expression of their common experiences
lingered. In 1933, during a conversation between the Fitz-
geralds in the presence of Zelda's psychiatrist, Scott accused
Zelda of "broaching at all times on [his] material" and stub-
bornly insisted that Zelda make "an unconditional surrender"
to him, relinquishing her "idea of writing anything" in the
interest of his career.3

Fitzgerald need not have been so upset. Until recently,
virtually no one--even among Fitzgerald scholars--ever
bothered to read Seve he the fleitr, but Tender Te the Night,
which is based on the same time period in the Fitzgeralds '
lives, is widely recognized as an important twentieth-century
American novel .

Although the two books have many superficial similarities,
their plots are quite different. Zelda's novel “focuses on
AlamhamardBeggs, a pampered and privileged Southern belle who is
given everything she could possibly want--except respect in a
man's world and meaningful work of her own. As Alabama grows
disillusioned with David Knight, her egotistical and unfaith-
ful artist husband, she first engages in a mild flirtation,
then resolves instead to make something of herself by becoming
a ballerina. Much of the novel concentrates on her strength
and determination--and remarkable success, considering the
late age at which she embarks on her career--in that endeavor.

She is foiled in her efforts only by her excess of zeal: by

105

failing to treat blisters on her feet she incurs an infection
that leads to surgery and an untimely end to her dancing
career. Defeated, she turns back to her unhappy marriage and
young daughter, gracefully reconciling herself to the loss of
her dream.

The plot of Tender 13 the night is, of course, more
familiar to most American readers, but there is a widespread
tendency to overlook Nicole Warren Diver's importance in the

novel. Tom C. Coleman observes:

Although Tender Ie the night is primarily Dick
Diver's story, critics tend to misunderstand and minimize

Nicole's role, the force which gives Dick's career its
structure. In addition to being the narrative of the
gradual deterioration of a brilliant but schizophrenic
young doctor under the harmful cumulative impact of
marriage to a beautiful and extremely wealthy and neurotic
young woman, it is the story of Nicole Warren's long
journey from insanity to sanity, from mental illness to
mental health. (36)

Tender Te the Night, like Sere he the fleitr, is an autobio-
graphical account of a very unhappy marriage between a proud,
successful man who expects his wife to be subservient to him
and a beautiful, intelligent woman who gradually tires of the
purposelessness of her existence. Read together, these two
novels offer an unusual and enlightening pair of perspectives
on the impact of the breakdown of traditional gender roles on
marriage in the late 19208.

With the exception of Henry Dan Piper, who devotes a
chapter of his critical biography of Scott Fitzgerald to
Zelda's novel--noting that "Sere he the heir; offers a more

sensitive account of the deranged wife's view of her marriage

106

than we find in her husband's version, Tender Te the night"
(204)--few of Scott Fitzgerald's critics examine Zelda's novel
in any depth. But the feminist movement has given rise to a
flurry of critical activity focusing on women's forgotten
writings, and Seye he the W_eite, with its uncommon distinction
of viewing from a woman's perspective events and characters
made famous by a male author, has recently received con-
siderable attention.4

Perhaps partly because Sea he the E8151 is a woman ' 8
creation, critics are inclined to view it from a feminine
perspective--sympathizing with Alabama, resenting David.
Similarly, Tender Te the night, a man's creation, generally
evokes sympathy for Dick Diver and distrust--if not outright
hostility--towards Nicole. Although Coleman breaks new ground
in his 1971 article about Tender Te the hight by declaring
that Nicole and her sister, Baby, are "innocent victims of
their environment" (38-9) , later critics continue to view
Nicole without compassion, berating her for her "emptiness"
(Prigozy, 214) and for her "materialism" (Grieff, 63) .

SerehetheheitrandTenderIethehightboth focus on
the late 19208, when attitudes towards women and their
traditional roles were undergoing rapid change. Zelda
Fitzgerald was receptive to the changes that would eventually
allow women to pursue work that interested them: Scott
Fitzgerald, who wanted much of his insensitivity towards Zelda

pardoned on the basis of his efforts to support her financial-

107
ly, clearly accepted the traditional values of Western
culture. As he wrote and as he lived, Scott clung tenaciously
to the old standards that denied women the rights to work and
love as they pleased. The most significant differences
between Scott Fitzgerald's fictional female characters and
Zelda's stem from the authors' own differences in attitudes
towards women's roles. Zelda's protagonist, Alabama Beggs, is
a new kind of woman, willing to take responsibility for
herself and her own happiness by dedicating herself to
something outside her marriage: but Scott's principal female
character, Nicole Diver for the most part, is confined
unhappily to traditional standards of feminine behavior in the
midst of an era of change.

By far the most striking similarity between Tender 1e the
Night and Seye he the heitz lies in their primary women
characters, Nicole Warren Diver and Alabama Beggs Knight, who
are clearly related to each other through Zelda.5 But before
any further examination of these women and their marriages, it
is important to note some of the other, more superficial,
characteristics the two books have in common. Both novels
focus on American citizens living on the Riviera during the
19208. Both books are rich with garden imagery. Both novels
trace the changing marital relationship between a man who has
achieved outstanding early success in his chosen career (Dick
Diver as a psychiatrist: David Knight as a painter) , and a

woman who is growing tired of living in her husband '8 shadow.

108
In both books the husband's emotional and intellectual neglect
of his wife contributes to her infidelity. Moreover, both
novels contain the death of a father, and the deaths affect
the adult children in similar ways: Dick is aware that "the
earliest and strongest of protections is gone" (203) following
the death of his father in the middle of Tender Ie the night:
and Alabama, who leaves her own hospital bed to go to her
father's deathbed in Seye he the heitz, recognizes that
"without her father the world would be without its last
resource" (195).

Unquestionably, the substantial similarities between the
Fitzgeralds' novels stem from their common life experience as
husband and wife: they both based their works on their lives
together in the late 19208, when they were living on the
French Riviera with their young daughter, Scottie, and growing
increasingly dissatisfied with their marriage. Considering
that they were both drawing on the same material, it is
somewhat remarkable that their different perspectives could
produce such different plots. Furthermore, it is ironic that
Scott, the established writer, presents a more obviously
autobiographical version of their story than Zelda does. As
Meredith Cary points out in a recent article about Sere he the
heitz, ". . . whereas it is Zelda Fitzgerald's novel which is
usually condemned as excessively autobiographical, it is Scott
Fitzgerald's novel which in fact details the lives of an

alcoholic and a mental patient" ( 65) . Despite the apparent

109

differences between the two fictional accounts of the Fitz-
gerald marriage, Alabama Beggs Knight and Nicole Warren Diver,
like the two novels they figure in, have many significant
characteristics in common. Undoubtedly their similarities
stem from the fact that they are both fashioned after the same
real woman, Zelda Fitzgerald. Both Alabama and Nicole, like
Zelda, are very beautiful, even well into their twenties, when
they are both mothers. Alabama has a body she could "'sell .

. . to Cartier's for a gold mesh sweat shirt'" (114) , and
Nicole is "lovelier nOw at twenty-four than she had been at
eighteen, when her hair was brighter than she" (25) . Both
Alabama and Nicole were born into families whose only son
died: and both have had especially close relationships with
[their fathers, who abandon them either through death (Ala-
bama's father) or desertion (Nicole's father) in the course
of the novel. As a young girl, Alabama is a sought-after
companion and shows early promise as a dancer and performer.
Similarly, Nicole's father describes her as a "darling,"
talented child, who was "smart as a whip" and accomplished in
many different activities (126) . Significantly, both women
come from highly-respected, wealthy families: Nicole Warren
is a member of one of "the great feudal families" of Chicago
(127): and Alabama Beggs, who grows up on a street named after
her ancestorsris the daughter of a Southern judge. Moreover,
both Alabama and Nicole originally seek to establish their

adult identities by marrying successful men, and both grow

0

110
disillusioned with their marriages while they are still in
their twenties.

One of the most important emotional characteristics Nicole
and Alabama share is sensitivity. Both women feel emotional
slights intensely, particularly when they are serious enough
to damage their already marginal self-esteem. Alabama's
anguish over her suitor's lack of consideration for her

feelings is reflected by the way she nurses her wound in the

following passage from Sere he the 51113.3.

Alabama and the lieutenant lingered beside the door.

"I'm going to lay a tablet to the scene of our first
meeting," he said.

Taking out his knife he carved in the door post:

"David," the legend read, "David, David, Knight,
Knight, Knight, and Miss Alabama Nobody."

"Egotist, " she protested.

"I love this place," he said. "Let's sit outside
awhile."

"Why? The dance only lasts until twelve."
"Can't you trust me for three minutes or so?"
"I do trust you. That's why I want to go inside."
She was a little angry about the names. David had told
her about how famous he was going to be. (36-37)
Clearly, Alabama is hurt by David's failure to recognize her
as a person ("Miss AlabamasNobody") , but after a mild protest
she subjugates herself to him and tucks her wounded pride away
to fester in secret ("She was a little angry about the
names.").
In Tender Te the hight Nicole Warren, who, like Alabama,
has fallen in love with a young lieutenant, experiences a

similar slight at the hands of Dick Diver. He fails to take

her feelings seriously during their budding romance. In the

111
following passage Nicole shyly reveals her own interest in a
romantic relationship with Dick as she tries to assess his

feelings for her.

"You like me?"

"Of course."

"Would you---" They are strolling along toward the
dim end of the horseshoe, two hundred yards ahead. "If I
hadn't been sick would you--I mean would I have been the
sort of girl you might have--oh, slush, you know what I
mean."

He was in for it now, possessed by a vast irration-
ality. She was so near that he felt his breathing change
but again his training came to his aid in a boy's laugh
and a trite remark.

"You're teasing yourself, my dear. Once I knew a man
who fell in love with his nurse--" The anecdote rambled
on, punctuated by their footsteps. Suddenly Nicole
interrupted in succinct Chicagoese: "Bull!"

"That's a very vulgar expression."

"What about it?" she flared up. "You don't think
I've got any common sense--before I was sick I didn't have
any, but I have now. And if I don't know you're the most
attractive man I ever met you must still think I'm crazy.
It's my hard luck, all right--but don't pretend I don't
finest-I know everything about you and me." (154)

Although Nicole is only seeking an honest answer to an honest
question, Dick's evasive reply negates the value of her own
emotions--inevitably threatening her self-esteem. Even when
she interrupts him, refusing to tolerate his avoidance of her
feelings any longer, Dick responds to her choice of wording
rather than to her legitimate anger itself. As he talks down
to her, treating her as a child, a patient, an inrerier, her
decision to talk back to him, refusing to accept inferior

status, reflects both her sensitivity and her nascent mental

health.

112

Despite their dismay over their suitors' insensitivity
towards them, Alabama and Nicole wind up marrying them.
Striving always to please their egotistical young husbands,
the women inevitably damage their already low self-esteem.
They accept their husbands' unrelenting sense of self-impor-
tance--of masculine superiority--just as they learned to live
with their fathers' belittling attitudes towards them as they
were growing up. In a recent article about Sere he the m,
Linda Wagner declares that the novel creates a "highly
evocative picture of what it means to a female child to grow
up, to grow into the bleak recognition that being female in
America is--or was at the turn of the century--synonymous with
being inferior" (201) . Upon close examination Tender Te the
Night also reflects the differing expectations American
society has traditionally imposed on female and male children.

Although Nicole's childhood experiences are only alluded
to while Alabama's are revealed directly, both young girls
clearly learned that they were to remain dependent on men
throughout their lives, leaving their fathers' homes only to
become wives and mothers whose success would be assessed
solely on the basis of traditional feminine criteria--house-
keeping skills, beauty, charm, and children. Men, of course,
were allowed a much greater degree of independence and the
more rewarding occupation of work of their own choosing. In
Sere he the heite, when Judge Beggs chastises the adolescent

Alabama for what he considers inappropriate behavior, Alabama,

113
aware that boredom lies behind her wild partying, has "a
strong sense of her own insignificance" (31) . In Tender Te
the Night Nicole displays a similar sense of her female
insignificance as she responds to Dick's statement that he's
accomplished only in his chosen field. "'Oh, I think that's
fine for a man, ' she said quickly. 'But for a girl I think
she ought to have lots of minor accomplishments and pass them
on to her children! '" (142) . Nicole's simple statement
reflects both her will to excel in her society's prescribed
role for her (motherhood) and her unconscious recognition that
women must make themselves content with "minor accomplish-
ments," relegating nejer accomplishments (careers) to men. It
is worth noting that Nicole's diction indicates her automatic
subordination of herself in connection with men: she is a
"girl" but Dick is a "man."

Naturally, Alabama and Nicole acquire some of their deep-
seated sense of insignificance by observing their female role
models, their mothers. As a girl Alabama watches her mother
dedicating her entire adult life to raising children and
running her husband's home according to his expectations. At
the end of the novel, while Judge Beggs is dying, Alabama's
thoughts bring into focus her previously subconscious percep-
tions of a woman's life in a man's world:

She saw her mother as she was, part of a masculine
tradition. Millie did not seem to notice about her own
life, that there would be nothing left when her husband

died. He was the father of her children, who were girls,
and who had left her for the families of other men. ( 201)

114

Alabama's recognition of her mother's vulnerability and
isolation at the end of the novel is particularly moving
because by that time Alabama has lost her own battle to make a
life of her own: no longer able to dance, she has retreated
into her unhappy marriage: moreover, her only child is a
girl--and consequently destined to leave her, as she and her
sisters have left their mother, "for the families of other
men."

Although Nicole's mother dies long before the opening of
Tender Te the hight,5 Nicole recounts an appalling episode
that reflects Mrs. Warren' 8 conviction that women could only
be important through their association with men. In a
conversation with Rosemary during one of their shopping trips,
Nicole recalls a night when Mrs. Warren sent Baby to a ball
" 'with an ice pack strapped on under her evening dress ' " after
a doctor had diagnosed her " ' side ache' " as appendicitis (55) .
Apparently, Nicole's mother believed so fully in female
dependence on men that she was willing to put her daughter's
life at risk in order for her to attend a social engagement
where she might charm some eligible young men. Mrs. Warren' 8
unspoken message to her daughters was clear: female children
are insignificant, expendable.

As might be expected of young women raised to believe in
their own insignificance in relation to men, Alabama and
Nicole both attempt to escape from overpowering father figures

through marriage. At seventeen, Alabama recognizes that

115
"looking for love is like asking for'a new'point.of departure
. . . another chance in life" (26). Marriage appeals to
Alabama as one of the only'ways a woman can significantly
change her life: yet marriage offers no improvement in her
social condition, for, as a female, she continues to be
subordinated to men. Thus, her "new point of departure"
inevitably disappoints her: as she transfers her dependence
from father to husband, she continues to feel woefully
inadequate as a person in her own right.

Like Alabama, Nicole fulfills her society's expectations
by marrying as soon as she is old enough to leave her father's
domain, which in.her case includes the paternalistic trus-
teeship Devereux Warren.has provided for'her'by placing her in
Dr. Dohmler's care. INicole's marriage, like Alabama's, fails
to offer’her any new opportunity for self-realization.
Although.both.women attempt to declare themselves adults by
marrying, neither achieves any real degree of independence:
both remain subservient to men.

However sincere their love for their'husbands‘may'be,
their marriages utterly fail to become mature, egalitarian
relationships. ‘Nicole, in fact, daily confronts a dual
awareness of her inferior relationship to Dick: he assumes
responsibility for--and superiority over--her as doctor to
patient as well as husband to wife. From the very beginning
of their relationship, they have been on unequal footing: the

psychiatrists at Dohmler's clinic recognize the situational

116

element of Nicole's earliest expressions of love for Dick, for
they label her initial interest in him a "transference" (120).

Alabama and Nicole find their lives as wives sorely un-
rewarding. Their husbands are successful and popular, but
painfully egotistical and difficult to live with. In Sere he
the heir; David Knight berates Alabama constantly about her
poor housekeeping. Moreover, he freely engages in extramar-
ital affairs, yet demands complete fidelity from her. He
neglects her emotional needs entirely, but he intervenes when
she tries to fill them elsewhere. Shortly after thwarting a
little flirtation Alabama has enjoyed with a Frenchman, David
spends the night with another woman. When he returns at
daybreak, Alabama is angry over his seizure of the traditional
masculine prerogative for casual sex, yet she obviously
expects her anger to be ineffectual. She interrupts her
weeping long enough to declare, "'I wish I could live in your
pocket! "' (ll6)--reflecting her culturally-induced determina-
tion to efface herself in relation to her husband. Not
surprisingly, David is insensitive to the plea for affirmation
her remark conveys. He compounds her already overwhelming
sense of inadequacy by pointing out once again what he
considers her major shortcomings as a wife: "'Darling!'
answered David sleepily, 'there'd be a hole you'd forgotten to
darn and you'd slip through and be brought home by the village
barber'" (116-17).

