F. Scott Fitzgerald's life is a tragic example of both sides of the American Dream—the joys of young love, wealth and success, and the tragedies associated with excess and failure. By 1925 he was known primarily as the historian of the Jazz Age (which he named) and chronicler in slick American magazines of the American “flapper.” Fitzgerald said, shortly after the success of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, that an author “should write for the youth of his generation, the critics of the next, and for the schoolteachers of following generations.” With this maxim as a mission statement, Fitzgerald did write literature that defined his “lost generation.” Within his stories, plays and novels, he also sought to define and perhaps reconcile the injustices of women's, role in society—a role that was changing, and having a tempestuous effect on society through that change. Throughout the works of Fitzgerald women play an important but secondary role. What is important about Fitzgerald's female characters is their effect on the men in the stories.
[...] Josephine Perry, however, was Fitzgerald's first construction of the New Woman. At first glance she seems to fit the Fitzgerald mold: vain, spoiled, rich and shallow, with a habit of leaving distressed men in her wake. But, unlike the men in the Fitzgerald stories she fails to mature, or experience personal growth in any way. In the five stories that make up the Josephine series, Fitzgerald offers an explanation of why he feels that women will not fulfill the promise of New Womanhood. [...]
[...] Her hope is rekindled only when a man appears out of the woods. Josephine pursues this person and the tale becomes another story of love maneuvering and intrigue. In Snobbish Story” she meets a new kind of man, a playwright, and, in the parlance of that day, a “Bohemian.” At first brush, John Bailey appears to be the man who will expand Josephine's thinking. After meeting him, she starts calling herself a “radical” and an and even encourages her father to spend his wealth in philanthropic endeavors. [...]
[...] I don't want Pat (their daughter) to be a genius, I want her to be a flapper, because flappers are brave and gay and beautiful.” Given the descent into mental illness (Zelda) and alcoholism (Scott) that these two later experienced it is clear that Fitzgerald had a stake in charting the negative outfall of adopting the libertine values and carefree lifestyle that he and his wife stood as spokespeople for. Fitzgerald's portrayal of women, first in the Josephine stories and later in The Great Gatsby and Crack-up” essays, does not as many critics believe, present a patriarchal and condescending view of womanhood. [...]
[...] Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of the author, had expressed the view that the modern woman had right to experiment with herself as a transient, poignant figure who will be dead tomorrow.” The women's suffrage movement, the decline of organized religion, the first world war, the popularity of newly- minted trends in fashion and culture, like the Gibson Girls, as well as such culture-defining events as the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1905, which gave birth to the labor movement, and all bubbled in the cauldron of the American City and gave birth to a proto-feminist movement, spearheaded by the concept of the Woman.” Fitzgerald had a keen eye for social movements and he chronicled the paradoxical role of the New Woman in these years. [...]
[...] All the women in the novel are superficial: Wilson's wife collects the dog and all sorts of other gifts with no real structure to them, Daisy is vapid and superficial and Jordan, seemingly liberated as a golf star, actually seems inexperienced in the ways of love and fails to attract Nick. These characters represent what Josephine would likely have become had her fictional life had continued. Tom and Daisy, locked in what is described in the first Josephine story as a “loveless marriage,” based on social conventions, have become bored with each other and are engaged in extramarital affairs. [...]
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