Biographical and Cultural Issues in F. Scott Fitzgerald’S Portrayals of Women

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Scott Fitzgerald’s portrayals of women Gibbens, Elizabeth Pennington, M.A. The American University, 1994 UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproductionFurther reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. The Baby Vamp and the Decline of the West: Biographical and Cultural Issues in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Portrayals of Women by Elizabeth P. Gibbens submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Literature Signatures of Committee: Chair: --- the College Date 1994 The American University 1o?i Washington, D.C. 20016 THE AMEBIC AIT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE BABY VAMP AND THE DECLINE OF THE WEST: BIOGRAPHICAL AND CULTURAL ISSUES IN F. SCOTT FITZGERALD'S PORTRAYALS OF WOMEN BY Elizabeth P. Gibbens ABSTRACT Meaning in F. Scott Fitzgerald's fiction results from biographical and cultural connotation. Fitzgerald wrote semi-autobiographical fiction. As a young author, he wanted to live as a romantic hero. Marrying Zelda Sayre, he enriched his romantic possibilities. Encouraged as a child to be charming, she complied with her husband's portrayal of her. She suited her role as his muse. As she matured, the conflicting pulls of her authentic and fictional selves destroyed her. Western culture supported Fitzgerald's "creating" Zelda. C.G. Jung argues that men, in worshipping women, have revered their own creative powers. In his Zelda character, Fitzgerald celebrates his authority as an artist. The conspiratorial Zelda that he sees refuses to live in his fictional cage; she strives to become an artist in her own right. In The Great Gatsbv. Daisy Buchanan is a modern muse. Since he constructs his own reality, Jay Gatsby is a figurative artist. In the failure of Gatsby's vision, Fitzgerald disparages American consumerism. While Gatsbv emerges as American myth, in Tender is the Night. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fitzgerald creates a metaphor for Western decline. In Tender. Fitzgerald shows that women's worlds are chaotic --he shows women to be incapable of governing. He uses Nicole Diver to show that sexually assertive women are bestial. Seemingly, to Fitzgerald, there can be no equality of authority between the sexes. Fitzgerald evidently reacts against female emancipation. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT..................................................... ii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION.......................................... 1 II. BIOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN F. SCOTT AND ZELDA S. FITZGERALD......................... 3 III. MALE SOUL WORSHIP: CULTURAL ISSUES IN FITZGERALD'S VIEWS OF CREATIVITY.................................. 15 IV. A PANDERING MUSE: DAISY BUCHANAN OF THE GREAT GATSBY..................................... 21 V. THREE KINDS OF MARBLE: THE HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK OF TENDER IS THE NIGHT........27 VI. FROM SUFFRAGE TO SUFFERING: THE ODDLY BEVELLED MIRRORS OF A NEW WORLD............................... 35 VII. SETTLING THINGS: TRADITION, REACTION, AND AN AUTHOR'S DYING CRY................................... 49 BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................................53 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I. INTRODUCTION Andrei Codrescu, evoking the sultry appeal of New Orleans, describes the cemetery F. Scott Fitzgerald, writing This Side of Paradise, saw from his New Orleans apartment window: [Fitzgerald] had the upstairs apartment, the one with the windows that look on the upraised graves. I can see him, coffee in hand, standing in his robe on the little balcony, wincing from last night's gin, looking down on the little houses of the dead, wishing he was one of them. “It's not so great on this side of paradise," he might have said, to no one in particular. (Codrescu 194) The Lafayette Cemetery is a precinct in New Orleans' city for the dead. Part of a huge complex of cemeteries, its above-ground tombs, with algae like the gnarled velvet of old carnival gowns and ghostly whitewashed facades, fascinate foreigners. Regarding the vaults, people often forget the reasons they exist — the graves hide their inhabitants, who would otherwise make their presence known by washing up after a hurricane on someone's front door step. The seemingly otherworldly inscriptions on the graves, "Louis Octave Broussard, 1801-1848," argue against any impression that Americans' ancestors people this city that only awakens on All Souls' Day. There is a kinship between Fitzgerald's fiction and the graves which were his view. Outwardly enchanting, there are lives buried within Fitzgerald's stories. Alien tourists, we readers can simply admire the preternatural allure of Fitzgerald's words, or we can explore the frequently painful reality which shaped Fitzgerald as an author. While Fitzgerald was writing Paradise, Zelda Sayre was also looking at tombs; contemplating death, Zelda also appeared hopeful. Perhaps wanting to live her life for story, Zelda asked Fitzgerald: Why should graves make people feel in vain? All the broken columnes and clasped hands and doves and angels mean romances and in an hundred years I think I shall like having young people speculate on whether my eyes were brown or blue... (ZSF 1991 446) 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 It seems that to Zelda, the possibilities in each life story made death purposeful. Zelda's end offers many interpretations; a frustrated ballerina burned beyond recognition, Zelda's remains were identified by the scorched slipper on which they lay (Milford 453). Ironically, Zelda's death resembles a story — the one in which Snow White's father, the king, forces her stepmother to dance in red-hot slippers until she dies. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. II. BIOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN F. SCOTT AND ZELDA S. FITZGERALD Scott and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald created the story of their lives. Tragic as their tale is, it took its shape from their own creative methods; Fitzgerald effectively molded the tale into fiction. In a less straightforward, commercially-successful fashion, Zelda also wrote autobiographical fiction. Inspired, the Fitzgeralds thrived on inventing worlds for themselves. However, in later life, both reflected that they had danced through life on the promises of popular songs (Milford 353, 441); as spirits of the earth, both were unable to live outside their times. As E.L. Doctorow notices, If we allow that culture...transforms itself into a jailhouse walling out reality, then songs comprise the cells of our imprisonment...the bars we grasp are our songs (Doctorow 58). Initially, both Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald grasped the androcentric standards of their times. In her mid-twenties, Zelda began to realize her imprisonment as beauty personified; reaching out for a more meaningful life, Zelda was destroyed. In his Invented Lives. James R. Mellow recounts how Scott and Zelda, using the world as paper and themselves as the keys of a typewriter,

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