117

In Tender la the hight Dick Diver's lack of respect for
Nicole parallels David's behavior towards Alabama. Dick is
most severely insensitive towards Nicole as he takes advantage
of the superior status their doctor-patient relationship
affords him. Besides talking down to her when she originally
expresses an interest in him, he fails to take his fellow
doctors' warnings seriously as they tell him of the dangers
inherent in his encouragement of Nicole's affections. He is
amused by the perceived threat of his attractiveness to women
in general, and he vows to put Nicole off by being "'gentle
and repulsive. '" He says he'll "'chew garlic'" and "'wear a
stubble beard'" to "'drive her to cover'" ( 131) . As he drags
his joke out, clearly having fun at a patient's expense, his
monologue bodes ill of the developing romance. It does not
occur to him that "Nicole's emotions [have] been used unfair-
ly" until he perceives that they might be "his own" (145) .

Much later, after Dick and Nicole have been married for
several years, he continues to take advantage of her history
as a mental patient. When Nicole receives a letter from one
of the clinic's former patients containing allegations that
Dick behaved improperly with her teenaged daughter, husband

and wife converse .

"This letter is deranged," he said. "I had no rela-
tions of any kind with that girl. I didn't even like
her."

"Yes, I've tried thinking that," said Nicole.

"Surely you don't believe it?"

"I've been sitting here."

118
He sank his voice to a reproachful note and sat

beside her.

"This is absurd. This is a letter from a mental
patient."

"I was a mental patient."

He stood up and spoke more authoritatively.

"Suppose we don't have any nonsense, Nicole."

(187)

Nicole knows perfectly well that Dick has a propensity for
young girls, and, as a former mental patient herself, she has
faith in the possibility that patients might perceive behavior
and situations accurately. In fact, the letter's accusations
are not completely unwarranted--Dick had kissed the young
woman when he was alone with her, then decided against
consummating the affair. But he struggles desperately against
Nicole's recognition of the truth by adopting an authoritari-
an, professional tone.

"Listen to me--this business about a girl is a delu-

sion, do you understand that word?"

"It's always a delusion when I see what you don't

want me to see." (190)

Clearly, Nicole is angry about Dick's condescending attitude,
but, like Alabama, she has learned to expect her anger to be
ineffectual.

Isolated and unhappy within their marriages, the young
wives infiaxenetheflaltzandrenderlethemhtlook
outward for any possible form of self-affirmation. Alabama
immerses herself in her reading: "Alabama read Henry James in

the long afternoons. She read Robert Hugh Benson and Edith

Wharton and Dickens while David worked" (90). When she

119
complains to David about her boredom, he suggests a classic
feminine solution, planning a party.

Nicole is also accustomed to finding culturally-approved
feminine methods of dealing with boredom: as a young girl,
she reads, dances, draws, and plays the piano: as a mental
patient, she writes letters to a soldier (Dick Diver) and
practices speaking foreign languages: and as a young wife she
copies recipes while she sunbathes and looks after her
children at the beach. In the first section of Tender Te the
Night Nicole is also portrayed enthusiastically engaging in
one of the most time-honored of all occupations available to
wealthy women with time on their hands: shopping. Critics
who berate Nicole on the basis of materialism fail to note how
easily she parts with her possessions:

Rosemary watched Nicole pressing upon her mother a
yellow evening bag she had admired, saying, "I think
things out to belong to the people that like them"--and
then sweeping into it all the yellow articles she could
find, a pencil, a lipstick, a little note book, "because
they all go together." (35)

Later, as Rosemary accompanies Nicole on one of her shopping
sprees, it is clear that Nicole's focus is on her activity,
not on obtaining objects of her desire: in her buying fever,
Nicole buys things on her list and things on impulse, things
for herself and things to give away. Pathetically, she seems
to derive some self-affirmation through her purchasing power--

just as many frustrated women still do today. She becomes so

absorbed in her occupation, in fact, that she rouses Rose-

120
mary's concern as she almost forgets to keep her late after-
noon assignation with her husband.

Literary critics often criticize F. Scott Fitzgerald's
female characters for their apparent superficiality. Leslie
Fiedler declares that he tends to treat his women characters
as "goddesses or bitches" (314) . Yet a closer look at the
backgrounds of women like Gloria Patch, Daisy Buchanan, or
Nicole Diver might acquit them of the charge of "bitch" and
excuse them for their failure to live up to Fitzgerald's
standards for goddesses. Perhaps inadvertently, Fitzgerald
has drawn female characters who struggle with conflicts common
to many twentieth-century women who are brought up to merry,
not to work. Nicole Warren, like Gloria Gilbert and Daisy
Fay, has been raised with the underlying assumption that women
need to be taken care of--first by their fathers, then by
their husbands. In Zelda's novel, Hastings, a guest at a
party, tells Alabama outright, "'You need somebody to take
care of you. . . You're a man's woman and need to be bossed'"
(115) . These intelligent women, ever cognizant of the second-
class status their culture imposes on their sex, genuinely
deserve the label "poor little rich girls." They crave
intellectual stimulation and meaningful activity as much as
other, less wealthy, women might crave new clothes. "'What'll
we plan?'" Daisy cries in getehy, and years later, Nicole
Warren Diver and Zelda's parallel character of Alabama Beggs

Knight continue the desperate struggle for self-realization

121
through action. Unlike Daisy, however, Alabama and Nicole,
who have been trained from infancy to be "happy to exist in a
man's world" (Tender, 53) , perceive that the world they live
in is slowly changing: they come into contact with women who
work side by side with men and who consequently reap substan-
tial personal (and financial) rewards traditionally available
only to men.

It is not surprising, then, that, despite their efforts to
live within the constraints their conservative husbands and
upbringings impose on them, both Alabama and Nicole are
troubled by their sense of inadequacy and purposelessness. In
an internal monologue, Nicole realizes she is "tired of
knowing nothing and being reminded of it all the time." She
envies Dick for his dedication to his work, and when he drops
the title of "doctor," she is concerned: "--You've taught me
that work is everything and I believe you" (161-62) . It
follows almost without saying that a woman who believes work
is "everything"--and who is denied any opportunity to pursue
work of her own--will suffer feelings of inadequacy.

As her marriage deteriorates, Nicole's apparently idle
wish that she could "study medicine" (161) is reminiscent of
all the earlier ambitions she's been forced to abandon.
Nicole is, after all, gifted as well as beautiful. Even while
she's a young girl at Dohmler's clinic, the psychiatrists
recognize her "'excellent mind'" and her need for mental

stimulation: they give her "'a little Freud to read'" (131)--

122
certainly not the customary recreational reading for a girl in
her position. Moreover, Nicole nurtures her private dream of
helping the war effort by perfecting her language skills: at
one point she even writes to Lt. Dick Diver from the clinic,
asking him to find her a job as an interpreter.

Nicole's early dreams of work are quickly terminated by
her decision to marry. As Dick's wife she is condemned
permanently to a life of leisure--to partying and sunbathing,
and to subordinating herself to her husband. She is dis-
couraged even from using her keen faculties of perception.
Ironically, her ability to read human character often seems to
surpass her husband's, though his work as a psychiatrist would
seem to demand a finely developed capacity for responding
intuitively to other people. Fitzgerald establishes Nicole's
intuition early in the novel when she is on the beach while
Rosemary singles Dick out to be the object of her romantic
interest: "Oh, she chose him, and Nicole, lifting her head
saw her choose him." Furthermore, Nicole is sensitive to her
husband's unverbalized "characteristic moods" (27) , and she is
capable of using her intuition to handle difficult situations
with diplomacy: in a crisis precipitated by their son's
complaint that their host's sister had bathed him in dirty
water, "Dick sat on the bedside indicating in a private
gesture to Nicole that she should take over" (261) .

Dick takes Nicole's intuitive ability and sensitivity for

granted, as if they are merely part of the marriage package

123
he's entitled to. In fact, he fails to appreciate any of her
special qualities or achievements openly--except perhaps her
beauty, which appears to be more important to him than to her-
-as he assumes control over her life. His absorption of her
identity extends even to the symbolic realm. In the early
days of their marriage Dick is fond of signing their cor-
respondence "Dicole," effectively denying that Nicole could
have any significance except by association with him. This
behavior of his is reminiscent of David Knight's naming of his
fiancee, "Miss Alabama Nobody." In Seye he the heir; Zelda
Fitzgerald underscores the woman's loss of her independent
identity through marriage by.frequently referring to the
married couple as the "David Knights" rather than Alabama and
David Knight.

Of course, Alabama Beggs is less traumatized than Nicole
Warren and has a greater sense of self up to the time of her
marriage than Nicole does. Even as a young girl she is
ambitious "to go to New York . . . to be [her] own boss" (16) .
Thus, it is not surprising that she finds it easier to assert
her need for independence when she is hurt by David's emotion-
al cruelty towards her. She easily resolves to take up ballet
in retaliation for David's infidelity: "'I am going to be as
famous a dancer as there are blue veins over the white marble
of Miss Gibbs'" (118) .

Much has been written about the ballet section of gere he
the heitz. It is certainly one of the finest--and earliest--

124
fictional representations of woman's capacity for wholehearted
devotion to her work, which removes her from the conventional
domains of romance, marriage, and family. Yet the characters
in Sen he the heir; regard Alabama's dedication to ballet
with skepticism: even characters who appear to defend Ala-
bama's right to dance do so in unfortunate terms. Dickie, for
instance, considers Alabama's interest in ballet "'the very
thing'" to justify her eccentricity, then quickly demonstrates
that he automatically views Alabama's work as secondary to her
real career, marriage, by declaring, "'It would be almost as
exotic as being married to a painter'" (113) .

Once Alabama begins to train for ballet, she finds her
fellow dancers unsympathetic towards her goal as well. When
Madame asks why she has waited so long to start, Alabama
replies simply that she's been "'too busy living'" but that
she's now "' fed up'" with her previous existence. The
instructor is intrigued and agrees to take Alabama on as a
student, but the other dancers at the studio regard her with
suspicion, clearly wondering why a married woman would
voluntarily take on so much hard work.

Much later, when Nanny and Bonnie visit Alabama at the
studio, Nanny is so impressed that she decides she ought to
take up ballet as well. When Nanny declares, "'We must all
have something to do , and Madam never plays bridge'" (147) ,
she obviously views Alabama's dancing as recreation, not work.

Even Alabama's husband, who is initially "noncommittal"

125
towards her decision to study ballet, becomes annoyed when it
begins to take up too much of her time. He expresses his
displeasure by belittling her efforts:

"You're so thin," said David patronizingly. "There's
no use killing yourself. I hope you realize that the
biggest difference in the world is between the amateur and
the professional in the arts." (147)

Despite her associates' refusal to take her career
seriously, Alabama becomes a good dancer--and derives sig-
nificant personal satisfaction from her ability. Like Zelda
herself, she gradually retreats from family life, increasingly
entrusting the care of her daughter to her husband. When she
eventually has an opportunity to dance professionally in
Naples, she willingly leaves her comfortable home and her
family behind, to rough it in a rundown boarding house and
make her debut as a ballerina. Unquestionably a New Woman,
Alabama takes her work seriously.

While Alabama discovers herself through work, Nicole
struggles sadly with her internalized notion that she is
virtually worthless except by association with men. Instead
of actively pursuing a career, she copes with her unhappy
marriage by seeking affirmation from other men. However, it
is important to note that while Scott Fitzgerald depicts
Nicole as a woman who has almost no options for self-expres-
sion through work, he presents two significant visions of
career women beside her in Tender Ie the Night. Rosemary,
"'brought up to work--not especially to marry'" (40), finds

126
success in her career but fails to find reciprocal romantic
love. She embodies Fitzgerald's conservative view that career
women are unfeminine. Moreover, the fascinating woman who is
hospitalized in Dick's care declares shortly before her death
that she "'is sharing the fate of the women of [her] time who
challenged men to battle'" (184) . Characteristically, Dick
responds to her assessment of her illness with condescension,
as he pointedly reminds her that "'many women suffered before
they mistook themselves for men'" (184) .

Surrounded by women who are deprived--of love, of life--
simply through their effort to realize their unconventional
ambitions in "a man's world," Nicole feels intimidated. Even-
tually, wishing to be a New Woman in any way possible, she
seeks to relieve her restlessness and dissatisfaction through
romance, one of the few options traditionally available to
women. When she can no longer bear Dick's hostility towards
her, she lets herself reciprocate Tommy Barban's long-standing
affection. Initially she has no plan whatsoever to marry
Tommy: she merely decides to effect a change in her unhappy
life with Dick by entering a love affair "without emotion"
(291) . Thus, she attaches herself to a new man in her pursuit
of a new sense of identity, much as she married Dick to leave
behind an unsatisfactory association with her father.

Nicole's affair with Tommy is a reflection of her improv-
ing mental health, for she uses it to remove herself from the

increasingly devastating relationship with Dick. As she

127
accompanies Tommy to a hotel for the first time, she daydreams
about liberation from stultifying relationships with men:

. . . she had a thrill of delight in thinking of herself

in a new way. New vistas appeared ahead, peopled with the

faces of many men, none of whom she need obey or even love

(294).

Unfortunately, however, she is not yet confident or indepen-
dent enough to assert herself with Tommy. In a scene that is
strongly reminiscent of Gatsby's confrontation with Tom
Buchanan over Daisy's affections, Tommy Barban intervenes
between Dick and Nicole Diver to declare his intention of
marrying Nicole. Unaccustomed to asserting herself, Nicole is
easily swept into divorce and remarriage. She continues to
let herself be'defined according to her relationships with
men.

Nevertheless, Tommy is undeniably an improvement over her
first husband, for Tommy at least regards Nicole as a sane
woman. In his address to Dick he accuses him of failing to
understand Nicole, of treating "'her always as a patient
because she was once sick'" (308) . Apparently Nicole can now
free herself from at least part of the dual sense of in-
feriority that being both patient and wife to Dick for many
years has given her.

In Tender Ie the Night Nicole Diver, one of Fitzgerald's
many widely misunderstood female characters, takes small but
significant steps towards her own personal freedom in a world

dominated by men. Even as a married woman, she daydreams

128
about having a career of her own, as something "to hang on to"
(161) , to give her substance in her own eyes and in the eyes
of the world. Although she denies herself a career, she
permits herself a lover, and she notes with interest the
emergence of other women like her:
She was somewhat shocked at the idea of being interested
in another man--but other women have lovers--why not me?
In the fine spring morning the inhibitions of the male
world disappeared and she reasoned as gaily as a flower,
while the wind blew her hair until her head moved with it.
Other women have had lovers--(276) .
Later, when her improved self-esteem and her budding asser-
tiveness cause her lover to liken her to a "crook," she
reasons, "Better a sane crook than a mad puritan" (293) . But
because she continues to define herself in terms of her
connections with men, her self-esteem remains shaky: men can
destroy or affirm her sense of self-worth almost at will.
Zelda Fitzgerald's parallel character, Alabama Beggs
Knight, nearly succeeds in establishing her own sense of
identity, independent of any man's opinion. Her failure to
become a professional ballerina results purely from chance,
not from any lack of ability or dedication to her efforts.
Zelda, who shared Alabama's fate of being locked into an
unhappy marriage and foiled in her sincere efforts to pursue
her work, once talked to her psychiatrist about her need to be
"on a more equal footing" with Scott: she disliked living "in

a world that is completely dependent on Scott, " and she wanted

to develop some work of her own that could "back [her] up" in

129
her inevitable battles with her husband (Bruccoli, Enie
grendeur, 352) . Zelda Fitzgerald, often dismissed merely as
Scott's neurotic wife, deserves to be recognized at least as a
spokeswoman for the women of her generation who were stranded
between the old ideal of feminine subservience to men and the
new ideal of equality.

At the same time, however, Scott Fitzgerald's achievement
in his creation of Nicole Warren Diver ought not to be
underestimated. Despite his reputation for being unsym-
pathetic towards his female characters, young women like
Rosalind, Gloria, Daisy, and Nicole invariably embody ideals
of self-realization that their mothers did not share and
confront role conflicts characteristic of women on the
threshold of a new era of freedom. Nicole Warren Diver,
presented under the cloak of schizophrenia, is a representa-
tive twentieth-century American woman, embodying conflicting
ideals of femininity (submissiveness) and independence.
Moreover, her understandable confusion is exacerbated by the
direct victimization she suffers through intimate association
with her father and her psychiatrist, who demonstrate the
selfishness and cruelty the patriarchy is sometimes capable of

inflicting on women.

CHAPTERHVI

Aftermath of Betrayal: Incest, Madness, and Transference

inTenderIetheliidbt

In Tender Te the Night more than in any of his other

novels, Fitzgerald captures the nature of the impact conven-
tional male chauvinism could have on a woman of his era.
While the principal female characters in all of his other
novels struggle with comparatively subtle forms of patriarchal
oppression, Nicole Warren Diver is victimized by overt sexual
exploitation perpetuated both by her father and by her
psychiatrist-husband. According to contemporary theories, the
dynamics of her illness and her interactions with men in
general are startlingly appropriate for an incest victim.1
Moreover, her vulnerability to "rape" by her father and
subsequent exploitation by her father surrogate, a psychia-
trist with whom she has a transference, 2 can be viewed
symbolically as a reflection of the New Woman's tenuous social
position in the face of patriarchal traditions. It is
therefore important to examine Nicole ' s confusion about her
experiences and roles in considerable detail .

Although Fitzgerald' s biographers and critics comment more
extensively on Tender Te the hight than on any of his other

130

131
novels except The greet getehy, relatively few have analyzed
Nicole in any detail except insofar as she reflects Zelda, and
Scott's ongoing power struggle with her. Nancy Milford points
out that Fitzgerald "mercilessly exposed Zelda in his charac-
terization of Nicole Diver" (284). Judith Fetterley alludes
to Fitzgerald's unequivocal assumption that "Zelda's madness
is his material" (113) . And Matthew Bruccoli notes that
Fitzgerald's "wife's illness was the catalytic agent in [his]
new approach to the novel" following years of false starts' on
the project: Bruccoli adds that "Zelda Fitzgerald's tragedy
. . . provided the emotional focus" of Tender Te the hight
(9211225111211. 82) -

Despite such widespread observations of the link between
Zelda's life story and Fitzgerald's creation of the character
Nicole, it seems noteworthy that at least three of the
Fitzgeralds' biographers make a deliberate--and somewhat
questionable--attempt to distinguish between Scott Fitzger-

ald's use of autobiographical material and his "pure inven-

tion" of supporting detail in Tender Te the hight. In The
genpeeitien er "Tender Te the hight" Bruccoli presents
Fitzgerald's notes depicting parallels between Zelda's and
Nicole's histories as mental patients as if they are important
to understanding the novel, and then points out:

The details of Nicole Diver's case were based on

Zelda Fitzgerald's illness, as shown in the table

comparing the two cases. The incest factor in
Nicole's case was, however, pure invention. (82)

132
Similarly, Milford remarks that certain aspects "of Nicole's
background are pure invention, " despite the obvious "degree to
which Scott used Zelda in a fictional counterpart." Like
Bruccoli, Milford goes on to assert that "Zelda was not raped
by her father" (219) . Sara Mayfield makes the same proclama-
tion in BELLE jrgn Eerediee: "Zelda was certainly never
raped by her father" (212) .

To be sure, the incest that triggers Nicole Warren's
earliest symptoms of mental illness in Tender Te the Eight
might well be "pure invention" on Fitzgerald's part. However,
given the nature of the incest taboo, the cloak of secrecy
that generally surrounds cases of incest, the fact that incest
memories are often repressed, and the widespread tendency--
even among mental health care professionals--to dismiss
reports of incestuous abuse as "fantasies,"3 it seems somewhat
naive for so educated a group of biographers to suggest--with
apparent conviction--that any woman, particularly a woman with
a deeply troubled psyche like Zelda Fitzgerald's--could not
possibly have been an incest victim. It seems improbable that
any scholar, however thorough, would have definitive knowledge
on so personal a point, since incest victims themselves are
often unaware of what lies at the root of psychological
problems they experience later in life.

Regardless of how Fitzgerald obtained the incest material
he used in his creation of Nicole, however, his evident grasp

of the vulnerabilities of an incest victim is irrefutable.

133
His literary portrait of Nicole--her sometimes irrational
behavior: her unwarranted faith in Dick: her poor self-esteem:
her dependency: her longings for health, work and respect--
reads like a case study of a hysteric (not a schizophrenic)4
whose illness was precipitated by incest. Nicole's "madness,"
which is often exaggerated and seen as the root of all Dick' 8
problems, can be explained very readily with the help of late
twentieth century psychological research on incest victims and
women who become sexually involved with their therapists.

In fact, as a result of Fitzgerald's perhaps intuitive
understanding of the ramifications of incest, Nicole' 8 tragedy
is somewhat easier to comprehend--in a psychological and
sociological context--than Dick's, though the novel is
generally treated as Dick Diver's story. Bruccoli, for
example, casually questions the significance of Nicole and her
experience of incest as he asserts:

Interesting as the comments on the social and inces-
tuous aspects of Tender Te the night are--and the

terrier is indubitably a valid approach to the novel--
the book is principally concerned with Dick Diver' s

tragedy. . . . (emphasis mine, ggnpeeitien, 12)
Likewise, Fetterley drastically oversimplifies Nicole' 8 incest

history and role in the novel when she observes that, "The
enemy in the text is the American woman and the text does a

job on her" (114) . Even McCay, who recognizes that Fitzgerald
tends to be "harder" on his women than "he is on his men"

(311) , glosses over the real significance of Nicole and of her

experience:

134
The cause of [Dick Diver's] decline is, in Fitzger-
ald's eyes, Nicole--beautiful, rich, sick Nicole--
whose illness becomes a challenge to the young
psychiatrist who would make the beautiful shattered
girl whole again . . . . Nicole herself has been
destroyed by . . . wealth and by her own beauty, a
beauty that tempted her own father to ravish her.
(318)

The essential flaw in such critical assessments of
Nicole's role in the novel is superficiality, both with regard
to Nicole herself and with regard to Dick. Moreover, such
superficial interpretations of the characters involved in this
tragedy pave the way for blind disregard for the wider
implications of the cross-gender relations within the novel.
Obviously, Nicole's presence in the story does indeed con-
tribute substantially to Dick Diver's demise--not just because
her wealth enables him to turn his back on his chosen profes-
sion, but also--and more importantly--because her confused and
unhappy alliance with him clearly illustrates his fundamental
unsuitability to be practicing psychiatry in the first place.
Dick's tragic flaw is not so much that he allows himself to be
"bought" as that he simply "cannot maintain emotional detach-
ment from entangling human alliances" (Berman, 72) , a charac-
teristic that prevents him from dealing "responsibly" with his
patients' emotions. His failure as a psychiatrist arises not
from any evil or temptation that Nicole herself embodies but
from his own primary weakness, the self-centeredness that
allows him to put his own needs ahead of those of his patient-

-in this case, a young, beautiful, and impressionable incest

victim, who--predictably--finds herself enamored with him.

135

D. S. Savage hinted that Dick is largely responsible for
his own fate as long ago as 1952, as he focused on Dick's
failure to establish and maintain appropriate boundaries
during his treatment of Nicole:

. . . it is Dick's culpable folly in agreeing to
marry his own patient which is the initial fault that
sets in motion the entire process of involvement and
degeneration: and it is interesting to note that

. . . he is shown in the outcome as powerless to
resist, not the inducements of Nicole's bank-balance
but the sheer overwhelming vital force of her sexual
attraction. (152)

For Dick Diver, as for so many of Fitzgerald's male
protagonists, women exist primarily to pay him homage and give
him pleasure: he does not see women as full and equal human
beings with rights and dreams of their own, but only as
objects of his desire. Indeed, he is decidedly cruel to women
who aspire to independence.5 Nicole's experience of incest is
important to the novel in that it shapes her character, evokes
her illness, and makes her profoundly vulnerable to Dick' 8
objectification of her. She is twice victimized--first by
incest and then by psychiatric malpractice: both manifesta-
tions of exploitation stem directly from patriarchal tradi-
tions that accord women second-class citizenship. Perhaps
unbeknownst to Fitzgerald, the incest in Tender Te the Night
serves metaphorically as a reminder of women's powerlessness
in traditional patriarchal societies. The family where a
father "rapes" a daughter, like the "therapeutic" relationship

that allows men to define women' s reality, is a microcosm of a

larger society that condones and perpetuates myriad means of

136
exploiting and subjugating women. Nicole's relentless efforts
to rise above her dual victimization are the efforts of a New
Woman envisioning equality and autonomy. Like Fitzgerald's
confused and talented wife Zelda, his character Nicole is a
"strange, valuable girl" destined "to endure unnecessary
rebuffs and discouragements" largely attributable to her birth
into a society dominated by men (Hardwick, 103) .

Once Fitzgerald decided to incorporate his understanding
of Zelda's mental illness into his fourth novel, he wrote
himself guidelines for developing the character who was to
become Nicole. In his notes he warned himself to be "'careful
not to reveal basic ignorance of psychiatric and medical
training'" (Bruccoli, W, 80). He planned to "'read
books'" on psychiatry and then to draw on a variety of sources
of "'Material on Sickness, '" including consultations with
clinicians who had treated Zelda.6 His painstaking research
undoubtedly assisted him in presenting psychiatry as it was
then being practiced--in a masculine tradition, which was
thriving on Freud's own efforts "to demonstrate his power to
bring a woman to reason, and to bring reason to the mysteries
of woman. " Indeed, what is most noteworthy about Fitzgerald' s
presentation of psychiatric material in Tender Ie the hight is
his evident failure to comprehend the importance of "self-
discovery and psychological insight . . . in effecting any
therapeutic cure" (Berman, 70) . In this context, it is no

surprise that Dick Diver is most pleased with his patient-wife

137
when she invests her entire identity in him, "play[ing] planet
to [his] sun" (289).

As an incest victim, Nicole has learned from her father,

long before her first meeting with Dick Diver, that:
. . . she is important because of her sexuality, that
men want sex from girls, and that . . . she can use
her sexuality as a way to get the attention and
affection she genuinely needs, that sex is a tool.
(Bass, 27)
She is struggling desperately with the aftermath of incest,
with the painful, forced recognition of herself as a sexual
object to a man she had no choice but to trust and depend
upon, when she encounters Dick one evening on the clinic's
grounds. As he gazes at her, aware as he later tells Franz
that she is "'about the prettiest thing [he] ever saw'" (120),
she too is acutely conscious of her sexual attractiveness to
him. In her first letter to him, she refers to this chance
encounter as follows:
"You thought I was pretty too but I 've had that
before and a long time I've stood it. If you come
here again with that attitude base and criminal and
not even faintly what I had been taught to associate
with the role of gentleman then heaven help you."
(121)

Like many young women who have experienced incestuous
abuse, Nicole is extremely sensitive to men's sexual interest
in her. Following her own father's impulsive sexual advances,
she has been placed in Dr. Dohmler's clinic largely on account
of a generalized fear of men and the threat they appear to

pose to her both physically and psychologically. Before her

hospitalization, she has accused her father's trusted valet of

138
"'making up to her'" and said things that "'got crazier and
crazier . . . almost always about men going to attack her, men
she knew or men on the street--anybody---' " (127) . Though the
characters in the novel regard her preoccupation with men's
potential or genuine sexual objectification of her as patho-
logical, it is important to note that at least in Dick's case
her perception of his personal, sexual interest in her is
entirely accurate. He is extremely attracted to her when he
initially encounters her, and he subsequently chooses to
respond to her letters in part because "'She was such a pretty
thing'" and "'she enclosed a lot of snapshots of herself'"
(130). His motivation is therefore suspect from the very
start. Far from sacrificing his own interests in an effort
"to make the beautiful shattered girl whole again," he is
selfishly absorbed in her beauty as well as utterly intrigued
by her fragility--the fragility of a "'beautiful shell'"
(120)--and her growing infatuation with him.

While Nicole is understandably apprehensive about Dick's
obvious fascination with her physical beauty,7 she nonetheless
finds it easier to establish a long-distance "transferent"
relationship with him through the mail than to work directly
with the doctors on site at the clinic. This is entirely
logical in the context of incest. Psychiatrists represent
male authority figures to the adolescent victim, and the
primary male authority figure in her life--her father--has

betrayed and abandoned her. 8 Rather than risk further

139
emotional and sexual abuse by allowing herself to trust and
confide in the doctors at the clinic, Nicole affects a certain
degree of detachment--and safety--by communicating most openly
with a doctor who poses less threat, simply by virtue of his
distance from her.

When Dick returns to the clinic, Franz tells him that the
"'change'" in the letters Nicole was sending him signaled that
she "'had become [Dick's] case'" (119) . Dick, however, has
yet to learn the full background of Nicole's illness and
scarcely seems to view her as a professional responsibility at
all.

A lengthy conversation between Franz and Dick before Dick
is allowed to see Nicole in person exposes Nicole's earlier
incestuous encounter with her father. Franz relates Nicole's
presenting symptoms and her diagnosis as a schizophrenic with
a fear of men that is "'not at all constitutional'" (128) , and
then explains how Dr. Dohmler prompted Devereux Warren to
confess to having committed incest with his young daughter.
The incest had occurred when Warren, bereft of his wife's
affection and companionship following her death, had cul-
tivated an increasingly intimate, exclusive relationship with
his adolescent daughter, who was equally needy emotionally and
psychologically.9 According to Warren, in his confession to
Dohmler, father and daughter had gradually developed a habit
of focusing all their attention on each other, holding hands

and vowing to " ' just have each other' " for a while. The

140
neighbors commented on the "wonderful" relationship between
father and daughter. And Nicole was allowed to seek comfort
in her father's bed, until "all at once" they "were lovers"
(129).

Fitzgerald's original intention, judging by his notes for
the novel, was to depict a young girl who had been "raped" by
her father "under unusual circumstances": however, there is no
indication in the finished novel that Warren was guilty of
forcible rape. In fact, references to the actual sexual ac-
tivities of father and daughter are somewhat veiled, leading
at least one critic to assume that Nicole had "consented" to
intercourse (Berman, 82) . Fitzgerald leaves no doubt what-
soever that intercourse has occurred. When Dr. Dohmler asks
Warren if "'this thing'" continued following the occasion when
father and daughter became "lovers, " he is obviously concerned
about the nature and extent of the sexual exploitation. When
he asks whether there were " 'consequences, '" he is wondering--
as Warren recognizes--whether Nicole became pregnant. As a
psychiatrist he is naturally probing for information that may
help him treat the young patient--information that may be
easier to obtain from the theoretically sane adult who
victimized her than from the frightened, confused patient
herself.

Franz sums up the clinic's assessment of the link between
Nicole's experience of incest and the illness for which she

was hospitalized, explaining to Dick that Nicole "'felt

141

complicity'" yet "'from sheer self-protection . . . developed
the idea that she had no complicity.'" Franz believes that
Nicole responded to the incest by slipping "'into a phantom
world where all men, '" no matter how well "'liked'" and
"'trusted,"" appeared to pose sexual threats (130-31).

Despite his purported eagerness to become aigreat psychia-
trist, Dick displays little interest in the clinical assess-
ment of Nicole that Franz offers. Instead, he wants to know
more about the incestuous encounter itself. Dick's impatience
prompts him to interrupt Franz in an effort to force the
conversation's focus back onto the incest itself: "'Did she
ever go into the--horror’directly?'" (132). Later in the
novel, his morbid fascination with Nicole's experience of
taboo sexuality surfaces again even after his colleagues warn
him to beware of Nicole's apparent attachment to him: in her
presence at a social gathering his thoughts dart uncontrolla-
bly to "the dishonor, the secret" (152).

Dick's almost voyeuristic curiosity about Nicole's incest
. history is one of the earliest clues that he, like Devereux
Warren, may be capable of indulging his own fantasies and
impulses through objectification of heru According to current
psychological theory, one of the most confounding elements of
incestuous abuse is that it is "relationally-based" and "takes
place within the context that is supposed to nurture, protect
and care for the child, where she should be able to get a

reasonable interpretation of reality and relational life, and

142
upon which she is utterly dependent" (Gelinas, 319). Clearly,
Fitzgerald establishes the relational basis of Nicole's
vulnerability to her father's sexual advances through Mr.
Warren's own account of their seemingly ideal familial bond
before the incest occurred. By depicting Dick's nonclinical
fascination with Nicole's incest history, however, Fitzgerald
also--perhaps unwittingly--demonstrates that.Nicole's fears
are at least somewhat justified: men whom she has every right
to expect to be trustworthy do indeed see her first and
foremost as a sexual object- The fact that her father used
her sexually is titillating to her doctor, and ultimately
contributes to her revictimization. In both her family and
her therapy her self is violated by men who usurp her autonomy
and view her as a sex object.

By demonstrating Dick Diver's selfish delight in Nicole's
beauty, personal history, and infatuation with him, Fitzgerald
hints prophetically at psychological and sociological phenom-
ena documented.in professional journals and texts approximate-
ly fifty years later. In The Segret Treme (1986) , a com-
prehensive study of incest, sociologist Diana.Russell notes

that:

Some people apparently find the information that a
child has participated in a taboo sexual relationship
exciting and provocative, regardless of the involun-
tary nature of the child's victimization. Incest
victims, for example, appear to be particularly at
risk of revictimization by male therapists and
psychiatrists. (171)

143
Particularly in light of such research, Dick Diver's preoc-
cupation with Nicole's beauty and sexuality even while she's a
patient in his care is highly credible. Moreover, Nicole's
vulnerability to Dick's attention can be explained in part by
Drs. Kenneth Pope and Jacqueline Bouhoutsos, co-authors of
Semallntimaexaeseeenmeranimandzatiente (1986). who
report that "there appears to be an inordinately large number
of patients . . . who report incestuous experiences and
subsequent multiple victimization" by therapists (54) . Pope
and Bouhoutsos also draw clear parallels between .incest and
therapist-patient involvement:
The same vulnerability exists in the patient as in
the child: the loving, trusting, belief that the
parent (or parent-figure) is also loving and caring
and would not hurt. There is the same feeling of
powerlessness on the part of the child-patient: the
fear that one cannot exist without the parent's or
the therapist's protection and love. (53)
In Tender Ie the night, there are just such similarities
between Nicole's "loving, trusting" involvement with her
father--and his subsequent betrayal of her--and her exag-
gerated attachment to her father-surrogate, Dick Diver, who
recognizes that his role as psychiatrist makes him a "'stuffed
figure'" in her life, but courts her nonetheless.
Nicole herself, the child/patient, is net responsible for
either her father's or her doctor's behavior towards her, for
she is not on an equal footing with either of these men. She

is needy, dependent, vulnerable: they are her caretakers, at

least in theory. Among the many predictable consequences of

144
incest is an impaired ability to discern whom to trust.10
Dick Diver, like Devereux Warren, is in a position to do her
tremendous harm, and she is not even equipped to recognize it
as it befalls her, for, as Pope and Bouhoutsos explain:
The abused child learns to accommodate to a continu-
ing outrageous sexual relationship, outrageous
whether or not it is gentle, whether or not it is
purported to be loving. The same is true of the
relationship with the therapist. Sexual iz ing the
therapy is a betrayal of a trusting relationship that
requires an altruism, an unselfish involvement that
the parent or therapist must have with a child or
client in a subordinate or needy position to leave
them whole. (53-54)

Nicole cannot be helped by Dick Diver' 8 treatment because
he is not capable of "unselfish involvement" with an attrac-
tive young woman. His earliest and most compelling thoughts
of Nicole are of her beauty. Moreover, even Dick' 8 original
decision to become a psychiatrist was anything but altruistic:
he " 'got to be a psychiatrist because there was a girl at St.
Hilda' s in Oxford that went to the same lectures'" (138) .
Consequently, it comes as no surprise that his own deep-rooted
drive "to be loved" (133) blinds him to his appealing young
patient ' s conflicting need to develop a sense of self uncom-
pl icated by sexual gamesmanship. Even when his colleagues at
the clinic begin to question him about whether he has a
treatment plan for Nicole, his light-hearted response demon-
strates both his selfish contemplation of the possibility of
having sexual contact with her and his utter insensitivity to
the dynamics of the therapeutic relationship. When Franz

points out Nicole' 8 growing infatuation with Dick, Dick

145
insensitively jokes about "'tak[ing] her up in the edelweiss'"
(138).

Recognizing the danger of Dick's apparent "'sentimental
involvement'" with his own patient, both Franz and Dr.
Dohmler, the clinic's director, attempt to set him straight.
As an experienced psychiatrist and chief administrator of the
clinic, Dr. Dohmler reminds Dr. Diver of the necessity of
acting professionally in Nicole's best interests, despite any
temptation she might pose to Dick:

"I have nothing to do with your personal reactions, "
said Dohmler. "But I have much to do with the fact that
this so-called 'transference, '" he darted a short ironic
look at Franz which the latter returned in kind, "must be
terminated. Miss Nicole does well indeed, but she is in
no condition to survive what she might interpret as a
tragedy." (139)

Just as Dohmler automatically distances himself from the
patient by using a polite title, he expects Dick Diver to be
cautious enough to establish and maintain appropriate boun-
daries, particularly with a patient whose personal bounda-
ries--physical as well as psychological--have already been
carelessly shattered by another man, her father. Increasingly
concerned about Dick's degree of personal involvement with
Nicole, Dohmler considers the possibility of separating the
pair. Dick concedes that Nicole's infatuation with (and
attraction to) him constitutes "'a situation'" only to be
reminded vehemently again by Dohmler that "'it is a profes-
sional situation'" (140). Before the doctors agree that Dick

must gently sever his relationship with Nicole, Dick specu-

146
lates aloud over the possibility of marrying her. Franz is so
dismayed by this fantasy that he cannot curb an uncharacteris-
tic outburst in which he declares that it would be "'better
never to see her again'" (140).

It is interesting to note that Fitzgerald's identification
of Nicole as a patient who can pose a curious blend of threat
and temptation to her doctor is compatible with current
research into therapist-patient intimacy and the phenomenon

known as "countertransference." Just as a psychiatric patient

may experience a "transference," which the Lengmen Dietienery
of Reyeheiegy end zeyghietry defines as "the projection or

displacement upon the analyst of unconscious feelings and
wishes originally directed toward important individuals, such
as parents, in the patient's childhood"(759) , a clinical prac-
titioner may experience a "countertransference." Like a
transference, a countertransference often involves the
projection or displacement of unconscious feelings and wishes,
only in this case the focus is on the eneiyetie, not the
patient's, perceptions within the therapeutic relationship.
In Tender Te the Night Dick Diver's interactions with Nicole
are motivated in part by her unconscious activation of his
countertransference: his "professional" behavior with her
grows more and more inappropriate as she inadvertently
triggers his drive to meet his own love and.power needs.

The breakdown of their therapeutic relationship begins

very early in their acquaintance, for Dick appears at all

147
times to be acting out of his own unconscious feelings and
desires without serious regard for her psychological needs.
Indeed, it is questionable whether they ever establish a
bonafide, viable therapeutic relationship, for although Nicole
sees Dick as doctor and authority figure, Dick fails to
acknowledge his responsibility toward her in her role as
patient.

Despite Fitzgerald's awareness that he was ignorant of the
precepts and proper practice of psychiatry, he somehow managed
to capture Dick's countertransferent thought patterns, which
lead directly to his personal involvement with Nicole and
ultimately to the destruction of his career. When Dick first
meets Nicole in the clinic garden, he does not see "the girl"
as a "patient," but only as "about the prettiest thing [he]
ever saw" (emphasis mine, 120). Significantly, this reference
to her connotes an object rather than a person. While he's
away at the War, he receives "about fifty letters from her
written over a period of eight months" and comes "to wait
eagerly" for their arrival (121) . Thus, he is already
involved with Nicole--from a purely personal standpoint,
despite her acknowledgment that she has been told he's a
doctor--long before he returns to the clinic and is entrusted
with her treatment. Under the circumstances, he probably
ought never to have been designated her doctor in the first
place, for he appears unable or unwilling to reject his own

fantasies of her as girlfriend in order to be an effective

148
agent of therapeutic cure, a doctor capable of sufficient
detachment to allow a patient to develop her own sense of self
apart from his projected notions of what she could--or ought
to--be in hie life.

Close analysis of the text reveals evidence that Dick's
behavior with Nicole is motivated largely by his own needs.
The text, however, does not provide clear and accurate
assessments on Diver's part of what would constitute proper
care for her as a patient. His relationship with her is
egocentric: his expertise as a psychiatrist, highly ques-
tionable. Fitzgerald even goes so far as to suggest that
Dick is himself in the midst of a personal identity crisis--
trying to decide "whether or not to die for what [he] no
A longer believes"--when he arrives at the clinic and assumes
responsibility for Nicole's care. As he questions his
shifting values, he also takes personal inventory of his
desires: ". . . he used to think that he wanted to be good,
he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it
was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he
could fit it in" (13) .

Although Dick recognizes that it is difficult actually to
be good, kind, brave and wise, he clearly fancies himself in
this traditional image akin to that of a masculine protector.
Since he wants, above all, "to be loved," it is not surprising
that he grows narcissistically involved with Nicole's sexual-

ized transference, which prompts her to flirt with him and--

149
more crucial for her situation as patient--to worship him.
Dick becomes more and more dependent on Nicole's attention--
and "less and less certain of his relation to her" (135)--as
she makes "a profound promise of herself for so little, for
the beat of a response, the assurance of a complementary
vibration in him" (136) , and brings "everything to his feet,
gifts of sacrificial ambrosia, of worshipping myrtle" (137) .
Although he is dimly aware of his obligation "to divorce her
from any obsession that he [has] stitched her together"
(137) ,11 she is so infatuated with him that she habitually
" [brings] out her accomplishments for his approval . " Upon the
advice of his colleagues, he makes a half-hearted attempt to
withdraw from her emotionally, yet he finds himself leisurely
strolling with her in the rain-drenched garden, "wanting only
to drink the rain that touched her cheek" (143) .

Evidently Dick does suffer some conflict over his attach-
ment to his beautiful young patient. On a rational basis--and
with the input of his esteemed colleagues--he perhaps per-
ceives that his interest in Nicole is decidedly personal and
therefore selfish and unprofessional as well . On another,
more emotional, level, however, he finds it virtually impos-
sible to resist the temptation Nicole's youth, beauty, and
admiration pose. Because he wants so much "to be loved, " he
finds his own image in Nicole's eyes as she worships him
profoundly appealing. It is his inability to resolve his

internal confusion about Nicole that leads him to increase his

150
involvement with her. He encourages her attention and enters
a relationship with her unwisely, on the unsound basis of her
transferent vulnerability with--and affection for--him. By
allowing himself to reciprocate Nicole's exaggerated interest,
Dick commits a violation of his profession's ethics and
actually sets the ensuing marriage up for failure. Because it
originates in a therapeutic relationship, their romance is
founded on a hopelessly unequal--and precarious--basis.
Dick's unsuccessful, and perhaps even insincere, effort to
discourage Nicole's infatuation while she is his patient has a
lasting and deleterious impact on her. On the whole, she
appears to be in better mental health during his absence from
the clinic than she does during most of her subsequent
marriage to him.

Before Dick's return to the clinic following the War, the
other doctors have fostered Nicole's development of a sense of
self--her faith in herself as an individual capable of making
her own decisions, assuming responsibility, contributing to
her community, and, above all, cultivating her own intellect
and special talents. She needs just this kind of unselfish
encouragement to grow well. She needs to learn to trust
herself--for she felt "'complicity'" following the incest--and
to learn how to discern others who are worthy of trust. She
needs to begin to value herself for who she, is, regardless of

whether others treat her with respect. She needs, in short,

151
to become the center of her own universe, not a satellite of
someone else's.

Unfortunately for Nicole, Dick Diver is ill-equipped
psychologically to provide the unthreatening, nurturing
environment she needs following her father's sexual exploita-
tion. Almost as soon as Dick arrives on the scene, Nicole's
transference triggers her unconscious efforts "to reassure
herself of her irresistibility" in her favorite doctor's eyes
and "to exaggerate her readiness for sexual surrender"
(Berman, 74) . Soon she has a firm "hold on him," and he is
"thankful to have an existence at all, if only as a reflection
in her eyes" (155) . In effect, their roles reverse. Dick,
who, as a psychiatrist, has a professional obligation to
maintain appropriate detachment, becomes dependent on his
patient for his own affirmation. His growing involvement with
his patient on a purely personal basis forestalls her develop-
ing sense of autonomy, eventually depriving her of "of any
subsistence except Dick" (180). This setback in her psycho-
logical development lasts for years, but ultimately she
recognizes that she can--and "must"--"be something in addi-
tion, not just an image on his mind" (277) .

Due to his own conflicting need to be worshipped, however,
Dick has little tolerance for Nicole's occasional, cautious
quest for a greater degree of autonomy. His countertransfer-
ence, which derives from their initial therapeutic relation-

ship, shapes their life together. Significantly, the close of

152

the novel illuminates the role of countertransference in
Dick's deteriorating relationship with Nicole. His pervasive,
almost overwhelming need "to be loved," which suggests an
inferiority complex, apparently stems from his faint recogni-
tion that he is "the last hope of a dying clan" (302) . His
compelling drive to win approval, "to be loved," fuels his
almost irresistible charm, which, ironically, is his tragic
flaw. He chooses "sweet poison" to win affection, and his
mask of selfless caring for others thinly disguises his real
motivation, which is to make himself indispensable to them.
Shortly before his separation from Nicole, he is called to
assist some friends in distress, and he realizes: "He would
have to go and face this thing that he didn't care a damn
about, because it had early become a habit to be loved . . . "
( 302) . The recognition of the tragedy inherent in his desire
to curry favor surfaces as the passage continues:

On an almost parallel occasion, back in Dohmler's

clinic on the Lurischsee, realizing this power, he

had made a choice, chosen Ophelia, chosen the sweet

poison and drunk it. Wanting above all to be brave

and kind, he had wanted even more than that, to be

loved. So it had been. So it would ever be . . . .

( 302)

Dick's compelling needs to see himself as "brave and kind"
and "to be loved" lie at the heart of his tragedy in Tender Te
the Night. He is responsible for his own downfall, and, by
the end of the novel, he knows it. Aware of the potential

ramifications of intimate involvement with "a mental patient"

(156) , he nevertheless acts out of his urgent need "to be

153
loved," choosing "Ophelia," and thereby sealing his fate.
Nicole herself as a person is not his problem: his unprofes-
sional involvement with her is.

It is difficult to comprehend how Fitzgerald managed to
delineate so clearly the effects of transference and counter-
transference in the relationship between Nicole and Dick, when
he himself had no formal training in psychiatry and, in fact,
appears to have "shared in the myth of the psychiatrist as a
modern magician, a miracle worker dwelling in the psychic
landscape of life" (Berman, 67). However, Fitzgerald's
fundamental ignorance of psychology is evident in other
aspects of the novel--most notably, as he attempts, through
his characters, to offer a diagnosis for Nicole's illness. In
(this aspect of the novel as well as in his description of the
Divers' marriage, there is no question that Fitzgerald drew on
his experience with Zelda. Like Zelda, Nicole is diagnosed as
being schizophrenic. In Nicole's case, however, the official
diagnosis appears somewhat unjustifiable.12

In The Teihing Que, Jeffrey Berman points out the ques-
tionable nature of "Fitzgerald' s implication that the incest
directly precipitated Nicole's schizophrenia" and observes
that Nicole "hardly appears schizophrenic at all. " He goes
on to note that, "The few symptoms [Nicole] manifests suggest
hysteria and obsession compulsion" (82-83) . Clinical defini-
tions of "schizophrenia" and "hysteria, " coupled with an

analysis of Nicole's symptoms, support Berman's view.

154

Moreover, Fitzgerald's unduly severe diagnosis of Nicole's
illness is remarkably appropriate in the context of incest:
current psychological research has revealed that incest
victims with "disguised presentations"--those who manifest
confusion and other symptoms but who do not talk openly of
their incestuous encounters (like Nicole)--are frequently
misdiagnosed. One of the most common misdiagnoses for such

patients is schizophrenia . 13
The Talisman Dietidnarx ef whales): and Emulate!

defines "schizophrenic disorders" as:

. . . a group of mental disturbances essentially
characterized by (a) one or more psychotic features
during the active phase, including bizarre or absurd
delusions (such as being controlled or thought-broad-
casting), (b) somatic, grandiose, religious, or
nihilistic delusions, (c) delusions of persecution or
jealousy with hallucinations, (d) incoherence with
marked loosening of associations, illogical thought,
or poverty of speech together with either blunted,
flat, or inappropriate affect, (f) delusions or
hallucinations, or (g) grossly disorganized behavior,
such as catatonia. Other common characteristics are
deterioration from a previous level of job, social,

or self-care functioning, and onset before age 45,
with a duration of at least six months. A common

term for schizophrenic disorder is schizophrenia.
(655)

The symptoms outlined above are clearly more severe than the
symptoms Nicole exhibits. Despite her confusion about some
men' 8 possible ulterior (sexual) motives in their dealings
with her, Nicole is for the most part able to function
normally among other people. Before Dick' 8 return to the
clinic, following the War, Nicole is even entrusted with the

supervision of other, "less stable" patients on excursions to

155

town. Later, within her family and social circle, she is
capable of assuming responsibility for others as well. At one
poignant moment, in fact, she quietly asserts her sense that
womanhood carries with it an inherent obligation to engage in
the "business" of "holding things together" (82) . Although
Dick finds it convenient to label as "delusions" those things
which she sees that he does not want her to see, she utterly
fails to display any "bizarre or absurd delusions" within the
novel. Her few irrational outbursts are invariably triggered
by circumstances that can be linked psychologically with her
incest experience. Hence, her behavior is not so much delu-
sional as hysterical.

The Lemma missionary 9.: W and 25321113513:
defines hysteria as:

. . a neurotic disorder characterized by sugges-
tibility, emotional outbursts, histrionic behavior,
repressed anxiety, and transformation of unconscious
conflicts into physical symptoms such as paralysis,
blindness, and loss of sensation. These symptoms
serve to screen out anxiety (primary gains) and at
the same time to elicit attention and sympathy
(secondary gains). Freud interpreted such symptoms
as defenses against guilty sexual impulses . . . . He
also included dissociative conditions in his concept

The symptoms attributable to hysteria encompass virtually all
of Nicole's manifestations of mental illness. Her original
manifestations of illness, as presented in her letters to Dick
Diver, reflect her anxiety and unconscious conflicts about

sexuality. She reveals that she "has gotten only to like boys

who are rather sissies" (121) and that she is frequently

156
apprehensive about men's glances: "They tried it again in the
candy store again and I almost hit the man with the weight"
(124) . Moreover, her emotional outbursts and histrionic
behavior take place in situations that remind her--at least on
a subconscious level--of her father's betrayal. She leaves
the room for some unstated reason during a dinner party when
her husband and Rosemary, a girl young enough to be his
daughter, are engaging in a flirtation; later allusions to a
scene in the bathroom suggest histrionics. Nicole also
suffers a breakdown--"everything got dark again"--immediately
after the birth of her second child, a little girl (161) :14
and she revolts against her husband, wrecking the family car
and nearly killing the family, following word from one of the
clinic' 3 former patients regarding Dick's sexual advances
toward her daughter. In one of her most severe emotional
outbursts of the novel, she retreats to a bathroom while Dick
tries to get rid of a dead man's body discovered in Rosemary' 5
hotel room. This incident, too, suggests an activation of
subconscious associations with an earlier crisis, her inces-
tuous encounter with her father. 15 In the following passage,
Nicole ' s reaction when Dick appears at the bathroom door
suggests many elements of incest, including invasion, blood,
shame, betrayal, coercion, power, powerlessness, and stig-
matization:
Nicole knelt beside the bed swaying sidewise and
sidewise. "It' 3 you! " she cried, "--it' 3 you come to

intrude on the only privacy I have in the world--with your
spread with red blood on it. I'll wear it for you--I 'm

157
not ashamed, though it was such a pity. On All Fools Day
we had a party on the Zurichsee, and all the fools were
there,and.I wanted to come dressed in a spread.but they
wouldn't let.me--"
"Control yourself!"
"--so I sat in the bathroom and they brought me a
domino and said wear that" I did” What else could I do?"
"Control yourself, Nicole!"
"I never expected.you to love me--it was too late--
only don't come in the bathroom, the only place I can go
for privacy, dragging spreads with red blood on them and
asking me to fix them." (112)
Although the spread in this instance has been bloodied by a
dead.man's body, and handled by her husband, to Nicole the
blood might well symbolize her loss of virginity in her
father's bed, Her abhorrence of the possibility of being
asked "to fix" the spread might well represent her resentment
over being expected "to fix" her relationship with her father
following their intercourse: her efforts to reassure her
father that it didn't "'matter'" (129), and her stubborn
silence about the incest during her months as a patient at
Dohmler's clinic. Even her desperate plea for privacy
reflects her lingering fear of invasion and violation as well
as a deep longing for respect" In any event, however, her
most blatantly "irrational" behavior occurs as a direct result
of a severely stressful situation--the discovery of'a body-—
that might very well upset people with.considerably’more
stable mental histories.

Further evidence that Nicole's illness can be assessed
more accurately as hysteria than as schizophrenia is found in

WWEWW
(1986). Several characteristics and behaviors that the

158

authors, Drs. Mueller and Aniskiewicz, attribute to hysteria
are exemplified by Nicole in Tender Ie the Night. The authors
note, for example, that, "Whenever a hysteric becomes hysteri-
cal, it is a sign that something in the therapeutic relation-
ship needs attention" (81) . In the novel, Nicole's hysterical
outbursts signal Dick's failure to address stressful incidents
in her life as well as his propensity to incite her jealousy
by flirting with other women. Interestingly, the authors of
W W outline in considerable detail
the likelihood that hysterical patients might evoke counter-
transferent difficulties in their therapists, largely because
hysterics tend to be extremely perceptive and articulate:

The hysterical client is intensely aware of how she

is being received. In particular, the hysteric is

hypersensitive to the therapist's feelings about her,

constantly alert to nuances in his behavior that

reflect his subliminal attitudes about her." (66)
As has already been demonstrated, Nicole is keenly aware of
Dick's initial attraction to her: later, she perceives his
attachment to her and refuses to believe his denial of
interest: "'It's my hard luck , all right--but don't pretend
I don't Baggy-I know everything about you and me'" (154) . And
of course she is right: Dick is thoroughly intrigued by her--
and by his own image in her eyes. More importantly, however,
Mueller and Aniskiewicz explain that hysterics often feel that
they "have no inner core" and, as a result, are "vulnerable to

being swept along by another person and . . . becoming drained

and losing [their] tenuous self-esteem" (130). This aspect of

159

hysteria manifests itself in Nicole's extreme dependency on
Dr. Diver, from their first meeting through.most of the novel.
Nicole experiences herself as virtually worthless--except
through her association with Dicka When.he tries to break off
their relationship, "there [is] no home left to her, save
emptiness and pain" (143). When they marry, she feels
"lonely" but sees "no place to go except close" (159). During
her pregnancy, she feels "like a broken roly—poly that can't
stand up straight" (159) and eventually she grows "tired of
knowing nothing and being reminded of it all the time" (161).
Indeed, in the early days of her therapy and marriage she
feels literally that she has no identity apart from Dick:
"When I talk I say to myself that I am probably Dick" (162).

Even Nicole's initial infatuation with Dick is at-
tributable to hysteria, (According’tolgeyehethezepengie
W in fiyeterigel W, a patient with hysteria
and confusion about.her relationships with men might well be
expected to become infatuated*with.her doctor and even behave
seductively with him. The danger, according to Mueller and
Aniskiewicz, lies not in the patient's attachment to her
doctor but in his response to it. If he allows himself to
reciprocate her interest, he "perpetuates and exacerbates the
client's Oedipal conflicts, inducing guilt, reinforcing
passive defenses and delaying movement during therapy" (91).

Apparently, in fact, intimate involvement with the therapist

160
is one of the very worst things that can happen to a patient
with hysteria:
If the hysterical client has elicited collusion in a
male therapist, she has symbolically gained an
excluding and exclusive relationship with the father,
and her second state is worse than the first. . . .
The male therapist has come to represent the Oedipal
father, and although she sought exclusiveness, what
should have remained at the wish-fulfilling fantasy
level has become "real." (91)
For Nicole, the Oedipal "fantasy" becomes all too "real" not
just once, but twice. Having endured an exclusive, incestuous
liaison with her father, she then has the misfortune to enter
therapy with a man who disregards her history and vulner-
ability as he selfishly cultivates his own fantasy of an
exclusive relationship with her. Under the circumstances, it
is quite remarkable that she ultimately manages to reject her
unhealthy alliance with Dick and develop a somewhat autonomous
sense of self. But achieving a sense of her own worth is no
easy task for her, and her romantic involvement with Dick
severely inhibits her progress along the way.

Nicole is prone to becoming involved with her therapist
for a variety of reasons besides unresolved Oedipal conflicts.
She appeals to Dick for what she is--beautiful, bright, young,
talented, vulnerable--just as she appealed to his colleagues
who "made rather a pet of her" (131) at the clinic while Dick
was away at the War. Unlike his colleagues, however, Dick
cannot distinguish between Nicole's needs and his own. His

professional judgment is clouded by his own drive "to be

loved," and he winds up behaving "as if" he met her in some

161

other context quite apart from a theoretically therapeutic
relationship.16

It is interesting to note that Nicole fits a profile drawn
nearly forty years after the publication of Tender, 15 the
Night to illustrate the characteristics of women who are
likely to be susceptible to romantic and/or sexual involvement
with their therapists. In her 1972 book entitled Men en;
negneee, psychologist Phyllis Chesler notes that women who
participate in intimate relationships with their analysts tend
to be "intellectually insecure . . . sexually fearful and
sexually compulsive . . . paralyzed by real and feared
loneliness and self-contempt . . . and slow to express any
anger. " In addition, Chesler observes that such women tend to
" [blame] themselves for any 'mistreatment' by men" and to
" [confuse] economic and selfhood needs with romantic ' love '
(149) . Nicole exhibits all of these qualities and behaviors
to some extent. Her insecurity about her intellect, for
example, is evident when she minimizes her considerable
prowess in languages and the arts by dubbing her accomplish-
ments "minor": she also dreams rather wistfully about
"look[ing] over the whole field of knowledge and pick[ing] out
something" that she could "really know about" and "hang on to"
(161) . She is so "fearful" of her own sexuality on the heels
of her incest experience that she often appears altogether
preoccupied with sex. And she is so isolated and lonely
during her months at the clinic that she writes pitiful

162
letters to a virtual stranger, Dick Diver, confessing her
self-contempt "I am completely broken and humiliated" and her
sense of abandonment "I am lonesome all the time, far away
from friend and family across the Atlantic I roam all over the
place in a half daze" (123) . She yearns for the sense of hope
she had "ages ago" when boys "were in love with [her] ,"
apparently seeing in romance a new point of departure, as
Alabama does in Zelda's novel Sexe he the Waltz. In short,
she is a very confused and unhappy young woman whose only
definition of self arises directly from whatever. standards
others see fit to impose on her. She is almost literally
willing to sell her soul to the devil for a few crumbs of
attention.

Fitzgerald's characterization of Dick does not provide any
evidence that Dick ever fully grasps the extent of Nicole's
vulnerability to him. Although his colleagues attempt to warn
him that Nicole's "transference" may have gotten out of hand,
his own interactions with expose his inability to empathize
with her. His advice to her is, at best, oversimplified. At
worst, his remarks are patronizing. Knowing full well her
psychiatric history, he admonishes her to "try to forget the
past" (142) , and--treating her like a child--he tells her she
"shouldn't" when she says she "hate[s] Doctor Gregory" (143) .
Even in his responses to her early letters, he merely tells
her, "'13s a good girl and mind the doctors'" (130). Far from

drawing her out as a person or in any way assisting her in

163

developing and strengthening a sense of her own worth, Dick's
natural inclination seems to be to impose his own sense of her
reality on her. He denies her her heritage by dismissing the
impact of the incest and her illness with pat remarks, and he
denies her her feelings by pronouncing them inappropriate.
Later, he attempts to deny her her (accurate) perceptions by
declaring them "delusions." Throughout the early stages of
their relationship and most of their marriage, his tone with
her is authoritarian, appropriate both for patriarchal
traditions and, according to Chesler, for exploitive
therapists.17

Either because she' s unaware of her anger or fearful of
expressing it, Nicole' 3 response to both her father' s abuse
.and her doctor-husband' s authoritarianism is passive, almost
serene, compliance. She holds her world together by avoiding
overt hostilities insofar as she is able. Confrontation
terrifies her, so she struggles to maintain control and
decorum. Fitzgerald alludes to Nicole' 3 outward calm re-
peatedly throughout the novel . She is marked by "a lovely
peace, without a smile" as she watches her children at play on
the beach (10) . She is said to " [know] few words and [be-
lieve] in none, and in the world . . . [be] rather silent"
(26) . She is observed sitting "in the car, her lovely face
set, controlled, her eyes brave and watchful , looking straight
ahead toward nothing" (14) . To Rosemary, Nicole' s charac-

teristic serenity appears almost mystical: she has "the face

164
of a saint, a Viking madonna" (33) . l8 Eventually, however,
Nicole ' s almost perpetual "exterior harmony and charm" is
identified explicitly by Fitzgerald as "the other face of her
illness" (180).

Nicole ' s exaggerated calm--her almost catatonic control--
is a manifestation of her schizoid tendency and yet another
accurate reflection of the impact incest can have. Although
Fitzgerald employs the term "schizoid" within the text, he
appears to consider it synonymous with "eccentric. " Dick
tells Baby Warren that Nicole is " ' a schizoid--a permanent
eccentric' " (151) - The Lemma Dictionary of Embassy and
Wm, however, defines schizoidism as "a complex of
behavioral factors that includes seclusiveness, quietness, and
other introversion traits indicating a separation by the
person from [her] surroundings, the confining of psychic
interests to [herself] , and in many cases a tendency toward
schizophrenia" (654) . With this definition in mind, it is
clear that Dick' 3 reference to Nicole's schizoid behavior
shortly after she disappears from the dinner table is ap-
propriate, even though his equation of schizoidism with
eccentricity is an obvious oversimplification. More impor-
tantly, however, Fitzgerald's attribution of schizoid behavior
to an incest victim is entirely compatible with current
assessments of incest victims' characteristics.

According to research findings publicized by Incest Sur-

vivors Anonymous, victims "may be withdrawn and isolated, "

165

"passive or distant," and even "numb to the world and to their
feelings" (W 91 We, 1). Other research
supports these findings.19 In fact, other, more recent
literary representations of incest victims reflect equally
serene, or, alternatively, dissociative, behavior. For
example, Julia, an incest survivor in James Baldwin's 1978
novel Jhet ehoye My gene, is described as being "at once
present and very far away, and with a beauty . . . only seen
in those who have been forced to suffer into, and beyond,
astonishment" (42) . Both Nicole and Julia, like other
victims, struggle with feelings of isolation, emptiness,
guilt, and confusion in the aftermath of incest. Their
outward calm and silence may mask considerable internal
strife.

Although Fitzgerald clearly accepts the Freudian notion
that psychological patterns and problems stem from "secrets
. . . buried deep in childhood struggles" (180), Nicole's
bouts with mental illness as an adult cannot be blamed on
Devereux Warren' s exploitation without some recognition of the
role Dick Diver, as Nicole's psychiatrist, plays in the
perpetuation and exacerbation of her illness. In theory,
psychotherapy affords patients an opportunity to "work
through" their internal conflicts and achieve an appropriate
resolution, thereby freeing themselves from tensions that may
interfere with their enjoyment of life and fulfilment of

personal goals. In Nicole's case, however, therapy is

166

counter-productive. Ideally, Nicole should experience a safe,
nurturing relationship with a mature father figure determined
to refrain from exploiting her at any cost. Instead, she
becomes entangled in a pathological involvement with a man who
reenacts her father's original betrayal. He is utterly
absorbed in her youth and beauty: ". . . nothing had ever
felt so young as her lips. . . . Her beauty climbed the
rolling slope, it came into the room, rustling ghostlike
through the curtains . . ." ( 156) . Yet his professional
training dictates caution with female patients, so he brushes
off her tentative overtures with remarks like, "'You're a
fetching kid, but I couldn't fall in love'" (154) . Dr.
Diver's inconsistency and occasionally impulsive responses to
Nicole's intense infatuation contribute to her further
victimization. Perhaps he feels he can justify his decision
to seek an overtly sexual relationship with her by proposing
marriage, but he apparently does not wait until the wedding
night to pursue his desire for sexual intimacy. Their
premarital sexual relations are alluded to only once, near the
end of the novel, and in Fitzgerald's customary discreet
language. In the first flush of liberation following sexual
intercourse with Tommy, Nicole "scarcely recall[s] how she

. . . felt when she and Dick had possessed each other in
secret places around the world, during the month before they
were married" (300). Fitzgerald's implications are casual,

yet irrefutable--and profoundly disturbing in light of

167

Nicole's earlier experience of incest. Her doctor, like her
father, has apparently violated her innocence and taken
advantage of her vulnerability in a selfish effort to satisfy
his own needs. The vision of the good young doctor traipsing
around the countryside with his beautiful, wealthy, teen-aged
incest-victim/patient, stopping here and there in "secret
places" like roadside inns to indulge his sexual fantasies, is
positively chilling.20

While it is unlikely that Fitzgerald had any understanding
of the magnitude of Dick's impropriety with Nicole,- it is
evident that in this novel--l ike its predecessors--Fitzgerald
is conscientiously attempting to capture a moment in history
and share an intimate glimpse into his perception of human
suffering. As usual, he draws on his own experiences with
women and--perhaps inadvertently--illustrates the attitudes
and conditions that shape their lives. Nicole is a young
woman--a New Woman of great promise. But her emotional ,
intellectual , and psychological development is thwarted by
circumstances beyond her control . Although she is economical-
ly secure due to a large inheritance, she is emotionally
dependent--first on her father and then on her psychiatrist.
Both men act--without evident malice--out of a patriarchal
tradition that permits them to view women as something less
than fully human. At their basest level , they both see Nicole
only as an object of their own sexual fantasies. At loftier

moments, "under the guise of helping, " Warren and Diver

168
dictate Nicole's and other women's behavior, by assuming "a
dominance over women, a dominance more insidious and far-
reaching because so thoroughly disguised" (Fetterley, 124) .
For most of the novel Nicole, an incest victim, experiences
herself as powerless, as Dick figuratively "rapes" her over
and over again through his efforts to "define both reality and .
sanity" for her (Fetterley, 124) . Instinctively, she responds .
to his abuse--as she responded to her father's--through
hysteria.

And her hysteria is a clue that she embodies an embryonic
New Woman, a woman who may learn to reject abuse by giving
voice to her dissatisfaction with the status quo by whatever
means possible. In the battle between the sexes Nicole
suffers, but she does not succumb. Her compliant silence
gives way to overt indignation near the close of the book,
when she overcomes her fear of expressing her displeasure with
Dick's deterioration and begins to talk back. In doing so,
she begins to declare her independence, parting irrevocably
from the past and ensuring her survival. The marriage between
Dick and Nicole cannot continue, because she is no longer
willing to honor its tacit demand that she be subordinate to
Dick. Clearly, she is sympathetic with other women of her era
in their quest for greater respect and personal freedom.

In The LemeLe Melegy, Elaine Showalter detects important
connections between feminism and manifestations of hysterical

disorders, noting that the "women's movement" of the 1920s

169
"offered a potent alternative to the self-destructive and
self-enclosed strategies of hysteria, and a benign form of
resistance to the patriarchal order" (161) . From this
perspective, Nicole's illness--and the related symptoms
presented by her predecessors in Fitzgerald's other novels-- .
can actually be interpreted as healthy integrity. She tries
to resist oppression, which literally makes her ill. She
longs for a new position of equality in the world of men. As
Showalter observes, "the hysterical woman" is actually "a
female avant-garde struggling to redefine woman's place in the
social order": feminism, in fact, provides an "alternative to
hysterical silence . . . the determination to speak and act
for women in the public world" (161) .

Although Nicole does not overtly align herself within the
text with the women's movement of Fitzgerald's era, she is
nevertheless influenced by it. Other women in Tenge; Ie the
Night seize their rights with more confidence and ease. Her
sister, though called "Baby," is responsible for managing the
family fortune and appears less desperate for male attention.
Similarly, Rosemary Hoyt makes her own money and chooses her
own lovers, in the tradition of men. But Nicole is a product
of somewhat different experience, more akin to that of the
young women in Fitzgerald's earlier novels. Indoctrinated
since birth, she fully believes that she cannot survive
without the "help" of men. As a child, she is both emotional-

ly and economically dependent on her father, who perhaps

170
unwittingly exploits her dependency by initiating--or, at the
very least, encouraging--incestuous contacts As a young woman
in the throes of mental illness resulting from her father's
sexual abuse, and subsequent abandonment, she is emotionally
and psychologically dependent on her doctor, who also uses her
to meet his own needs“ Through subtle and overt.means, both
men teach her--as her society generally dictates--that.her
role is to obey their will. She believes, in fact, that her
survival ultimately depends on compliance.

It is not surprising, then, that Nicole is astounded by
Tommy Barban's belief that she can--and should--assert her
independent will. She responds to his initial suggestion that
she speak out in an effort to curb Dick's drinking with utter
incredulity: "'I!' she exclaimed in amazement. '1 tell Dick
what he should or shouldn't do!'" (274) But gradually Tommy's
influence helps her grasp what she has sometimes suspected:
that she is capable of, and indeed.antitled to, a certain
amount of self-assertion. Inevitably, her growing willingness
to discard.her customary passive role in her relationship with
her husband results in some outright conflict, On one
noteworthy occasion she "[weeps] with anger at [Dick's] abuse"
when he attempts to blame his demise on her illness. She
rejects his cruel reference to her as "'questionable com-
pany,'" asserting forthrightly, "'You're a coward} You've
made a failure of your life, and you want to blame it on me'"

(301). As Nicole learns to question the things her tradition-

171
al, chauvinistic husband tries to tell her, her "case" is at
last "finished," and "Doctor Diver [is] at 1iberty"--largely
because she outgrows her unhealthy relationship with him
(302).

Although Nicole's experience is more complicated--and more
deeply disturbing--than that of Fitzgerald's New Women in his
earlier novels, she displays similar underlying conflicts.
Patriarchal prohibitions and exploitation inhibit her develop-
ment of an autonomous sense of identity, but her innate
intelligence, integrity, and curiosity prompt her to recognize
the injustice inherent in the status quo. As she removes
herself from the oppressive conditions of her marriage to her
doctor, she demonstrates her commitment to the ideals of the
New Women of her era who called for greater freedom and
respect. In her surprising departure from the convention of
subservience, she also paves the way for Kathleen and Cecilia,

the New Women of Fitzgerald's final, unfinished novel, The
M315 Moon.

CHAPTER VII

Uncertain Futures: Fitzgerald's Vision of Women in
IDEHLQESLIXQQQD

Like all of Fitzgerald's previous novels, The Leet,Tyeeen
is somewhat autobiographical and focuses pointedly on the
romantic interplay between the sexes. 'Unlike his earlier
novels, however, The Leet,Tyeeenr-even in its unfinished
state--is clearly the product of maturing vision. 'The
characters, dialogue, and settings are more vivid than any
that precede them. The plot is stronger: the theme seems more
compelling. In fact, Barry Gross asserts convincingly that,
"The Leet ween would have been Scott Fitzgerald's best
novel," for it "is both dramatic and.philosophical/psychologi-
cal, a sonnet sequence and.an.epic, a tour de force and a
confession of faith" (197). Similarly, Edmund Wilson, in his
1941 foreword to the novel, proclaims that it is both "Fitz-
gerald's most.mature piece of work" and "the best novel we
have about Hollywood . . . the only one which takes us inside"
(x). Ironically, however, even Fitzgerald's "most.mature"
vision of women--as reflected in this final, unfinished,

novel--casts them in subordinate--and often quite precarious--

172

173
roles both within their relationships with men and within
American society as a whole.

By the time Fitzgerald set to work on The Lest ween, his
popularity as a writer had waned dramatically. Debt-ridden
and suffering from the combined effects of alcoholism and
tuberculosis, he had gone to Hollywood as a screen writer in
hopes of renewing his fortune. In the patriarchal tradition,
he was extremely concerned about supporting his daughter
Scottie, who was attending Vassar, and his wife Zelda, who was
confined in a North Carolina mental hospital. His annual
royalty checks for his earlier novels were rapidly diminish-
ing. Moreover, in the 1930s his short story market--which had
been a good source of ready cash in the 1920s--"simply disap-
peared," according to Robert Martin, who attributes the
magazines' lack of enthusiasm to the Depression as well as to
Fitzgerald's "own inability to write stories the magazines
wanted" and his "own emotional depression" (147) .

Although Fitzgerald went to Hollywood out of financial
desperation, he reaped more than just financial rewards from
his move. His observations of the Hollywood movie studios and
their personnel during his eighteen months under contract as a
screenwriter, coupled with his Hollywood love affair with
Sheilah Graham, inspired him to begin a new novel, despite his
disappointment over the reception Tenge]: Ie the Night had
received. His ability to apply himself earnestly to the task
of writing The Lee; Meet; was enhanced by his relative

174
freedom from domestic worries. With both Scottie and Zelda
thousands of miles away, he was able to establish a daily
writing regimen that was respected and assisted by both
Sheilah and a young secretary, Frances Ring, who did his
typing. In their stability and dedication, these two women
afforded Fitzgerald a new perspective on female character.
His understanding of them--and of his daughter Scottie,
largely through correspondence--contributed to his charac-

terization of Kathleen Moore and Cecilia Brady, the two

principal women in The Lest Men.

In "mmamm1m":nmmmgm
"The Leet ween," Matthew Bruccoli identifies numerous
parallels between Hollywood tycoon Monroe Stahr's experiences
in the novel and Fitzgerald's real life experiences in the
1930s. According to Bruccoli, "Stahr's sense of loss and his
attempt to secure a new love" reflect "Fitzgerald's situation"
during his years in Hollywood. Stahr's dead wife Minna--and
his lingering grief over losing her--are reminiscent of
Fitzgerald's mourning over "the hopelessly disturbed Zelda."
But the most obviously autobiographical element of the novel
is Fitzgerald's depiction of Kathleen Stahr, who critics
generally concede is "based on Sheilah Graham." Bruccoli
elaborates:

Just as Stahr is struck by Kathleen's resemblance to
his Minna, Sheilah Graham resembled Zelda. At the
time Fitzgerald first saw Miss Graham--who, like
Kathleen, was wearing a silver belt--she was engaged

to the Marquis of Donegall, a circumstance Fitzgerald
elevated into Kathleen's liaison with a king. Miss

175
Graham's education in Fitzgerald's "college of one"
also parallels Kathleen's experience. Finally,
Stahr's hesitation about marrying Kathleen is a
reflection of Fitzgerald's inability to marry Sheilah
Graham. (19)

Because Graham strongly influenced Fitzgerald's portrayal
of the primary woman in his last novel, it is important to
examine her relationship with him.1 Fitzgerald met Graham
shortly after his arrival in Hollywood in 1937. Although they
fell in love and remained intimate until his death in 1940,
Graham strongly objected to being labeled as Fitzgerald' s
"mistress, " because she always maintained her own home and was
never supported by him. In her biography of Fitzgerald, she
I even quotes Edmund Wilson as saying, " ' You were not his
mistress . . . you were his second wife. ' "2 She explains that
she "cared for" Fitzgerald "as the man who expanded all [her]
capabilities for loving, for anguish, for honesty, for joy,
for unselfishness, " and she reports that it "depressed [her]
to have [their] time together reduced to ' an affair' " (The
Reel, 14).

Certainly their three-and-a-half year relationship was
more comprehensive than the traditional notion of an affair.
Bruccoli credits Graham with " [providing] an atmosphere of
regularity that made it possible for Fitzgerald to write" as
well as serving as "the model for Kathleen" (The Reel, 18) .
Frances Kroll Ring, in her memoir, Ageinet the me: he I
Remember L Seett W. fondly recalls Graham' 3 comings

176
and goings in Fitzgerald's household as well as Graham's
friendly acquaintance with Fitzgerald's daughter.

More importantly, however, feminist scholar Mary Ellmann,
in her book Thinking ehent Men (1978) , closely assesses the
intellectual component of Fitzgerald's intimate liaison with
Graham. Ellmann points out that Graham, as she accepted the
role of "student" in Fitzgerald's special "college of one,"
fit a feminine stereotype, exhibiting "compliancy" in the face
of her lover/patriarch's purportedly superior intellect and
education. Ellmann calls this classic pattern of interaction
"one of the most amiable of set relationships between men and
women" but also points out that "the foundation of the stereo-
type is premarital or extramarital: the man's 'inner' life is
a privilege to share . . but such unilinear pleasures are
necessarily brief and irregular" (119) .

Like the doctor-patient relationship of Dick and Nicole in
Tender Te the Night, Fitzgerald's teacher role with Graham as
student reflected the tradition of men occupying a position of
authority and superiority over women. Fitzgerald's efforts to
teach Graham what he thought a well-educated woman should know
are called to mind in The Lest Men as Kathleen tells Stahr
of her informal education during a long-term romance with an
earlier lover. When Stahr casually comments on the scope of
Kathleen's knowledge as it is reflected through her conversa-
tion, she explains, "' . . . the man I told you about knew

everything and he had a passion for educating me. He made out

177
schedules and.made me take courses at the Sorbonne and.go to
museums. I picked up a little.'" Even though Kathleen
understates the extent of her learning, (much as Nicole
belittled her considerable intellectual achievement as she
addressed Dick Diver), Stahr is impressed, for he has "an
intense respect for learning a racial memory of the old
eehniee," Yet Kathleen appears determined to make light of
her considerable intellectual achievement as she shifts the
dialogue toward a psychological and.biological perspective:
"'It was just in place of babies'" (91). Interestingly, her
remark.subtly suggests that she has an internalized notion
that procreation is a more natural and suitable undertaking
foeromen.than education.

Cecilia Brady, the young narrator of much of The Leet
Tyeeen, appears to hold.a similar'viewu .Although she acknow-
ledges that she has "the kicking fetus of'a mind" (11) and
she's a junior in college, she tends to evaluate herself in
terms of her'physiology, not.her intellect, when she ponders
the possibility of exciting'men's interest. She notes, for
instance, that she has "good features," "skin they seemed to
love to touch," and "good legs": in addition, she takes pride
in her figure, for she "[doesn't have] to wear a brassiere"
(68). Education appears to be of little import to her except
insofar as she expects it to make her "fit to be a brilliant

ornament of any salon" (17).

178
Fitzgerald himself, however, as the father of a daughter
in college, opposed the notion that education was optional and
unimportant for women in the 19308. According to Bruccoli,
during the time when Fitzgerald was writing The Lest Ty_c_o_en,
he was also "in conflict" with Scottie "over her attitude
toward her studies" and consequently "was writing her a series
of severe letters" (20). Frances Kroll Ring connects Fitzger-
ald's concern for his daughter's education with his awareness
that women's lives were rapidly changing:
He was compulsive about Scottie's education and
impressed upon her that she would be the firet m
in the family to try for a college education. She
must be prepared to have an independent life with a
rod of knowledge up her back to support it . . . . He
was keenly aware of a changing world for women and he
wanted his daughter to be ready for that world with
education, goals, self-esteem. She must not fritter
away her life as so many young women in the twenties
had. (82)

Fitzgerald himself wrote to Scottie of the importance of

preparing for the world of work:
Every girl your age in America will have the ex-
perience of working for a living. To shut your eyes
to that is like living in a dream--to say "I will do
valuable and indispensable work" is the part of
wisdom and courage." (Turnbull, Lettere, 51)

It is interesting to note that Fitzgerald's allusions to
women's education in The Test Mn, combined with his
vehement insistence on its importance to both Sheilah and
Scottie, underscore the frustrations of women in his earlier
novels (and life experience), who longed for the sense of

purpose that intellectual activity and professional achieve-

ment could provide but lacked the motivation, encouragement,

179
and formal education to pursue them. Before Fitzgerald's
lifetime, education was considered more or less superfluous
for most American women, yet during the course of his career
he came to see it as essential. Without education, the women
of his era had virtually no choice but to marry--sometimes
unwisely--just to assure their livelihood. Education,
however, could provide options for the New Woman by strength-
ening her intellect and self-esteem and, potentially at least,
enabling her to enter the professional world and earn her own
keep. Zelda lived long enough to know that she would have
liked to have had such an option: so did at least two of Fitz-
gerald's women who were inspired by Zelda--Gloria and Nicole.
But the naive young Cecilia of The Lest 119.9211: like Fitzger-
ald's own daughter Scottie, at the time still sees her social
life as the focal point of her existence. To be sure,
education is something Cecilia values--but chiefly with
respect to how much it can enhance her social graces and
opportunities.

Like most of the women in Fitzgerald's earlier novels,
most of the women in The Leet 1199.931 are relatively unedu-
cated. But in The Lest 119.9211 nearly all of the women do
aspire toward independence to such a degree that they attempt
to provide for themselves financially. In this respect,
Kathleen and many minor characters display their sense of

living in a new society. Yet a close examination of their

180
employment reveals that they are really no better off than
their forerunners in Fitzgerald's earlier novels.

As Kathleen relates her life story to Stahr, she pinpoints
the hardship she suffered for lack of preparation to support
herself. The proverbial orphan, she tells Stahr that she was
presented at Court by an impoverished stepmother, who died
soon after, leaving her to fend for herself at the age of
sixteen. Feeling that "she was too weak to go into the
streets," she tried first to sell cars and then to get work as
a chambermaid. Eventually she met "'The Man, '" who was "a
blessing at first," since "from sixteen to twenty-one the
thing was to eat." For a while they "travelled the world"
together, but, "Then The Man went to seed, drinking and
sleeping with the housemaids and trying to force her off on
his friends. They all tried to make her stick with him. They
said she had saved him and should cleave to him longer now,
indefinitely, to the end. It was her duty. They brought
enormous pressure to bear. But she had met The American, and
so finally she ran away." (112)

From Kathleen's description of her experience, it is clear
that she has lacked the wherewithal to provide for herself
financially. Her "survival" has long depended on her willing-
ness to abandon her fantasies of earning a living through
conventional employment: it has been necessary for her to
market herself to men . . . a man . . . "The Man," who turns

out to be a king and is therefore suggestive of the patriar-

181
chal tradition itself. Surprisingly, Kathleen's experience is
little different from that of women in Fitzgerald's other
novels. Despite her noble contemplation of automony, her
economic condition forces her to turn to men for support. She
consents to being the King's traveling companion, as the young
women inmmxmammmmm
consent to marriage, because their bodies and charm are the
only negotiable tender they have. Moreover, like Nicole in
Tender Te the night, Kathleen has found it impossible to
terminate an unhealthy relationship with one man until another
stepped forward and proclaimed himself her protector.

Other women in The Leet Tyegen wind up accepting almost
equally subservient postures in their quests for financial
security. Kathleen' 3 friend Edna, who is with her at the
studio on the night of the earthquake when they first en-
counter Stahr, supports herself through prostitution: she
visits "call-houses, " as Kathleen later tells Stahr (88) .

Some women in the novel hold jobs that require them to perform
other functions traditionally linked with the feminine gender.
The stewardess on the plane in the opening scene is respon-
sible for keeping her guests comfortable by serving them food
and beverages and nursing them if they feel ill . The actres-
ses at the movie studio entertain others--in the social
convention--by drawing on such time-honored feminine at-

tributes as beauty, vitality, and charm.

182

Several women in the novel are employed as secretaries,
whose work routinely entails pleasing male bosses. Most sig-
nificantly, Brady's secretary--somewhat facetiously named
Birdy Peters--strives diligently to meet the demands of a man
whose conception of a secretary's responsibilities evidently
includes the gratification of his sexual desires. This
instance of a woman's employment status is especially note-
worthy because of its impact on Cecilia Brady, who accidental-
ly discovers the naked secretary in her father's office
closet. What might be viewed as a rather comical- scene by
some readers is apparently deeply disturbing to Cecilia, who
flees in silence after demanding that her father "cover" Birdy
"up." Cecilia remembers that she has "surprised" her father
"before," yet she continues to feel "just black and awful"
later in the day. As she muses over her father's behavior
with his secretary, she reminds herself, ". . . there was
probably not any kind of place, including churches and offices
and shrines where people had not embraced--but no one had ever
stuffed me naked into a hole in the wall in the middle of a
business day" (104) . Her stark vision of the incident, and
her attendant depression, suggest her dim perception that her
father's crude objectification of his secretary may reflect a
fundamental lack of respect for all women. She identifies
with Birdy, but yearns for a greater degree of respect.

Only one woman in Fitzgerald's last novel actually appears

to have achieved independent financial security: Jane

183

Meloney, a writer who makes "over'a hundred thousand a year."
Not surprisingly, however, Fitzgerald's brief description of
Meloney when she first appears includes a passage that
deprives her of any sexual or romantic appeal: "Without being
an old.maid, she was, like most self-made women, rather old
maidish" (36). This description reaffirms Fitzgerald's
customary point-of-view that successful career women invaria-
bly had to sacrifice their femininity in the quest for what
were supposedly "masculine" forms of achievement.3 Interest-
ingly, however, Meloney's success as a writer derives from
"such ordinary assets as the bare fact that she was a woman
and adaptable, quick and trustworthy, ' knew the game' and was
without egotism" (36) . The other major writer in the novel, a
man named Wylie White, at one point compares himself to a
woman, saying, " ' I'm vain as a woman. If anybody pretends to
be interested in me, I 'll ask for more. I like advice" (16) .

Liking advice and craving attention are not necessarily
signs of vanity, however. They are at least as likely to be
signs of insecurity and low self-esteem. Over and over again
the women in Fitzgerald's novels attach themselves to men even
as they long for feminine identities that are not contingent
upon currying males ' approval . Their patriarchal culture
defines them in terms of their relationships with men, and
they thrive on men' s interest at least in part because they
have not yet found any alternate means of defining and knowing

themselves.

184

In The Lest Megan Fitzgerald's intuitive grasp of women's
social condition during his lifetime moves into a symbolic
realm, for Monroe Stahr is--among other things--an archetypal
patriarch. He is not just another man: he is a hero and
father-figure to virtually all the people who inhabit the
world of his studio. How he regards women can therefore be
seen as indicative of how the American patriarch defined the
women of his era.

Numerous details in the unfinished novel suggest that
Stahr is the "wise old man" of his milieu and that he has
always made it his business to look after the citizens of his
studio society. Cecilia summarizes his patriarchal role among
the Hollywood crowd:

He spoke and waved back as the people streamed by in
the darkness, looking, I suppose, a little like the
Emperor and the Old Guard. There is no world so but it
has its heroes, and Stahr was the hero. Most of these men
had been here a long time-~through the beginning and the
great upset, when sound came, and the three years of
depression, he had seen that no harm came to them. The
old loyalties were trembling now, there were clay feet
everywhere: but still he was their man, the last of the
princes. And their greeting was a sort of low cheer as
they went by. (27)

Heroes like Stahr, of course, inspire respect, and even
worship, among their followers. They also dispense wisdom, as
Stahr does when he identifies which segments of film should be
cut: "The oracle had spoken. There was nothing to question
or argue" (56) . Sometimes individuals, who run into difficul-
ties directly seek the wisdom of patriarchs: Stahr, for

example, has a visit from an actor, distressed by impotence,

185
who tells him, "' . . . I came to you, Monroe. I never saw a
situation where you didn't know a way out'" ( 35) . Stahr's
aura of wisdom is enhanced by his extreme dedication to his
work and by his impending death: although Stahr estimates his
age at thirty-five when Kathleen asks, his doctor knows that
he is "due to die very soon now" and that he is prone toward
"working light hearted with fatigue" (108) . Stahr is also
"Napoleonic," according to Fitzgerald's notes, and "more of a
man's man than a ladies' man" (147) . Even his rival Brady
likens him to "'a little goddam priest or rabbi, '" thereby
demonstrating an awareness of Stahr's virtually transcendant
influence over the people around him (103) .

Although some of the men in Fitzgerald's earlier novels
occupy roles that might imply some degree of patriarchal
authority, Monroe Stahr is the most thoroughly developed,
mature, and consistent male character to appear. Devereux
Warren in Tende: Te the Night is approximately Stahr's age and
is a father, so he might be construed as a kind of patriarch:
but he lacks the wisdom and esteem that are generally as-
sociated with the archetype. Similarly, Dick Diver, who is
not much younger than Warren and Stahr, occupies a patriarch's
role in his capacity as a doctor: far from inspiring con-
fidence and loyalty, however, he habitually alienates people
he would like to charm and often becomes enmeshed in situa-‘-
tions others find somehow appalling. Gatsby has an aura of

mystery about him that is akin to Stahr's charisma, but the

186

throngs who seek him out are only superficially interested--
primarily in the good parties he has to offer--and ultimately
prove disloyal. Amory and Anthony are merely egotistical
schoolboys in comparison to Monroe Stahr. In effect, then,
Stahr is Fitzgerald's first and only male character who
exhibits the maturity, wisdom, leadership, strength, and
courage generally associated with the archetypal patriarch.4
As an archetype, he represents a cultural tradition. His
responses to the behaviors and attitudes of the New Women
Fitzgerald portrays within The Leet Tyeeen can therefore help
to illuminate Fitzgerald' s perceptions of the traditional
culture ' s impression of the changing status of women.

According to Fitzgerald' s characterization, Stahr is not
usually inclined toward "losing his head' over women.
Although he clearly misses his wife Minna Davis--who, perhaps
significantly, did not share his surname--"He had never lost
his head about Minna, even in the beginning--it had been the
most appropriate and regal match imaginable. " After the
marriage was arranged, as a king' s would be--on the basis of
propriety, his wife "loved him always, " in the feminine
convention, and his own "tenderness" surfaced dramatically
just before her death. Since Stahr "had another sort of
adventure reserved for his mind--something better than a
series of emotional sprees, " he maintained detachment from
women "in his younger days" as he "had them once and never

more than once--like one drink. " It was only in his maturity

187
that he recognized the "barrenness" of his life without
romance and set about learning "tolerance, kindness, for-
bearance, and even affection like lessons" (96-97) .

Stahr's lack of personal interest in most women serves in
part perhaps as a metaphor for the American patriarchy's
disinclination to pay much attention to women. Just as
Stahr's pattern has been to take women for granted, turning to
them only occasionally as his need for something they offer
arises, so too has the American society at large generally
ignored women except in moments of crisis, at least up to the
time of Fitzgerald's generation.

But for Stahr the New Woman, as she appears in the form of
Kathleen Moore, offers unusual and intriguing possibilities.5
Her initial attraction for Stahr is her novelty, for "she
[does] not belong to the Hollywood world" (133) . Kathleen
makes Stahr "glad that there [is] beauty in the world that
would not be weighed in the scales of the casting department"
(66) . He immediately associates Kathleen with his dead wife,
but when they smile at each other, it is "as if this was the
beginning of the world" (7 3) .

While there is nothing at all unusual about a Fitzgerald
protagonist falling rapidly in love with a beautiful woman,
Kathleen differs from her predecessors in other novels in
small but important ways. According to Fitzgerald' s notes,
Kathleen's almost irresistible appeal stems from the fact that

she has "a life" of her own that does "not depend on him or

188

hope to depend on him" (152) . In this respect, she indeed
appears to be a New Woman--exercising her own autonomous
judgment, providing for herself. Upon closer examination,
however, this view of Kathleen is not really supportable.
Although she demonstrates her honesty and assertiveness in a
variety of ways and does not depend on Stahr for her liveli-
hood, she is not genuinely independent. She tells Stahr of her
past long-term liaison with another man, describing it as "one
of those awful mistakes people make." Despite her plans to
marry the man who rescued her from her "awful mistake," she
decides to make love with him "in the fuselage of [his]
house," all the while "thinking irrationally that it would be
such a bright indefatigable baby" (80,81,87) . Like the New
Women Fitzgerald presents in earlier novels, Kathleen displays
overt sexuality that is received with mixed reactions on the
part of the conventional patriarchy that Stahr represents.

Like a noble, wise patriarch, Stahr listens to the news of
Kathleen's earlier sexual involvement with sensitivity,
"weighing but not judging," as he recognizes pragmatically
that, "It would have been a waste if she had not loved and
been loved" (80-1) . In a more abstract situation, however,
the very same representative of the patriarchy lambasts his
studio writer for giving the impression in a script that "a
future wife and mother" is "one-third whore" (40) . Stahr's
acceptance of the changing sexual attitudes and behaviors he

encounters in his personal life co-exists with his more

189

conservative view of what constitutes appropriate morality in
the movies. His ambivalent feelings about expressions of
female sexuality may be representative of the American
society's attitude toward the sexual revolution that took
place during Fitzgerald's lifetime.6

Not surprisingly, Kathleen Moore proves to be more
liberated in sexual matters than in economic matters. Unable
to support herself through employment, she has resorted to
depending on men to provide for her financially. Ironically,
Stahr does not appear to be aware that she is less in control
of her life than he imagines. Her somewhat aloof manner with
him apparently conveys sel f-sufficiency, for she does not
depend on him for anything. Nevertheless, she deee have plans
to marry another man, the one who rescued her from the
decadent king. Her semblance of self-sufficiency may stem
more from her commitment to someone else than from a genuinely
autonomous lifestyle. It is also interesting to note that
Kathleen's movement from one intimate liaison to another
parallels the relationship patterns of Daisy in The Qgeet
Qetehy and Nicole in Tende]; 1e the Night. All three of these
New Women have extreme difficulty in leaving dysfunctional
relationships: they dare not contemplate the end of an
association with one man, however cruel he may be, without a
suitable replacement for him. The women of Fitzgerald's
transitional era--at least as they surface in his novels--

consistently appear to long for autonomy while experiencing

190

themselves as powerless without a male protector. This
results in a kind of serial monogamy for them as they move
readily from one relationship into another, often confounded
by their sense that something is missing in their lives and
loves. What they really need, without realizing it in most
cases, is a strong sense of their own value, irrespective of
men's romantic impulses toward them. Fitzgerald may have
perceived the economic constraint on women's development of a
sense of identity, for he repeatedly created female characters
who daydreamed about the independence and respect a job might
offer. However, his notes for The Lest Megan suggest that
Kathleen's search for employment would have reflected the
absurdity and futility of the grandiose quest for autonomy:
she was to have evoked encouragement only from a Swami (146) .

Nevertheless, Kathleen does clearly set herself apart from
women of previous generations. In addition to her assumption
of the right to engage in sexual activity outside of wedlock,
she also feels free to speak out against what she perceives as
unreasonable demands on her. In one noteworthy scene Kathleen
decides to leave a dance where she is uncomfortable: Stahr
stops her on the way out the door.

"Am I responsible for this?" he asked.
"I was going anyhow." But she added almost resent-
fully, "They talked as if I'd been dancing with the Prince
of Wales. They all stared at me. One of the men wanted

to draw my picture, and another one wanted to see me
tomorrow."

"That's just what I want," said Stahr gently, "but I
want to see you much more than he does."

"You insist so," she said wearily. "One reason I
left England was that men- always wanted their own way. I

191

thought it was different here. Isn't it enough that I
don't want to see you?" (74-5)

While Kathleen obviously feels that she ought to have some
jurisdiction over her social interactions with men, she also
seems to have significant difficulty in rejecting their
demands. Rather than simply saying "no," she sometimes finds
it necessary to withdraw from situations where men put
pressure on her. She reports that she "'left England'" in
order to separate herself from insistent men: she also
attempts to leave the dance primarily to break away from men
who have plans for her--plans she does not care to satisfy.
Interestingly, she compares Stahr and his coercive, possessive
prodding with men of the even more traditional patriarchy, the
old order of England. As they leave the dance together and
continue the discussion, she labels herself a "'weak woman'"
and eventually agrees to see him again the next day.

As a patriarch, Stahr naturally ignites the curiosity,
respect, and romantic fantasies of many women. Throughout the
unfinished novel young Cecilia Brady is even more intrigued by
Stahr's authoritative manner and serene sophistication than is
Kathleen. Cecilia's fascination with this traditional male
archetype is all the more compelling because she evidently
perceives herself to be a New Woman. Early in the novel she
turns contemplative following Wylie's implication that people
are interested in her only because she's Brady's daughter:

We don't take abuse like our mothers would have.

Nothing--no remark from a contemporary means much.
They tell you to be smart, they're marrying you for

192

your money, or you tell them. Everything's simpler.
Or is it? as we used to say. (68)

While she diligently attempts to set herself apart from her
mother's generation--wanting above all to feel that her
generation of women is able to command more respect--her final
thoughts evoked by this incident suggest her own doubts over
whether the status of women had genuinely improved.

Still, she considers herself a liberated young woman, and
she finds it possible not only to imagine a premarital affair
with a man practically her father's age but also to pursue it
actively. Her thoughts about Stahr originate as a schoolgirl's-
daydreams of romantic conquest: "When I wasn't dozing I was
thinking that I wanted to marry Stahr, that I wanted to make
him love me" ( 17) . She is awed by him: "I never dared look
quite at him, unless I had something important to say" (15) .
Yet she finds it pleasant to watch him "as unobtrusively as
possible," even though her "stomach [dips] a little at the
proximity to Stahr" when she spends time at the movie studio
(21) . In effect, she has a severe crush on him for--without
really knowing him--she looks upon him as a masculine ideal.

Cecilia's infatuation in and of itself does not make her a
New Woman, but her decision to act upon it does. Absolutely
"head over heels in love with" Stahr, she boldly makes her

move 3

My heart was on fire, and smoke was in my eyes and
everything, but I figured my chance at about fifty-fifty.
I would walk right up to him as if I was either going to
walk through him or kiss him on the mouth--and stop a bare
foot away and say "Hello" with disarming understatement.

193
And.I did--though of course it wasn't like I ex-
pected. . . . I stood there, an hour, I think, without
moving, and all he did was twitch the side of his mouth

and put his hands in his pocket. (70)

It seems noteworthy that Cecilia's effort to be assertive as a
New'Woman elicits very little response from the content patri-
arch» He doesn't even get particularly flustered when she
says, a moment later, "'Undertake me.'" Instead, he merely
looks up "in surprise" and seems "almost miserable for a
minute." Then he casually dismisses her attentions, and she
recognizes the moment as "the end" of her "childhood" (71).

Cecilia's startling discovery that seizing prerogatives
may not be as rewarding as she anticipates reflects lessons
many young women of Fitzgerald's generation must have learned.
Imagining emancipation from the society's patriarchal tradi-
itions and conventions was one thing: achieving genuine freedom
was a different matter altogetheru As Cecilia.muses, "How
different it all was from what you'd planned" (70).

Although The Leet Men was still unfinished when
Fitzgerald died of'a heart attack in 1940, as his final novel
it completes the important.portrait of American womanhood that
he created in his major works between the two world wars.
Fitzgerald's close attention to detail and nuance makes his
writing important not just as literature but also as social
history; Throughout his adult life, there was much talk about
the changing status of women. .Although,he evidently listened

closely to that talk, his characterization of contemporary

women in his novels suggests that he perceived on some level

194
that certain aspects of women's liberation were more illusory
than real.

To be sure, the women in Fitzgerald's fiction do tend to
be more assertive and more sexually active than women in
earlier works of American literature. But no one who must
rely on others for the fulfillment of basic survival needs is
ever really free. Virginia Woolf explains the important
difference between symbolic and genuine emancipation in A m
91 gm SLED (1929) . "The news of my legacy reached me," she
reflects, "one night about the same time that the act was
passed that gave votes to women. . . . Of the two--the vote
and the money, the money, I own, seemed infinitely the more
important" (37).

The New Women of Fitzgerald's era--and in his fiction--had
won suffrage. But that fact doesn't seem to matter much to
them--or to him--for he never seems to mention it in his
novels. What the women of Thie Side 91 fiendiee, The Bennti;
mmnflmfid. MMMIMIEQJEW: finding
Leet Tyeoen do consistently care about is dignity. They want
to be treated with respect and to be allowed to make their own
decisions, especially with regard to their bodies. They want
to be able to support themselves financially by doing work of
their own choosing. They want, above all, to be heard in
their earnest quest for autonomy.

It is a tribute to the artistry of F. Scott Fitzgerald

that he could so accurately record these New Women's voices--

195
and that he could listen so well to them in the first place.
Although much critical attention.has been devoted to Fitzger-
ald's compelling male characters, his women characters command
just as much respects They are poignant, complex, frustrated,
and often damaged. .And they seem--even in the later decades

of this century--to be all too real.

Notes

Chapter 1
1.) The stranger in Anderson's story envisions the

manifestations of "a new quality in women," which will
make them "strong and courageous" through their recurrent
"struggles and defeats." These New Women, able to
"venture anything" will be "something more than man or
woman." .Anderson's allusion to the possibility of
transcending gender calls to mind the aspirations of
Fitzgerald's New'Women, who attempt to take charge of
their own destinies by breaking away from.certain patriar-
chal conventions.

2.) The narrators of h Leet Lady and The gteet
getehy are both looking back on love stories in which they
were peripherally involved. Both.describe their relative
naivete at the start of their narratives, and.both recount
events that contribute to their subsequent disillusion-
ment. In addition, both narrators have four-letter,
monosyllabic names: Niel in A Lget Ledy and Nick in The
Sim; Qum-

Chapter 2

196

197

l.) Fitzgerald referred to Thie Side e: Eerediee in

these terms in his inscription in the copy he gave to H.L.
Mencken. See Bruccoli, W. p. 55.

2.) These descriptions appear in reviews by Harry
Hansen in the ghieege 29.1.1! Nege (March 31,1920) , David W.
Bailey in the New gtineen (May 1, 1920) ,1 and Burton
Rascoe in the theege Deiiy Ttimme (April 3, 1920) . See
Bryer's gritieei Beceptien, pages 1, 19, and 3, respec-
tively.

3.) Note in particular the critical articles by
Barry Gross and Clinton Burhans listed in Works Cited.

The most recent stylistic examination of Thie sides};
fiendiee is also the most lengthy: see The Nehing gt Thie
Side gt fiendiee, by James L.W. West III.

4.) Scott Donaldson, in particular, discusses the
influence of women in Fitzgerald's life on his characters.
Mary McCay refers to Fitzgerald's men as "romantics" ( 311)
and James West refers to his women as "pragmatists" ( 67) .

5.) For a thorough analysis of Thie side 91 Beredtse
as a bildungsroman, see the article by Barry Gross.

6.) For an examination of Fitzgerald's association

of sex with evil, see the article by Clinton Burhans.

Chapter 3

1.) Barry Gross notes that Gloria is different from

Rosalind and Daisy "only in the degree of her self-

198
knowledge and articulateness." See "The Dark Side of
Twenty-Five," p. 47.

2.) Although Scott Donaldson deems Bloeckman
"unpleasantly aggressive" (183), Gloria takes his affec-
tion very seriously'. . . wondering on the eve of her
engagement whether is was "wrong to make Bloeckman love
[her]" (147).

3.) See Norwood's complete list of traits of "women
who love too much," pp. 7-9.

4.) Several of Fitzgerald's biographers and critics
have noted that Zelda accused him of using passages of her
diaries in his novels. See, for example, Stern, p. 109.

5.) According to Stern, "Anthony caters to his
babywife ...." (141). Stavola calls.Gloria "egocentric,
careless, and.pleasure seeking" (123).

6.) Like many of Fitzgerald's characters-—and,
indeed, Fitzgerald.himself--Gloria.harbors a vague sense
that Hollywood can always offer financial redemption. For
a thorough analysis of Fitzgerald's view of Hollywood, see
"Hollywood in Fitzgerald," by Robert A. Martin.

Chapter 4
1.) Joan S. Korenman examines Fitzgerald's con-
tradictory descriptions of Daisy's coloring in terms of
her "embodiment of traits associated with the fair and the
dark women of romantic literature" in "'Only'Her’Hairdres-

ser’. . .': Another Look.at Daisy Buchanan" in Amezieen

199
Literethre, 46 (Jan. 1975), 574-78: and Leland S. Person,
Jr. , considers Daisy "more victim than victimizer" in

"'Herstory' and Daisy Buchanan" in Merieen Litetetgre 50
(May 1978), 250-57.

2.) F. Scott Fitzgerald, Behylen Beyieited end Othe;
Stetiee (New York: Scribner's, 1960), p. 4. Subsequent
references are to this edition.

3.) In a 1920 letter to Isabelle Amorous, Fitzgerald
wrote about Zelda: ". . . I fell in love with her
courage, her sincerity and.her flaming self-respect. . ."
The letter appears in Sheilah Graham's The Ben]. L fieett
Fitzgeteid (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1976), p. 58.

4.) For fuller discussions of the romantic aspects
of Daisy's character, see both the Korenman and Person

articles cited above.

Chapter 5

1.) See Matthew J. Bruccoli's The gemmeitien Qfi

mum-3mm: amammmmwit-
tsburgh: ‘University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963) for a

detailed analysis of Fitzgerald's nine-year process of
writing the novel.

2.) The exact changes that Scott imposed on the
original manuscript are unknown, since Zelda's papers were
destroyed in the fire that killed her in 1948. Scott
discussed some of the changes he considered mandatory in

his correspondence with his publisher, Maxwell Perkins.

200

3.) For a complete account of this dialogue between
husband and wife, see Matthew J. Bruccoli, Seme $.23 91
MW: Thehifeefnmttfiitzsmld (New York:
Scribner's, 1981), pp. 349-52.

4.) Recent essays about Zelda's novel include
Meredith Cary's 531: he the Edit; as a Novel," Eitzgereld;
Heninggeyehnngei, 1976, pp. 63-78: Jacqueline Tavernier-
Courbin's "Art as Woman's Response and Search: Zelda
Fitzgerald's 531: Me the Waltz.” 5.9133312!!! Literary
Jentnei, 11 (Spring, 1979), pp. 22-42: and Linda.Wagner's
"Seye Ne the Vinita: An Assessment in Craft," Mme]. ef
NettetiyeTeehnigne 12, No. 3 (Fall, 1982), pp. 201-209.

5.) It is not my primary purpose here to establish
similarities between Scott's fictional characters and
Zelda, but critics generally recognize Zelda's influence
on Scott's characterization of women.

6.) Fitzgerald was inconsistent in establishing
Nicole's age at the time of'her’mother's deaths iNicole
remembers being thirteen shortly before her'mother died:
Mr; Warren says his wife died.when Nicole was eleven” See

p. 55 and p. 126.

Chapter 6
1.) For thorough analyses of the psychological
ramifications of incest, see both the Russell book and the

Gelinas article listed in Works Cited.

201

'2.) Berman points out that "At the center of the
male-female relationship in Tender Le the Night looms the
specter of transference, with its ominous implications of
the repetition-compulsion principle" (72-3) .

3.) In L Neler Teld hnxene (Florence Rush, editor) ,
Bass traces mental health care professionals' disinclina-
tion to believe accounts of incest back to Freud himself.
She notes: "When Freud was confronted with frequent
accounts of sexual assault by fathers against daughters in
his psychiatric practice, he felt he had discovered a
major cause of hysteria. But as the enormity of this
indictment against fathers became apparent to him . . . he
revised his opinion and decided that women had fantasized
these rapes" (25) . Interestingly, Incest Survivors
Anonymous includes among its many statements in its "Open
Letter to the Professional Community," "Fantasy is that it
did net happen."

4.) Berman notes that Nicole "hardly appears
schizophrenic at all" and points out that her "few
symptoms . . . suggest hysteria and obsession compulsion"
(83).

5.) Chesler declares that therapists who become
sexually involved with patients tend to be "quite cruel to
protestors or deserters" (_W_Qmen end Nedneee, 151) . Dick
Diver is most cruel to Nicole near the end of the novel,

after she begins to assert herself.

202

6.) It is interesting to note that Fitzgerald
reminded himself in writing to draw on material from
Zelda's doctors Forel and Bleuler, "'in.this case using no
factual stuff'" (Bruccoli, Qempeeitien, 81).

7.) Russell observes, "Given the many different
experiences of sexual assault in the lives of incest
victims, it is hardly surprising that they are more
fearful." She adds that "the incest experience itself
could have stripped away some of the victims' potential
ability to protect themselves" (172).

8.) Russell's research indicates that "incest
victims.might be more sensitive to, and easily upset by,
experiences such as sexual advances by authority figures,
sexual comments by men on the street," and other'manifes-
tations of men's casual sexual objectification of them
(165).

9.) According to Gelinas, "The inception of incest
occurs gradually and usually in the context of the
father's emotional needs, mother's depletion and
daughter's parentification" (321).

10.) Russell elaborates on this point: "One common
consequence of the manipulation of a child's trust and
vulnerability is an impaired ability to correctly judge
the trustworthiness of others“ This impaired capacity, in
turn, may make victims more vulnerable to subsequent

abuse, both sexual and nonsexual" (168).

203

11.) Pope and Bouhoutsos recognize the danger
inherent in a therapist's belief that he is responsible
for his patient's cure. They note, "Perhaps the most
difficult trap to avoid is the feeling that one is
indispensable, that only through personal intervention can
one provide a patient with the feeling that he or she is
lovable, desirable, and worthwhile" (45) . Needless to
say, such an approach to therapy gives the psychiatrist an
exaggerated notion of his importance and makes it easier
for him to rationalize unprofessional conduct.

12.) Clemens suggests that Zelda, too, may have been
misdiagnosed.

l3.) Gelinas explains that, "the presence of depres-
sive complications with impulsive and dissociative
elements can lead to multiple and erroneous diagnoses: the
most common misdiagnoses are borderline personality
disorder, latent schizophrenia, and bipolar affective
disorder" (327).

14.) For more information about the potential
psychological repercussions of giving birth, see Marilyn
Yalom's book. Maternity. Merl-slim. and the Literature 2f
Nedneee. In addition, Gelinas discusses the role of
"developmental triggers" like giving birth in her essay,
"The Persisting Negative Effects of Incest."

15.) According to Gelinas, an "undisclosed incest

victim" may manifest a characterological depression with

204
complications and.with atypical impulsive and dissociative
elements" that are brought on by the activation of
subconscious memory processes (326).

16.) According to Pope and Bouhoutsos, "therapists
commit a serious error'with damaging consequences where
they respond to clients' sexual attraction as if it had
occurred in a different context. These . . . scenarios
are among the most confusing for both therapist and
[patient, and are among the most damaging" (lo-ll).

17.) Chesler also notes the tendency among exploitive
therapist to be "involved in creating a primal patriarchal
family-empire," with themselves at its center (Nenenhend
Madness. 150)-

18.) For an examination of Fitzgerald's use of
religious imagery, see Joan Allen's gendlee end Qerniyel

Lights: mmwunmw.
19.) Gelinas notes that "incest victims tend to be

extremely unassertive and.passive, to the point of
paralysis" (322).

20.) Pope and Bouhoutsos explain that sexual intimacy
between patient and therapist may have any or all of the
following consequences for the patient: quilt, am-
bivalence, feelings of isolation, feelings of emptiness,
cognitive dysfunction, inability to trust, identity and
boundary disturbances, sexual confusion, lability of mood,

suppressed rage, and increased suicidal risk (64).

205

Chapter 7
1.) In a letter to Maxwell Perkins in May, 1939,
Fitzgerald alluded to Graham's influence on The Lest
119.9211 by asserting that "the novel was about some things

that . . . happened to [him] in the last two years"

(Bruccoli, he Eyer, 285) .

2.) Sheilah Graham. The Real F... 59.933; W.
16.

3.) Kate Millett observes that in American society
following World War I women's budding "economic indepen-
dence was consciously as well as unconsciously perceived
to be a direct threat to male authority" (87) . It seems
likely that Fitzgerald's own insecurity about providing
for Zelda and Scottie may have influenced his treatment of
female financial success in his novels.

4.) Barry Gross describes Stahr as "the complete
man: romantic, moralist, visionary, humanist, pragmatist,
individualist, technician, artist" ("Scott Fitzgerald's
The LEE}; 119.9231: " 209) .

5.) Kathleen Moore's prototype, Sheilah Graham, has
been described as "a female Gatsby, an outsider who had
risen to a position of prominence." See Donaldson's Fee],
fig]: Me, 204.

6.) Fitzgerald's notes for the novel suggest that
the society's discomfort with the women's movement may

have been made more explicit if Fitzgerald had been able

206
to complete the novel. In a passage marked "[ Kathleen and
her husband?]," Fitzgerald describes a man's anxiety over
a woman's independent thought processes: "He was afraid
of her when she thought, knowing that in the part of her
most removed.from.him, there was taking peace a tireless
ratiocination, the synthesis of which.has always a calm

sense of the injustice and unsatisfactions of life" (151) .

Works Cited

Allen. Frederick Lewis. inx Yesterday m: Infernal hieferz
ef Mneteehflehties New York: Harper and Row,
1931.Perennial Library Edition, 1964.

---- Since Yesterday The 12115 in Merle;- New York:
Harper and Row, 1939. Perennial Library Edition, 1972.

Allen. Joan M. candles and 93mm Lights: The Cathelie
Seneihiiity er L stett Nitzgereid. New York: New York
University Press, 1978.

Anderson, Sherwood. Nineephrg, the. New York: Viking
Press,1960.

Baker, Carlos. "When the Story Ends: 'Babylon Revisited. "'
Menzies 91 L $99.13 museum- Jackson R- Bryer,
ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.

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